User Reviews

Approximately a decade before he got paired with a certain Englishman, Oliver Hardy starred in this lighthearted comedy about a man trying to find a baby to impress his visiting uncle. It was one of Ollie's movies filmed in Jacksonville, Florida (hard to believe that place once had a film industry). The series of gags is worth a few laughs, but Ollie's full potential definitely got realized once he got paired with Stan.

When the folks at Kino Video assembled their fine "Slapstick Encyclopedia" collection, a multi-cassette selection of silent comedies, someone decided to kick off the first installment with One Too Many, an obscure one-reel farce made in Florida in 1916, which stars the very young Oliver Hardy. As enjoyable as the set is over all, this decision was an unfortunate one, for One Too Many is a slapdash film, so poorly made that it might discourage some viewers from watching further. The story contains several classic ingredients of farce: characters driven by by greed, elaborate deception, panic when plans go awry, and complications escalating to the point of absurdity, etc. Unlike the good ones, however, One Too Many is incoherent, unfunny, and ultimately annoying. It's hard to tell at this point whether the hopelessly confusing plot is the result of missing footage or inept film-making, but whatever the cause, by the halfway point even the most attentive viewer has no idea what the character relationships are, or what precisely is happening, and by the end one no longer cares.

The only point of interest here is seeing the 24 year-old "Babe" Hardy, who appears considerably heavier than he would a decade later when he teamed with Stan Laurel, but who is nonetheless full of youthful energy. In the opening scene, awakening with a hangover, Babe performs a highly athletic backward roll off a bed. Trust me, that's as funny as this movie gets. If you read this before seeing the first cassette of Kino's "Slapstick Encyclopedia," I suggest you fast-forward past this misfire and skip to the good stuff.

While this short comedy holds some interest for the chance to see a very young Oliver Hardy, it is really not very good at all. Whatever potential there was from the story and cast is quickly wasted, and it is just a chaotic and sometimes incomprehensible jumble that really goes nowhere. By the time this feature was filmed, many good comedies had already been made, and it just should have been a lot better.

The premise of the story is that Hardy's character has put himself in a spot by giving his uncle a false impression about the status of his home life, and this sparks a lot of frantic running around by Hardy, his associates, and his neighbors. Most of their running around is incomprehensible and senseless. This is the kind of setup that can be pretty amusing when written and directed with skill - but that is unwatchable if not done carefully. Unfortunately, the latter is the case here. Not even an emerging talent like Hardy can save this kind of mess.

Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy had extensive (separate) film careers before they were eventually teamed. For many of Ollie's pre-Stan films, he was billed on screen as Babe Hardy ... and throughout his adult life, Hardy was known to his friends as 'Babe'. While touring postwar Britain with Laurel in a music-hall act for Bernard Delfont, Hardy gave an interview to journalist John McCabe in which he explained the origin of this nickname: early in his acting career, Hardy got a shave from a gay hairdresser who squeezed Hardy's plump cheeks (the ones on his face) and said 'Nice baby!' Hardy's workmates started crying him 'Babe', and the nickname stuck.

Although much of Hardy's pre-Laurel work is very interesting -- notably his comedy roles in support of Larry Semon and the Chaplin imitator Billy West -- his teamwork with Billy Ruge (who?) in a series of low-budget shorts for the Vim Comedy Film Company is very dire indeed. Hardy and Ruge were given the screen names Plump and Runt: names which are unpleasant in their own right, but made worse because Ruge (although shorter than Hardy) isn't especially a runt. Seen here, Hardy looks much as he does in his early Hal Roach films with Laurel ... but without the spit curls and the fastidious little moustache.

'One Too Many', an absolutely typical Plunt and Runt epic, is direly unfunny ... and its dreichness is made even more conspicuous by the fact that this film has exactly the same premise as 'That's My Wife', one of Laurel and Hardy's most hilarious films. Plump (Hardy) is the star boarder in a rooming-house run by a tall gawky landlady. Runt (Ruge) is the porter. Plump receives a letter from his wealthy uncle John, whose dosh he expects to inherit. His uncle is coming to see him and to meet Plump's wife and baby. There's only one problem: Plump hasn't got a wife and baby. He's been lying to his uncle in order to seem a family man. Now, of course, Plump expects Runt to find him a wife and baby on short notice. Of course, the results are disastrous. It would be nice if those disastrous results were funny, but they aren't. Most of the unfunny humour here is just empty slapstick, with characters settling their arguments by shoving each other into bathtubs.

SPOILERS COMING. Vim director Will Louis (who?) shows no instinct for camera framing: the actress who plays the landlady is significantly taller than Hardy, and Louis consistently sets up his shots so that her head is out of frame. This could be funny if done on purpose, but it's merely inept. At one point in this bad comedy, an extremely tasteless gag is looming on the horizon as Runt approaches a black laundress. 'Surely they wouldn't stoop THAT low for a laugh,' I thought. But they do. Runt steals the woman's black infant and tries to fob this off as Plump's progeny.

Somehow, Plump acquires an infant's cot, but he still hasn't got a baby. With Uncle John coming up the stairs, Plump conscripts Runt for babyhood. This gag might just possibly have worked with a midget, or even with a truly runt-sized actor such as Chester Conklin, but Billy Ruge is only slightly below average height. Ruge's impersonation of a baby is neither believable nor funny, and Uncle John would have to be a complete moron to fall for it. Amazingly, he does!

The most notable aspect of 'One Too Many' is a brief appearance -- apparently her only-ever film appearance -- by Madelyn Saloshin, Oliver Hardy's first wife. The marriage was not a happy one, although Hardy's marital troubles never attained the epic proportions of Stan Laurel's.

Only one thing in this movie impressed me. There is a very brief flashback sequence, with Hardy reminiscing about his seaside romance with a bathing beauty. In 1916, there was still not yet a standard film grammar for conveying flashbacks: the one shown here is done gracefully and simply. Too bad this movie has no other merits. 'One Too Many' is definitely one film too many on Oliver Hardy's CV, and I'll rate this movie just one point out of 10. Laurel and Hardy together are definitely much funnier than either of them separately.

This zippy and fun short from 1916 - the time when Charlie Chaplin and Fatty Arbuckle were the big names in comedy - features the young Oliver Hardy as a ne'er-do-well who has to quickly impress his wealthy uncle by producing a wife and baby for his visit.

Of course this does not go smoothly and soon there are rather more wives and babies than he can cope with; plus the mandatory chases and misunderstandings that are the hallmark of early movie slapstick.

Restored well it can be viewed as part of 'The Early Films of Oliver Hardy' and is now available on DVD, a fine addition to the available corpus of the big screen favourite comedy duo.

This movie is really a slapstick movie. It is amazing that people of today still are watching pictures from 86 years ago. As a Laurel and Hardy fan I would like to say that Oliver was and always will be one of the greatest actors in our history of the motion picture industry! When you are watching, One too many, you must keep in mind that this picture was made in 1916.