I remember feeling how weird it was in seeing Laurel without Hardy in this Hal Roach comedy, released in 1927. I kept expecting Ollie to turn up to give Stan a hand! Stan plays the butler of a household where the wife is being blackmailed after some compromising letters of hers have finished up in the wrong hands. She enlists Stan's help in finding these letters before the wife's husband finds out about them. Laurel should have been given top billing as he is the one who takes centre stage along with his leading lady. American film comedy had moved on by 1927 and "Eve's Love Letters" is an example of a slightly different kind of comedy. There are some good laughs and there is a fair bit of comic incident.
3 Reviews
A wonderful slap stick!
thao28 August 2007
Warning: Spoilers
The film begins with a quotation from Mark Twain: "Man was made first Woman came after him and she's been after him ever since." Eve (Agnes Ayres) gets a letter from her ex lover, Sir Oliver Hardy (Jerry Mandy), where he threatens to show her husband, Adam, the burning love letters she wrote to him before she married, unless she pays $10 000.
Eve and Anatole, the butler (Stan Laurel), go to steal the love letters from Oliver Hardy but Adam (Forrest Stanley) in the meanwhile finds out she has gone. He suspects she has been unfaithful and goes home to Hardy to see if she is there. The film turns in to a wonderful slap stick after that where Eve does her best to play on Adam. One of her tricks is to dress the butler up as a woman. The butler makes a pass on Adam, who seems interested. Adam and Eve try to pass the blame from there on, until Adam finds out about the tricks and forgives Eve.
Eve is here in a familiar role of the temptress/trickster. The snake (Oliver Hardy) is almost immediately out of the picture. Where to lay the blame is the main plot of the film. Both are guilty and harmony can not be reached before both admit that, at least to them selves. There is therefore no fall in the film, only temporary crisis. Adam and Eve are in a way prototypes of married couples and the troubles they run into.
Eve and Anatole, the butler (Stan Laurel), go to steal the love letters from Oliver Hardy but Adam (Forrest Stanley) in the meanwhile finds out she has gone. He suspects she has been unfaithful and goes home to Hardy to see if she is there. The film turns in to a wonderful slap stick after that where Eve does her best to play on Adam. One of her tricks is to dress the butler up as a woman. The butler makes a pass on Adam, who seems interested. Adam and Eve try to pass the blame from there on, until Adam finds out about the tricks and forgives Eve.
Eve is here in a familiar role of the temptress/trickster. The snake (Oliver Hardy) is almost immediately out of the picture. Where to lay the blame is the main plot of the film. Both are guilty and harmony can not be reached before both admit that, at least to them selves. There is therefore no fall in the film, only temporary crisis. Adam and Eve are in a way prototypes of married couples and the troubles they run into.
Loved it
hte-trasme21 May 2010
Agnes Ayres was apparently a star of feature film who is top billed in this one-off Hal Roach short. She does well as the woman at the centre of the story, but it's pretty plain that it's actually the comic mind and performing talents of Stan Laurel, who plays her butler, that make this two-reel short shine.
We start with a fairly standard plot about a woman who is being blackmailed with love letters from before her marriage, but they get destroyed fairly quickly and when she is almost caught by her husband at the blackmailer's house the comedy turns into a fast-paced, wonderfully choreographed, inventive and funny farce in which Ayres and Laurel collaborate of a series of escalating tricks to confuse and humiliate the tipsy husband.
Laurel, showcased here, is very close indeed to the "Stanley" characterization that would make him famous (as others have noted, the blackmailer is amusing named "Sir Oliver Hardy"), though a little cleverer -- he is very memorable blowinga safe with strong liquor, pantomiming floating into heaven while faking his death, and spending much of the short doing a humorously bizarre drag act while seducing the husband.
A great absurdist farce and example of Laurel at the top of his game at the top comedy studio just before his fateful teaming with the real version of Oliver Hardy.
We start with a fairly standard plot about a woman who is being blackmailed with love letters from before her marriage, but they get destroyed fairly quickly and when she is almost caught by her husband at the blackmailer's house the comedy turns into a fast-paced, wonderfully choreographed, inventive and funny farce in which Ayres and Laurel collaborate of a series of escalating tricks to confuse and humiliate the tipsy husband.
Laurel, showcased here, is very close indeed to the "Stanley" characterization that would make him famous (as others have noted, the blackmailer is amusing named "Sir Oliver Hardy"), though a little cleverer -- he is very memorable blowinga safe with strong liquor, pantomiming floating into heaven while faking his death, and spending much of the short doing a humorously bizarre drag act while seducing the husband.
A great absurdist farce and example of Laurel at the top of his game at the top comedy studio just before his fateful teaming with the real version of Oliver Hardy.
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