County Hospital (1932)

Another fine comedy from Stan and Ollie. Stan pays a hospital visit to Oliver, who is up in traction with a broken leg, enjoying the peace and quiet. Of course it isn't long before that peace is destined to vanish.Stan is so wonderfully inept in this one. Visiting Ollie as he hasn't anything else to do today, not bringing Ollie candy as "It costs too much" and not having been paid for the last batch. He comes up with his legendary gift.Don't think any other comedian eating a hard boiled could be funny, but in Laurel's effortless hands it's great. The trouser gag is absolutely hilarious.Only the climax is a let down, spoiled by poor rear projection work and going on too long. We are rescued though by the boys' L-shaped car (at least that's how it ends up!) Stan and Ollie: best there's ever been.

There is a scene in James Parrot's short County Hospital, which stars Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, where, upon visiting his best friend Hardy in the hospital, Laurel sits idly, salting a hard-boiled egg and eating it. There's no joke, there's no real punchline, and there's no real purpose; it's about as literal as a scene could get. If only there was a way to tell the late writer H.M. Walker along with Parrot and Laurel that they may have fundamentally erected the popular idea/concept of anti-humor all the way back in 1932.Although it does feature crisp sound and dialog, County Hospital is still so much a Laurel and Hardy short because of the fact it is more about situational humor than dialog-driven humor. Some readers of mine may mistake the idea that I have a disdain for situational humor, although, when I see the humor done smoothly and humorously, that couldn't be further from the truth. Laurel and Hardy knew what they wanted to accomplish and that was the concept of slapstick, silly humor. The wise-cracking, satirical humor that could make you laugh and ponder was left to Charlie Chaplin and the Marx brothers, which could arguably be why their films come to mind quicker than most Laurel and Hardy films do, on the topic of classic comedy films.The short concerns Laurel arriving to the hospital to comfort Hardy after he received a broken leg, which already feels like the sequel to another one of their shorts gone awry. He brings hard-boiled eggs and nuts - to which Hardy replies with the sole line that essentially sums up the characters in each of their shorts - but Hardy realizes that while Laurel means well, he consistently causes trouble for the both of them. Hardy cannot remember the last time he endured such a restful experience, with two more months in a hospital bed to go, but Laurel ruins all of that with his well-meaning but trouble-causing actions.County Hospital's only burden is its atrociously fake scene involving a sleepy Laurel trying to drive a vehicle with Hardy in the backseat, a scene that is understandable given the thought of the technological limitations of the early 1930's along with the short's budgetary issues. It's little bother; the film that was made instead was a fun piece of work, with self-referential gags and questionably pioneering ones as well.Starring: Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. Directed by: James Parrot.

LAUREL AND HARDY make the most of thin material, relying more on dialog than usual. Not downright hilarious, but full of enough sight gags to keep things breezing along to the fake finish with the rear projection shots of near auto crashes.Oliver Hardy is in a hospital bed with his leg in a cast when he gets an unexpected visit from his eccentric friend Stan Laurel.From then on, nothing but disaster as one well-intentioned gesture after another leads to complete havoc when the doctor (BILLY GILBERT) arrives to check up on his patient. Stan unleashes the truss holding things down on Oliver's leg and the doctor goes flying out the window. From then on, it's pure havoc, topped by a final ride home with Stan accidentally given a tranquilizer shot from a needle he sat on. The boys narrowly escape crashing into other cars as they make their way home on a Los Angeles boulevard in heavy traffic.The final sight gag involves the car that ends up almost wrapped around a post.Funny stuff, but don't expect too much except for a couple of very funny moments.

This short shows the confined area to which it was, namely that poor Ollie actually enjoys the peace and quiet, never mind his broken foot, in his bed of pain at the County Hospital. Stan 'decides' to visit him,as 'he's nothing better to do!' That's the sarcastic line Ollie gives back to him, after he leaves Ollie's peace in tatters, assaults the doctor's dignity and almost kills him, cuts up another patient's trousers and brings Ollie 'hard boiled eggs and nuts' instead of candy or fruit etc. "You didn't pay me for the last box I brought you." says Stan after Ollie's enquiry why he didn't bring the candy!Altogether,it was one of their shorts that had a thin-ish outline, but was filled fairly well considering. It had the odd finale of Stan sitting on a syringe/sedative intended for another patient. The nurses casually mention to themselves in fits of laughter, that Stan will sleep for a month. Strangely not telling him in Hollywood licence style - so of course, when Ollie is prematurely struck off (Because Stan has wrecked the place) the latter drives him home, well almost - sleeping at the wheel, swerving and near-missing everything. It ends with their car bent round in a semi-circle shape, as a policeman tells them to pull over. They can't as because of the shape of the car, it drives around in a circle!As I say, a shallow type of tale, with Stan visiting Ollie in hospital, but nonetheless, it delivers the calamitous Stan in the style we knew was coming Ollie's way!