Main Cast: Oliver Hardy, Stan Laurel, Doris Merrick, Arthur Space, Veda Ann Borg
Release Year: 1944
Country: US
Run Time: 74 minutes
Plot
Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy play janitors for a detective agency who pose as super-sleuths when they're hired to protect inventor Alva P. Hartley (Arthur Space). Moving bag and baggage into Hartley's gadget-laden house, Stan and Ollie must first contend with the inventor's bratty son Egbert (Bobby Blake, aka Robert Blake) and much-married Aunt Sophie (Esther Howard). More problems ensue when Hartley's next door neighbors Charlton (Frank Fenton), Hartman (James Bush), Dutchy (Phil Van Zandt) and Mayme (Veda Ann Borg) reveal themselves as the crooks they really are. Entrusted with Hartley's latest invention, super-bomb called "The Big Noise", Stan and Ollie skeedaddle to Washington, just one step ahead of the criminals. Escaping the villains, the boys take flight in a balky airplane, only to find that they're the targets for Army gunnery practice. Our heroes save themselves-and the day-when they use the bomb to destroy a Japanese submarine. Long regarded as the worst of Laurel & Hardy's feature films, The Big Noise has in recent years been championed by several of the team's fans, not least because the admittedly patchy storyline incorporates several of their classic routines from such earlier 2-reelers as Habeas Corpus, Wrong Again and Berth Marks. Arguably the film's best scene finds Stan and Ollie trying to gorge themselves on a "banquet" consisting of dehydrated food capsules. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Review
Although not nearly as bad as its reputation, this latter-day Laurel and Hardy comedy isn't very good either, merely a rehash of many of the team's old routines that includes the always welcome derby hat confusion and the cramped sleeping car arrangement from Berth Marks (1929). The beloved comedians are beginning to show their age, however, and the supporting cast, which includes a rather irritating Robert Blake, is more a hindrance than a help. Fox starlet Helene Reynolds reputedly walked off the film in midstream, incensed at being dragged into what was decidedly a minor B-movie, and was replaced with that broadest of 1940s broads Veda Ann Borg. The latter, unfortunately, shares no scenes with Stan and Ollie, but only appears in an unnecessary subplot. But despite its flaws -- and they are legion -- The Big Noise is saved for purists by a charmingly non sequitur closing; after dropping a bomb on an enemy submarine, Stan and Ollie are seen sitting contentedly on a buoy in the middle of the ocean, the former playing "Mairzy Doats" on a concertina as a school of fish dances around them. Perhaps this bizarre but completely disarming closing gag is one of the reasons why Stan Laurel later counted The Big Noise as his favorite among the team's Fox comedies. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide
In this film, Laurel and Hardy are janitors. One night, while cleaning the office of a detective agency, they answer a telephone call from Alva P. Hartley (Arthur Space), an inventor who claims to have created a destructive bomb he calls "The Big Noise." Posing as detectives, Laurel and Hardy move into Hartley's home, where they must contend with his eccentric behavior and the oddball antics of his widowed aunt (who takes a fancy to Hardy) and Hartley's misbehaving son. Hartley's neighbors are crooks who are eager to steal the new bomb. Laurel and Hardy hide the bomb in an accordion and steal an airplane to bring it to Washington. However, the airplane is a remote control target used by the U.S. Army for gunnery training. Laurel and Hardy barely escape by parachuting to safety over the Pacific Ocean, and they dispose of the bomb by dropping it on a Japanese submarine.[1]
The Big Noise was the fifth of six feature films Laurel and Hardy made at 20th Century Fox during the 1940s. During the film's production, Stan Laurel told an interviewer that efforts were made to support the American World War II domestic effort to conserve materials. "We cut out automobile chases and food wasting-gags when the war first started, and with The Big Noise we decided to slash every gag that might conceivably have bearing on wartime wastages and destruction," he said.[2]
Laurel would later recall that he attempted to convince his producer to recycle the Berth Marks scene involving the duo in a claustrophobic train berth by changing the location of the berth to a transcontinental airplane. Laurel felt having the airplane hitting turbulence with the pair bouncing about in the berth would be funnier than recycling the train-based gags. Laurel's request was rejected, but the film changed the original setup by adding comic actor Jack Norton as an inebriate who shares the berth with Laurel and Hardy.[4]
Critical reception
The Big Noise was greeted with harsh reviews when it was first released. Bosley Crowther, writing for The New York Times, claimed it "has as much humor in it as a six-foot hole in the ground." Crowther also derided the duo's advanced age by noting: "Once, long ago, it was funny to see them joust with wet paint and folding beds. But now it is dull and pathetic. And they don't even seem to care."[5]
Other reviews were equally cruel. The New York Herald Tribune complained that "from any comic consideration, it represents the last stop on a dead-end street." Variety echoed Crowther's notion of has-been status by commenting that the film's "silly situations may have been comical in their time, but certainly not to this day and age."[2]
Over the years, The Big Noise has earned the wrath of Laurel and Hardy scholars. William K. Everson stated the film "sank to a new low" and dismissed the airplane finale as "pale and tedious."[6]Leonard Maltin stated the film was "not only unfunny, but for anyone who loves Laurel and Hardy, very sad."[7]
