Fred Guiol | Along Came Auntie / 1926

two husbands wrestling in a bed

by Douglas Messerli

 

Carl Harbaugh, Stan Laurel. James Parrott, Jerome Storm, Beatrice Van. H. M. Walker, Frank Wilson, and Hal Yates (screenplay), Fred Guiol (director) Along Came Auntie / 1926

 

Oliver Hardy’s roles before he was properly paired up with Stan Laurel might be described as the most extreme of physical comedy. He spends most of his time throughout Fred Guiol’s 1926 comic short Along Came Auntie, for example, straddled over the body of the much leaner actor Glenn Tryon, sometimes hinting of a more physically queer situation than the plot avers. But then the plot, the creation of 8 writers (one of them Stan Laurel), doesn’t always know where it’s going.

     In this slapstick work, Hardy plays the former husband of the heavy-spending wife, Mrs. Remington Chow (Vivien Oakland), now married to a vacationing husband (given her behavior, it is quite comprehensible why Mr. Chow vacations alone), Remington (Glenn Tryon). In his absence Mrs. Chow has come to owe so much money that an Under-Sheriff (Tyler Brooke) has been given a writ to possess her property.

     She somewhat successfully eludes him with use of a mechanical dog and a great deal of door slamming. In the meantime, she determines that it’s come time once again to let out a room, much to the consternation of her maid Marie (Martha Sleeper) who recalls that the last time they did so she had to fight off the unwanted attentions of the renter. And this time, as the new roomer arrives, he brings with him a fiddle, a bass drum, a bass fiddle, and various other instruments, promising to be a very noisy intruder. And already he has appeared to sum up the maid’s measurements with the verdict, “Perfect.” She has no way of knowing that it was his parrot who evaluated her looks, but she has no intention of waiting around to find out, packing her bags and leaving her employment.

      Mrs. Chow, however, recognizes by the sounds of violin which the newcomer is already intoning that it is none other than her former husband, Vincent Belcher (Oliver Hardy). And given the state of her second marriage, she is more than happy to see him.

      At that moment, of course, Remington returns from Florida, she having to admit that she has spent so much of his money that the Sherriff is still at the door and she has taken in a boarder. For some reason, she also failed to read her mail, and when her husband observes a letter still sitting by the front door, she discovers it is a letter from her wealthy aunt Alvira (Lucy Beaumont) who has heard that her niece has remarried and, if it is true, she intends to cut her off from the promised gift of $100,000 and quarts of diamonds.

       How convenient for her that Vincent has returned. But before she can even “cook up” a proper scenario of deception, the aunt arrives, demanding to know whether or not the rumor she has heard is true. Obviously, Mrs. Chow denies it, pulling Vincent from his rented room as proof of her constancy, while signaling Remington to play long.

     But he is not all ready to play second fiddle to a rank amateur fiddler, and the two are soon rolling across the mansion floors, locked in one another’s arms when not chasing after the other. Fortunately, in their struggles they manage to entwine the intruding Sheriff in the strings of a music room harp. But the niece has no choice to explain to the aunt the “strange man” who Vincent is chasing is an old buddy with whom he always plays these rambunctious games.

      It’s clear that Aunt Alvira is sweet on Vincent, but she cannot tolerate such a wild heathen of a visitor as her niece’s current, for more handsome mate, and takes every opportunity she can to sweep Remington downstairs and, if she could, out of the house.

     To fool her aunt, the niece finally conceives a plan whereby, as the couple retire for bed, the two men will sleep together, Remington dressed in her bed clothing while Vincent pretends to be his/her husband. It’s a similar situation to the later 1940 film by Wesley Ruggles, Too Many Husbands. But in this case, the husbands not only are asked to sleep together but to play the roles of husband and wife, an unbearable diversion which Remington cannot abide, the two men again jumping upon one another and attempting to throttle the other to death the moment they lay down side by side.

       Hearing the ruckus, Auntie gets up to inspect, resulting in a long series of absurd events, in one of which Remington is forced to play his sleepwalking wife who after a long voyage around the house returns to bed only to be caught, when the aunt peeps through the key hole, being strangled by Victor, which results in the Aunt’s attempt to rectify his behavior with a gun. Ultimately, they are forced to reveal the truth to Alvira, if for other reason than survival.

     As I have mentioned previously, a great number of early silent and talking films seem to revolve around a relative whose promised money resulting in queer goings on. But Along Came Auntie is surely one of the most physically violent of them all. And unlike some of the other such films, nothing in this work is apparently resolved.

 

Los Angeles, March 5, 2022

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (March 2022).