Fred Guiol | 45 Minutes from Hollywood / 1926

the woman who stole his pants

by Douglas Messerli

 

Hal Roach, H.M. Walker, and Walter Lantz (screenplay), Fred Guiol (director) 45 Minutes from Hollywood / 1926

 

Fred Guiol’s 45 Minutes from Hollywood once again stars the handsome Glenn Tryon, who this time plays the “just” out of town hick, Orville, desperate to get to see Hollywood and watch a movie being made. Both Oliver Hardy, who plays the Hotel Detective, and Stan Laurel who has a small role as a starving actor who has evidently permanently retreated to bed, are also this film; but the director has yet imagined them as a team, although in less than a year he will pair them in roles similar to their famous coupling in Duck Soup.

      Orville’s poor family are desperately behind in their rent, and his mother (Charlotte Mineau) has just received notice that if the fee is not immediately paid in person, the office apparently being located in Hollywood, they will be evicted from their home.

      She first assigns the task to her father, Grandpa (Rube Clifford) who has dreams of breaking and entering an elderly star’s mansion for a little fun and sex. But Orville is desperate to travel into the city and pleads with his mother to let him go, who finally relents, sending all her family members, Orville, Grandpa, and Orville’s sister (Sally O’Neil) off on the 45-minute journey. But by the time they race to the train via bicycle—clearly not built for the 3 of them—they have almost missed the train, requiring them to jump on the already moving locomotive, and although Grandpa makes a valiant attempt, he finally falls off and is forced to remain behind.

 

      The sister simply disappears from sight for the rest of the movie, as Orville takes a Hollywood tour bus which presents the film’s audience with what is perhaps one of the earliest of Hollywood movie self-promotions, giving us quick glimpses of Theda Bara, the Our Gang players, and the Hal Roach Bathing Beauties. Somehow Orville keeps missing all the announced stars and sites, and when they finally observe a bank robbery in progress, which they all believe is merely a film shoot, he and the others jump off the bus to get into the picture, so to speak—precisely what the real robbers hoped would happen in order to help cover their tracks. The bank manager however refuses to hand over the money, and in front of the tourists the crooks, caught in the act, must rush off as the police chase after.

       Observing what he believes a female actor on the run, Orville joins in the chase; he is shocked, however, that the movie is so very realistic, the film police using real bullets, the evidence of which is manifested in the holes in his hat. The escaping female criminal enters a hotel, and selects a room in which to hide, Orville following.

       Once inside, the two hear a man in the bathroom shower, Orville supposing that it must be the woman’s husband, a delusion she encourages. When she seems to signal the boy that she’s sexually interested in him, he’s more than a little surprised even if intrigued. By the time he sits down next to her on the bed, she’s hit him over the head with a heavy object and begins to attempt to pull of his pants, presumably, we realize by now, to change out of her drag costume back into male attire.

        Orville briefly awakens to discover his pants half-way slid down his legs, chastising her for her eager desire to get him undressed for sex, particularly with her husband in the next room. The thief manages the transformation by hitting him over the head once again. Now dressed in Orville’s pants, in the pocket of which sits the role of bills he was to have delivered for the payment of their house, the robber rushes off, leaving Orville dressed in the female costume the crook abandoned.

      The bathing beauty in the next room is the house detective (Hardy) who, at the very moment he exits the bathroom with a towel wrapped around his substantial girth, is met with not only a strange woman in his bed but his returning wife Em (Edna Murphy), who, despite all his insistence upon his innocence, will not believe a word he says and proceeds to violently attack both the intruding harlot and her errant man.

       So begins a series of chases, with Orville attempting time and again to return to the room from which he has been ousted to help the police find the thief and explain that the woman stole his pants, while Em chases them both, and the police chase everyone in sight.

       Orville ends up in a trash bin set on fire. The Police Detective appears the hotel lobby with a cat clawing its way up his body under the towel, while the police run in and out of bedrooms— including the one in which Stan is attempting to get some sleep—all ending up in chaos. Orville finally gets his clothes and money back, the detective restores his innocence and the temporary love of his wife, and the police get their woman/man; but it really doesn’t matter because by the time this movie ends we’re all rather tired of the mad mess of movie.

      Both producer and director hoped that Tyron, who had become popular in previous shorts, might through this vehicle become a star. But today this short is remembered primarily because it is one of the few pre-Laurel and Hardy films, in which the duo both performed. In this case Stan, who had been writing for Guiol, was asked to substitute for another actor who had become ill, contrary to Laurel’s contract with another studio for which he was then performing. But the role is so small and his fake moustache so large, you might miss him if you weren’t on the lookout. And today, alas, the pretty boy Tyron is nearly forgotten.

 

Los Angeles, March 6, 2022

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (March 2022).