Oranges and Lemons
About Oranges and Lemons
Stan Laurel plays Sunkist, a packer at a citrus orchard who keeps the job only because everyone else is worse. He runs a machine that drops fruit into a hopper, scoops it, and dumps it into a tin bath, except none of it lands. He swaps places with another worker and the fruit hits him on the head. He tries to help a heavy coworker on a stepladder with a rubber middle. The boss, Orange Blossom, chases him into the packing house, where Little Valencia is boxing fruit and flirting, and then into the storage room, where Sunkist tries to use the machinery to get away.
Cast & crew
More about Oranges and Lemons
George Jeske directed this one-reel Hal Roach comedy. Hal Roach produced it, Frank Young photographed it, and Pathé Exchange distributed it. It was released on August 12, 1923. Laurel's character is named Sunkist, taken from the citrus cooperative Sunkist Growers.
Themes
Making
Roach's 1923 Laurel shorts give him a job, a boss, and a machine that does not work. This one is set entirely in the fruit business, from the orchard into the packing floor.
Look
Frank Young shot the orchard and the packing-house chase.
Preservation
A print is on the Internet Archive.
Notes
- Katherine Grant plays Little Valencia. Eddie Baker plays the boss, Orange Blossom.
- James Finlayson is one of the workers, with George Rowe, Sammy Brooks, and Mark Jones.
- 'Tonnage' Martin Wolfkeil plays another worker, the heavy man on the rubber ladder.
- Laurel's character here is aggressive and physical, not the later shy partner of Oliver Hardy.
- The name Sunkist is a lift from the packing house's real-world brand.
Scenes
- Sunkist and a coworker trade places at the hopper, and the fruit falls on Laurel's head.
- A stepladder with a rubber center section folds under the heavy worker.
- The boss chases him off the orchard and in among the women packing cases.
Also available
- Internet Archive (OrangesAndLemons_)
