On the Loose (Hal Roach Studios, MGM, 1931)

by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2024 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved

After watching Lost Boundaries on Turner Classic Movies my husband Charles and I ended up seeing a 20-minute comedy short from 1931 by Hal Roach Studios called On the Loose, directed by Hal Roach himself from a script by H. M. “Beanie” Walker (one of the few silent-film title writers who graduated to doing audible dialogue for sound films) and part of the series of short films Roach produced for the female comedy team of Thelma Todd and ZaSu Pitts. (When Pitts left the series in 1933 she was replaced by Patsy Kelly, one of the low-keyed Lesbians in the film business.) While it’s hard for me to watch ZaSu Pitts in her stereotyped comedy roles and not regret that the demolition of Erich von Stroheim’s directorial career cost her her chance to become a big dramatic star (Stroheim cast her in three films, Greed, The Wedding March and Hello, Sister!, always in serious roles, and had Greed been issued in Rex Ingram’s three-hour cut and had MGM promoted it, it would have given her the kind of breakthrough Sybil and Norma Rae gave to Sally Field a half-century later), this is a good movie in which Pitts and Todd (using their real names the way Roach’s biggest stars, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, did) are tired that the only guys they can find to date on Saturday afternoons insist on taking them to Coney Island. On the Loose’s plot kicks off when a British upper-class twit called “Mr. Loder” and played by the young up-and-comer John Loder drives past them and splashes mud all over their nicest dresses. Loder and his comic-relief companion (Claud Allister) offer to buy them new dresses, which they do at a salon called “Pierre’s” run by a stereotypical queen played by, of all people, Billy Gilbert. Actually it’s nice to see him playing something other than his comic German typecasting, and he comes off like a mincing queen in his fashion shop as he helps women try out his dresses – only he reverts to a masculine “butch” voice when barking orders to unseen minions in his back room as he worries about how long they’re taking and that the delays might cost him his customers.

As part of their deal to help Thelma and ZaSu, Loder and Allister offer them a date the next Saturday – only, you guessed it, it’s to Coney Island, where the girls accept politely and move through the attractions in the fun house and on the roller coasters with grim determination. Though the imdb.com page for this film says it was shot entirely at the Hal Roach Studios in Culver City, California, the fun-house scenes seem way too elaborate to be soundstage sets and it seems likely to me they went to a real fun house (possibly Playland in San Francisco, which I remember from my own childhood) and shot there. Among the people they encounter are an obnoxious bully (Otto Fries) who keeps threatening Allister with bodily harm for messing with his girl (Dorothy Layton) – he isn’t, but the various devices inside the fun house keep mashing them together into unwanted bodily contact – and there’s a great scene in which Todd finally punches out the bully. There are also some neat scenes in which Loder is hopeless at the shooting gallery while Todd picks off the targets in rapid succession – and does it with a pistol instead of the regulation long gun – while Pitts similarly humiliates Allister at the darts booth. Ultimately the two return to their apartment, much the worse for wear, only two men show up knocking at their door – and it’s Laurel and Hardy, making an oddball cameo appearance, offering to take them out to, you guessed it, Coney Island. The girls respond by throwing the various knickknacks they’ve won as prizes on previous visits to the island at them, and Laurel and Hardy beat a hasty retreat from the premises. An imdb.com “Trivia” page notes that Laurel and Hardy are never shown in the same frame as Todd and Pitts – obviously they shot their sequence at their own convenience with doubles throwing the bric-a-brac at them – but it was still a charming little comedy and quite amusing in a low-keyed way.