Helpmates
| Helpmates | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Directed by | James Parrott |
| Produced by | Hal Roach |
| Written by | H. M. Walker |
| Starring |
Stan Laurel Oliver Hardy |
| Music by |
Marvin Hatley Leroy Shield |
| Cinematography | Art Lloyd |
| Edited by | Richard Currier |
| Distributed by | Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer |
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Release date
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Running time
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21' 05" |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
Helpmates is a Laurel and Hardy Pre-Code short film comedy. It was directed by James Parrott, produced by Hal Roach and released by Metro-Goldwyn Mayer on January 23, 1932.
Ollie's house is a mess after a wild party from the previous night. Ollie receives a telegram from his wife (who is on vacation in Chicago), which tells him that she is returning home in the afternoon. Fearing his wife's wrath, he calls Stan over to help him clean up. Things go downhill and they make more mess not less. Ollie becomes frustrated and lights the oven the wrong way, turning on the gas first instead of lighting the oven. The result is an explosion that trashes the living room and kitchen, as well as Ollie's hat.
Ollie's suits get stained with soot, soaked with dirty water, and covered in flour, until he has no choice but to go meet his wife at the station in his lodge uniform (a comic version of an Odd Fellows Lodge uniform). Stan miraculously manages to restore the house's interior to its proper look and decides to light a fire in the fireplace for Ollie and his wife to come home to. When the logs fail to ignite he soaks the fireplace with kerosene, lights a match, and moves it towards the logs. Ollie returns from the train station with a black eye, a bent sword, and without his wife. The house is a smouldering ruin, Stan has burnt it down. Stan leaves Ollie seated on the only remaining chair looking bemused, then to cap it all, a huge rain storm pours down on him.
Helpmates was the first black-and-white film to undergo film colorization. First experimented in 1983 through a company called Colorization Inc., a subsidiary of Hal Roach Studios, it was first publicly shown at the 1984 The Sons of the Desert-sponsored International Helpmates Convention. Colorization became a success for the studio, and the colorized version of Way Out West was soon released on VHS through the Hal Roach Studios Film Classics label. The colorized Helpmates was released to the public along with the colorized version of The Music Box in 1986. The technology for this process was inferior compared to today's subsequent colorization technology. However, there were numerous continuity errors and garish color design choices.
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