County Hospital (1932 film)
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| County Hospital | |
|---|---|
 Publicity shot for County Hospital |
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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 |
| Distributed by | Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer |
| Release date(s) | 1932 |
| Running time | 18 min |
| Country |  United States |
| Language | English |
| IMDb profile | |
County Hospital is a Laurel and Hardy short film made in 1932. It was directed by James Parrott, produced by Hal Roach and distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
Contents |
[edit] Plot
Ollie has broken his leg and he is in County Hospital. Stan comes to visit but gets lost on the way to the room. But he has a gift: a bag of hard boiled eggs and nuts. Ollie is not impressed and doesn't want them, suggesting that Stan could have brought candy. Stan complains that Ollie hasn't paid him for the last box.
Stan starts to eat one of the eggs which he seasons with a salt cellar he's brought in his pocket. Then he drops another one into Ollie's drinking water jug. Ollie tells him not to put his hand in the pitcher to get it, so Stan retrieves the egg by pouring the water over the floor. In drying the egg, Stan spills the water onto Ollie.
When the doctor (Billy Gilbert) arrives to check on Ollie, Stan absent-mindedly picks up a weight attached to Ollie's leg harness by a rope. The doctor yanks the weight from Stan propelling himself out the top-floor window. Now the doctor is hanging by the rope; in addition, his weight has lifted Ollie up, suspending him over the bed. The rope snaps and the doctor grabs the window at the last moment. Ollie falls on to the bed breaking it. The commotion brings a number of nurses in to the room. One of them puts a hypodermic syringe on the chair. While the doctors attend to Ollie, Stan manages to get the doctor back inside, but not without splitting his pants.
Outraged and embarrassed, the doctor orders Ollie to leave at once. Ollie blames Stan for ruining his peaceful stay in hospital and tells Stan to get his clothes. Stan obeys but has a hard time getting the pants on Ollie. Exasperated, Ollie tells Stan to cut the leg off, But typically, Stan thinks Ollie was asking him to cut off his own leg! In exasperation, Ollie tells him to cut the leg off his pants so he can put them on. Stan cuts the wrong leg off. Ollie's roommate appears and it turns out he has put Ollie's pants on by mistake, which means Stan has cut both legs off the roommate's pants, turning them into shorts. Then Stan sits on the needle. The nurse returns to retrieve it and, finding it in Stan's rear, laughs herself silly: the syringe contains a tranquilizer, and her supervisor points out that Stan will sleep for a month.
Finally, The Boys leave. The injection begins to take its toll as he starts the car, and proceeds to drive home in a daze. They narrowly miss a number of vehicles, as a panicky Ollie repeatedly cries, "Why don't you watch where you're going!!" (Unfortunately, it is blatantly obvious that the car is actually on a revolving platform and that the traffic images are simply a poorly executed back projection. This was an unusual lapse, since Laurel and Hardy's movies often contained exceptionally well-executed special effects. Brats demonstrates how well they could be done.)
They finally crash into two trams and come to a halt. A police officer is on hand and tells Stan to pull over. He tries to, but the smash-up has bent the car into a 90-degree angle and it only moves in a circle. The police officer starts writing a them a ticket.
[edit] Cast
- Stan Laurel (Himself)
- Oliver Hardy (Himself)
- Billy Gilbert as The Doctor
- May Wallace as Miss Wallace, head nurse
- Estelle Etterre as Nurse Smith
- William Austin as Ollies' Roommate
- Belle Hare as a Nurse
- Lilyan Irene as a Nurse
- Dorothy Layton as a Nurse
- Sam Lufkin as a Police Officer
- Baldwin Cooke as an Orderly
- Ham Kinsey as an Orderly
- Frank Holliday as a Visitor
