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Plying their trade as
fish-peddlers, Hardy musically singing out "Fresh fish!" while Laurel blows
on a horn, their old jalopy rumbling through the unresponsive Hollywood
streets, the pair realize that their commercial future is bleak. Then Laurel
has an idea: they'll buy their own boat, catch their own fish,
eliminate the middle man, and keep all the profits. The next step, which
also proves to be the last of this particular enterprise, is to buy an old
boat and "fix it UP."
One of their most diverting
milking of a single gag, Towed in a Hole concerns itself almost exclusively
with the hammer and nails, saw and paintbrush brand of visual humor.
The best gags are those of anticipation: Hardy perched precariously atop the
boat's mast to paint it, and hearing Laurel sawing below—his
face registering alarm, reassurance, and last-minute horror before the mast,
skillfully sawn in two by Laurel, comes plunging down to land Hardy in a tub
of whitewash.
It is virtually a
two-man show,
Billy Gilbert's "role" as the seller of the boat being nothing more than an
expository bit, and it is also a notably subtle film in its use of
suggestion and sound to elevate all the gags from the level of mere
slapstick. There is comparatively little dialogue, and indeed at one point,
outraged by Laurel's stupidity, Hardy majestically states "I have nothing to
say!" and maintains an even more marked silence. At the conclusion (the boat
is being repaired on dry land, miles from the ocean) the boys put the boat
on
wheels and hoist a sail to facilitate its journey to the sea, whereupon a
breeze immediately springs up and
the now spick-and-span boat sails away, to destroy itself within seconds. |
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