The Dancing Masters (1943)

The greatest movie ever made..!

How sad is this?

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

crazy storyline, disjointed scenes..but that never stopped them before.they run a Dance Studio and the opening scenes are good: Hardy kicking up his heels in a beautifully lit sequence, Stan defying gravity doing his trademark "Pelican dance". their best scene in years involves Robert Mitchum and hood buddy sellin' 'em insurance or ELSE! too bad, and how depressing, though, to watch opportunity after opportunity go by..and here they are even given a cast! Margaret Dumont! Charles Rogers! Daphne Pollard! (the lady who played Hardy's wife in THICKER THAN WATER)...even the guy who later did the voice for Mr. Ed! newcomer/model Trudy Marshall is a-OK, too. why not have Dumont the owner of the studio, constantly confused and exasperated by the decidedly unmethodical Stan and Ollie? all L & H fans should watch this once in a while, despite the flaws.

It's been remarked by some critics that Laurel and Hardy on the screen played it gay. I think most are reading too much into that, but in the case of The Dancing Masters this might be the exception.Meet Stan And Ollie proprietors of a dance studio and seeing them at the beginning in costume, especially Stanley in ballerina drag might just make you wonder. It was quite a treat to see them as dance instructors especially Ollie. For such a big guy he moved pretty good.They've got themselves in a situation. Already owing a lot of back rent to landlord Matt Briggs who has only been staved off from throwing the boys out by wife Margaret Dumont and daughter Trudy Marshall. Stan and Ollie get intimidated into buying insurance from some shady characters. The old protection racket with a veneer of legitimacy.They are also guardians to Marshall and her boyfriend Robert Bailey who apparently years ahead of his time has perfected laser technology. The invention works, but in Stan and Ollie's hands only too well.Although not up to the standards of their work with Hal Roach, Stan and Ollie do recapture some of the magic of those previous films. Best scenes are an auction where Ollie is suckered into buying some useless junk and the climax on a runaway bus. That final scene is more like an Abbott&Costello sequence, but it works for Laurel&Hardy.Allan 'Rocky' Lane plays a favorite of Briggs whom he'd like to match up with his daughter. And Robert Mitchum plays one of the 'insurance' salesmen. Speaking of Lane, Briggs does a rather unconvincing 180 degree turn in regard to Lane and Bailey for the hand of his daughter. That does weaken the film somewhat.Still die-hard fans of Stan and Ollie should like The Dancing Masters.

Up until Fox released these two three-disc sets of Laurel and Hardy's later films, I had only seen the three that had been previously available on video - and "The Dancing Masters" wasn't one of them. I have to say that as a life-long Laurel and Hardy fan I was very pleasantly surprised.Even taking the considerable negatives into account: rock-bottom production values, chop-shop editing, and an incoherent "narrative," it's downright astonishing to behold this pair so effortlessly mining genuine laughs from such old and cast-away material.From the "safe combination" routine near the opening to the "wet pants" bit with co-star Bob Bailey, I found this film to be a real treat - and I screened it with a friend who is not a big L&H fan - he loved it. It's the little things Stan and Ollie did - the gestures, the expressions, the glances - that made their style of comedy absolutely unique in film history. Like "The Bullfighters," my favorite among the L&H Fox films, this one has plenty of those moments, and has such a short running time that you can stick it in your player again right away and savor what you missed the first time around. I can't speak for the legions of other L&H fans, but I personally experienced a higher laugh count from this film than from many of their more minor Hal Roach shorts (sorry, Fox-haters).The only thing I did not like or understand about "The Dancing Masters" was the print quality. As released in this two-volume DVD set, the other five Fox films look to have been pressed from the actual masters, thus providing superlative picture and sound quality. But, this film suffers from a grainy, scratchy picture that even at times grows blurry and somewhat undefined. And, there several jarring "pops" and a lot of low-volume crackling on the soundtrack. Is there anyone out there who knows why Fox couldn't find a better print for release with this otherwise outstanding set?

Another unfortunate chapter in Laurel & Hardy's post-Hal Roach efforts,this is a desultory,poorly-constructed comedy which tries to compensate by reworking much material from the boys' Roach days.Such films as COUNTY HOSPITAL(1932),THICKER THAN WATER(1935) and THE BATTLE OF THE CENTURY(1927) have revamped sequences in this film.THE DANCING MASTERS plot however,makes little sense and the scenes from the above earlier,better films seem to have been lazily added as an afterthought,almost as though screenwriter Scott Darling realises he has no funny ideas.This is probably correct,but sadly the reworkings don't work as they are pointless.Darling's own material is woefully hackneyed.The scenes where Ollie tries to cause an accident on Stan are at least of some interest,as these scenes reworked from THE BATTLE OF THE CENTURY are lost.The supporting cast has some interesting names;Robert Mitchum in one of his earliest film roles;A former Roach Mrs.Hardy,Daphne Pollard,has a bit part;former Keystone Kop and Charlie Chaplin foil Hank Mann,in his only Laurel & Hardy film;and Margaret Dumont,The Marx Brothers perrenial leading lady.But they,like Stan & Ollie,can only do so much out of a banal screenplay.The best moments come from Stan's 'rhetorical strangle' and a locked safe;beyond that,there's little else.