In November
1933, Laurel and Hardy released another cracking mad scientist-themed short
directed by Lloyd French and written by H.M. ‘Beanie’ Walker. They play a
couple of chimney sweeps hired to work in the home of the highly-eccentric
Professor Noodle, the hugely memorable Lucien Littlefield who’d already earned
his kooky comedy spurs as the Doctor in The
Cat and the Canary (1927).
Right from the
special-effect opening credits featuring a bubbling conical flask, and tracking
in to Noodle's desk of complicated experimental paraphernalia, we know we're in
the presence of the archetypal batty boffin we all know and love. Noodle has
the smoking jacket of the gentleman and the perched pince-nez of the scholar,
coupled with a tufty, almost bald head and a look of maniacal determination as
he stirs the tall frothing liquid. His long-suffering butler Jessop (Samuel
Adams) has spent twenty years hearing him declaim his eternal youth goal with
'just a few drops' of his serum. Noodle's boasting is aptly punctured with a
mischievous cuckoo effect followed by the doorbell.
As Stan and
Ollie enter and begin to elaborately destroy the house, Noodle delights in his
list of nonsensical ingredients to be added. An unfortunate adult duck subject is
placed into a bathtub for the final test, and with a single serum drop from a
teat pipette, the water boils like a jacuzzi resulting in the duck reverting to
a cute little duckling. This causes the 'good' doctor to perform a madcap jig
of celebration around the room, a wonderfully bizarre high-point of Littlefield's
performance. He bursts with such infectious joy that he can barely contain himself
in front of the boys in a glorious display of deliriously-committed ham.
Littlefield’s cry of exultation that the greatest scientific breakthrough of
the age is 'Mine! All mine!' is seamlessly followed by his hilariously un-self-conscious
insane cock-crowing sound. His triumphant excitement is such that after he leaves
the room with the boys in eager pursuit, he can't resist turning back on them
to re-enter with a full-throated cackle. Savour the crackling voltage of a madcap actor who can single-handedly pull the focus from both Laurel and Hardy.
Our
be-sooted pair are then shown a continuation of the previous experiment where
the poor duck's bio-markers are now further reversed to the form of an egg.
With a surprisingly uncharacteristic burst of self-preserving intelligence,
Ollie reacts to this with an upbeat 'Well, be seeing you!' Inevitably while the
Professor exits to find his butler, Stan and Ollie get busy with the fizzy, using
a heroic dose that reduces poor Ollie to an impossibly retrograde self: a
chimp.
Dirty Work is a fast-paced favourite of many
(myself included) - and a neat, concentrated injection of inspired medical
mayhem.
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