Laurel and Hardy were the alchemists of the comedy world: they could turn anything into comedy gold.

Part of that alchemical formula was the realization that familiarity was a good thing. Tried and true routines were favored, and new innovations were consciously turned into comic rituals, obsessively repeated.

Two Tars (1928) was directed by James Parrott, the brother of Charley Chase, Laurel and Hardy's rival for the most popular comedy star at Roach Studios. Parrott had a masterful understanding of the peculiar magic of Laurel and Hardy.

There is no overarching plot, just a simple premise and a string of little incidents. Laurel and Hardy are sailors on shore leave, who pick up a pair of good time girls. This modest set up leads inexorably to a cycle of reciprocal violence, which reaches its apogee when the boys get stuck in an epic traffic jam. There are hundreds of impatient people, crowded into a tight space and already sporting jangled nerves and short fuses. Introduce Stan and Ollie into the mix and watch the disaster unfurl.

Laurel and Hardy are the Typhoid Marys of a slapstick epidemic. Their comic havoc is literally contagious.

Balloons are popped, mud slung, and automobiles torn to shrapnel by bare hands. Who needs Monster Truck rallies when you have Laurel and Hardy?

Two Tars sits at the dead center of their silent comedy career--the midway point between the moment when they were paired as a team and the moment when they would cross from silent comedy into the brave new world of talkies. The only reason that Laurel and Hardy are not today thought of first and foremost as geniuses of silent comedy on the same par as Chaplin, Keaton and Lloyd is because they so thoroughly conquered the talkie medium as well. But that's another story.

Producer: Hal Roach
Director: James Parrott
Screenplay: Leo McCarey (story), H.M. Walker (titles)
Cinematography: George Stevens
Film Editing: Richard C. Currier
Cast: Stan Laurel (Stan), Oliver Hardy (Ollie), Thelma Hill (Brunette girl), Ruby Blaine (Blonde girl), Harry Bernard (Truck driver), Chet Brandenburg (Motorist), Baldwin Cooke (Motorist), Edgar Dearing (Motorcycle policeman), Frank Ellis (Motorist), Helen Gilmore (Motorist).
BW-21m.

by David Kalat

Sources:
Simon Louvish, Stan and Ollie: The Roots of Comedy.
Leonard Maltin, The Great Movie Comedians.
Walter Kerr, The Silent Clowns.