Series: Laurel and Hardy Director: James Parrott Producer: Hal Roach Dialogue: H.M. Walker Photography: George Stevens Editor: Richard C. Currier Sound: Elmer Raguse Stars: Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, Fay Holderness Company: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Released: 31 May 1930 Length: 2 reels Production No.: L-33 Filming dates: April 4-21, 1930 Rating: 7/10

Hog Wild

Available on BLU-RAY & DVD:

• See also Radiomanía and Pêle-Mêle

Ollie is furious because he cannot find his hat and unashamedly creates a whole big scene about it, even threatening to leave the house forever unless it is found, until he finally realizes he is wearing it on his head! Stan, on the other hand is on his way round to Ollie's house to pick him up but when he arrives Stan is surprised to find Ollie halfway up a ladder and on his way to the roof, armed with poles, cable and toolbox! One honk on Stan's car horn brings Ollie down to the ground in a heap. Poor Ollie is under instruction from his wife that he must erect a new radio aerial on the roof before he can go out with Stan. Stan offers to help. Two broken windows later, and Ollie heads up to the roof on a ladder he has placed on a board on Stan's car. The two men fumble around on the roof whilst attempting to put up the antenna poles but it's Ollie who takes the quick route to the pond down below after he slips on a pole. After Ollie has climbed back up the ladder to the roof, Stan goes back to trying to fix a pole onto the edge of the roof and pulls the cable through. When he lets go, the cable shoots back up into the air and catches Ollie, trips him up and sends him back to the pond down below. Once more Ollie returns to the roof and resumes his work, hammering the roof and sending a large amount of rubble down onto his wife's head who is in the sitting room below. Ollie ties a rope around himself and the chimney for security and the instructs Stan to erect the second pole on the roof; but Stan slips on a roof tile and down they both go, taking the chimney with them this time! Mrs. Hardy adds to their misery and tells Ollie to stop his "playing".

Stan is told to go into the house so that Ollie can pass the wire down to him. Ollie throws down the cable, attached to a wooden block, hitting Stan on the head. He is told to attach the cable to binding post A. Stan connects the wire to a live circuit, sending sparks up to Ollie and causing him to fall through the open hole in the roof where the chimney once stood. Ollie ends up in the downstairs fireplace and is not in any kind of a mood to take any further verbal abuse from his wife. She tells him he is relieved of the duty of fixing the aerial, but he professes to get it fixed if it is the last thing he does. The boys go back outside the house as Ollie climbs back up the ladder to the roof. He doesn't quite make it when Stan, sitting in the car again, accidentally steps on the gas pedal and off they go! Stan has to steer the car from a standing position, whilst Ollie is atop of the ladder, which is balancing on the board he placed there earlier. Down the streets they go, ducking under a low bridge before catching up to a tram in town. As Stan drives alongside the tram Ollie falls off the ladder as it crashes to the ground. Out of nowhere, a tearful Mrs. Hardy comes up to Ollie and tells him a man has come and taken the radio away. Devastated, Ollie and his wife return to Stan's car - only to have it crushed between two trams.

Favourite bit There is no particular standout scene here because the whole picture just flows with such a consistency. My favourite part in this film is a visual stunt which, unfortunately features two stuntmen taking the place of the boys as they roll over one another and fall off the roof and down into the garden pool beneath. Notice how both men keep their faces hidden away from the camera.

Trivia • Copyrighted December 3, 1930. • The location of the Hardy's house used for the filming was at 4175 Madison Avenue, Culver City, Los Angeles. • The woman with the shapely legs crossing the puddle in the road whom Stan sees whilst driving is Dorothy Granger. • Yola d'Avril played the part of Mrs. Hardy in the French-language version of the film. • There are 2 separate commentary tracks on the Laurel & Hardy: The Essential Collection DVD, featuring Richard W. Bann and Richard Correll. • The film was shot with the working title of "Haywire". • Two stunts in particular of worthy of mention: When Stan is driving the car and looking around at the woman in the road he comes to a cross-roads where two cars pass him at high speed; and shortly after when Stan honks his horn and Ollie falls from the ladder: both stunts were performed by themselves. • When the maid is called out of the kitchen, before she even knows what she is being called for the first thing she does is look at Ollie's hat. • Stan's license plate is 6M-28-82. • When Stan pulls up and parks outside Ollie's house, he parks illegally next to a dropped kerb. • When Stan burns Ollie's pants with the car, you can see Hardy's pants are padded out to absorb the flames. • Notice how the pond is quite tight to the edge of the house when seen from the ground, yet when seen from the air it has a significant amount of grass around its edges. • When 'Ollie' dives into the pond from the roof, there is no way he could have gone completely under the water. In the next scene he is seen sitting on the bottom and it barely covers his trousers. In actual fact, the stunt was performed by a stuntman and the pool was 8 feet deep. Also, given the circumference of the pool and going in head-first into water so deep, it must have been quite difficult for the stuntman to manoeuvre in the water to come back to the surface. • When Ollie hammers the wood to the roof he disturbs some rubble, which falls onto Mrs. Hardy's head. Now, if she was sitting downstairs, how did the rubble travel through the roof, attic, upstairs ceiling and through the downstairs ceiling? • The water tower for the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film studios can be seen in the far distance when the boys are up on the roof. • After the bricks come tumbling off the roof, some of them appear to float in the pond. • A large model ship sits atop of the mantle piece. • When Stan is driving the car down the street with Ollie perched on top of the ladder, he makes a sharp right-hand turn before going under the bridge. If you look closely you can see there is an edit in the film which would indicate there was a crash. If you freeze-frame it at just the right moment you can see Stan steers into the wall under the bridge. • If you look closely enough at the board on which the ladder is mounted as Stan emerges from under the bridge you can see the ladder is seated in two holes in the base of the wood. There is a close-up which reveals this. The reason for this was because there was a counter-weight under the car which allowed the ladder to sway the way it does whilst Ollie is on top of it, although we the viewers are not meant to see it. • The bus which the boys catch up to has the number 1012 on it and it's destination is Wilshire, via Halifax Avenue. • When Ollie is on top of the ladder next to the double-decker bus; even in this calamitous state of affairs he still doffs his hat to the ladies on the bus. • At the end of the film, after Stan has driven the car all the way from the house into town, don't you think it's quite remarkable how Mrs. Hardy has caught up to them on foot? • In the very last scene look in the background and you can see a stray dog walk from right to left across the screen. My opinion • Not a classic, but definitely has some of the most memorable of L&H's scenes. Not one of my favourites.

	Stan Laurel Stan
	Oliver Hardy Ollie
	Fay Holderness Mrs. Hardy
	Dorothy Granger Tillie, the maid/ Woman crossing street
	Charles McMurphy Streetcar conductor
	Cy Slocum Bus passenger
	Edna Hall Bus passenger
	Russell Custer Bus passenger
	Betty Danko Bus passenger [*according to Jesse Brisson, though I am not 100%]
	Joy Winthrop Bystander
	Jack Hill Stunt double

CREDITS (click image to enlarge)

ALTERNATE TITLE CARD (click any image to enlarge)

Acknowledgements: Laurel And Hardy: The Magic Behind The Movies by Randy Skretvedt (book) Jesse Brisson (identification of Cy Slocum, Russell Custer, Joy Winthrop, Jack Hill, Edna Hall, Betty Danko) This page was last updated on: 24 November 2023