| Babes in Toyland | |
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Theatrical poster (1934) |
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| Directed by | Gus Meins Charley Rogers |
| Produced by | Hal Roach |
| Written by | Frank Butler Nick Grinde based on the libretto by Glen MacDonough (operetta) |
| Starring | Stan Laurel Oliver Hardy |
| Music by | Victor Herbert (operetta) Frank Churchill Ann Ronell |
| Cinematography | Francis Corby Art Lloyd |
| Editing by | Bert Jordan William H. Terhune |
| Distributed by | Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer |
| Release date(s) | December 14, 1934 |
| Running time | 73 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
Babes in Toyland is a Laurel and Hardy musical film released in November 1934. The film is also known by its alternate titles Laurel and Hardy in Toyland, Revenge Is Sweet (the 1948 European reissue title), March of the Wooden Soldiers and Wooden Soldiers (in the United States).
Based on Victor Herbert's popular 1903 operetta Babes in Toyland, the film was produced by Hal Roach, directed by Charles Rogers and Gus Meins, and distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Originally filmed in black-and-white, the film is also shown in two computer colorized versions.[1]
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Although the 1934 film makes use of many of the characters in the original play, as well as several of the songs, the plot is almost completely unlike that of the original stage production. In contrast to the stage version, the film's story takes place entirely in Toyland, which is inhabited by Mother Goose (Virginia Karns) and other well known fairy tale characters.
Stannie Dum (Stan Laurel) and Ollie Dee (Oliver Hardy), live in a shoe (as in the nursery rhyme There Was An Old Woman Who Lived In A Shoe), along with Mother Peep (the Old Woman), Bo Peep (Charlotte Henry), a mouse resembling Mickey Mouse (and actually played by a live monkey in a costume), and many other children. The mortgage on the shoe is owned by the villainous Silas Barnaby (Henry Brandon), who is looking to marry Bo Peep. Stannie and Ollie set out to get the money for the mortgage from their boss, The Toymaker (William Burress). But after the Toymaker finds that Stannie has mixed up an order from Santa Claus (building 100 wooden soldiers at six feet tall, instead of 600 soldiers at one foot tall) and one of the soldiers wrecks the toy shop, Stannie and Ollie are fired without getting the money.
The two then hatch a plan to sneak into Barnaby's house and steal the mortgage, but are again foiled by their incompetence. Barnaby has them arrested on a burglary charge, and the two are sentenced to be dunked in the ducking stool and then banished to Bogeyland. But Barnaby agrees to drop the charges if Bo Peep will marry him. She reluctantly agrees, but not before Ollie suffers the humiliation of the dunking.
Stannie and Ollie come up with a new scheme. At the wedding, Ollie is present to give the bride away. After the nuptials, but before the ceremonial kiss, Ollie asks for the "wedding present" (the mortgage) from Barnaby. After inspecting it, Ollie tears it up, and then lifts the bride's veil — to reveal Stannie, who had worn Bo Peep's wedding dress to the ceremony. Bo Peep is still free, and the mortgage is gone. Ollie teases Stan about having to live with Barnaby as Stan cries saying "I don't LOVE him".
Enraged, Barnaby plots his revenge, eventually hitting on the idea of framing Bo Peep's true love, Tom, Tom, the Piper's Son (Felix Knight), on a trumped-up charge of "pignapping", and getting him banished to Bogeyland. Barnaby proceeds to abduct Little Elmer (Angelo Rossitto), one of the Three Little Pigs, and then has a henchman plant false evidence (including sausage links) in Tom-Tom's house. Tom-Tom is put on trial, convicted, and banished to Bogeyland, which he is taken to on a raft by two hooded executioners across an alligator infested river. A distraught Bo Peep follows him.
Meanwhile, Ollie and Stannie find evidence implicating Barnaby in the pignaping, including the fact that the alleged sausage links presented as evidence at Tom-Tom's trial are made of beef. They later find the kidnaped pig alive in Barnaby's cellar.
A manhunt commences for Barnaby, who flees to Bogeyland through a secret passageway at the bottom of an empty well. Stannie and Ollie eventually follow Barnaby down the well. Meanwhile, Bo Peep crosses the river to Bogeyland, finds Tom-Tom and explains Barnaby's trickery to him.
In a sequence cut from most of the television prints (the version shown on WPIX in New York retains this sequence), Tom-Tom sings a lullaby (Victor Herbert's Go to Sleep, Slumber Deep) to Bo-Peep in an enormous cave set with giant spider webs. Barnaby catches up to Tom-Tom and Bo Peep, and attempts to abduct Bo Peep but gets into a fight with Tom-Tom, who gives Barnaby a well-deserved thrashing.
Pursued by Barnaby, Bo Peep and Tom-Tom escape into the caverns of Bogeyland and run into Stannie and Ollie. The foursome escape back through the well and are welcomed by the town, who now realize Barnaby's treachery. An enraged Barnaby grabs a large stick and beats a stalactite to summon an army of Bogeymen. He leads an invasion of Toyland on a fleet of rafts in a scene reminiscent of the painting of Washington Crossing the Delaware.
Ollie and Stan tell their story to Old King Cole (Kewpie Morgan) (the King of Toyland) and the townspeople as two Bogeymen scale the wall and open the gate. The crowd flees in panic as the army of torch-wielding Bogeymen attacks Toyland. Ollie and Stannie run and hide in the toy shop. There they discover boxes of darts and use them to fight off the Bogeymen. Stan and Ollie then empty an entire box of darts into a cannon, but as the two search for the last remaining darts, they realize instead that they should activate the wooden soldiers. The "march" alluded to in the film's title begins as the soldiers march out of the toy shop (filmed in a stop-motion animation sequence by Roy Seawright[2]). The scene changes to live action as the soldiers attack the Bogeymen with the bayonets of their rifles. Barnaby is defeated and trapped and covered by blocks that spelled "rat" and the Bogeymen are routed and driven back into Bogeyland, where alligators appear to feast on them, although this is never made clear. The kingdom of Toyland is saved. Stan and Ollie decide to give the Bogeymen a parting shot with the dart-filled cannon. As Stan aims the cannon and lights the fuse, and Ollie turns away to avoid the loud blast, the barrel of the cannon flips backwards and unleashes the barrage of darts on Ollie, covering his back with darts. The film ends with Stan pulling them out one by one as Ollie winces.
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The film featured only seven musical numbers from the enormous stage score, though that was fitting for a musical with only a 78-minute running time. Included in the film, in the order in which they were performed, were "Toyland" (opening), "Never Mind Bo-Peep", "Toymaker's Workshop", "Castle in Spain", "Go to Sleep (Slumber Deep)", and "March of the Toys", an instrumental piece and "I Can't do the Sum" for the running theme of Laurel and Hardy's scenes. The opening song was performed by Mother Goose; most of the rest were sung/led by Bo Peep and/or Tom-Tom. While none of the songs were performed by Laurel and Hardy, the two briefly danced and marched in a memorable scene to "March of the Toys". Another song, "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?" was not one of the original stage songs, but did appear in the Three Little Pigs segment.
Released in 1934, Babes in Toyland was one of many feature films with Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. After it appeared in theaters, it was re-released several times, but unfortunately, the title was constantly changed to make it seem to audiences that they were going to see a different film. Then it surfaced as a holiday movie on TV. Those who would see it, including critics, said it was a forgotten gem among the many movies of the 1930s and the best film of the Laurel and Hardy features.
A holiday staple, many television stations in the US showed this film near Thanksgiving time each year during the '60s and '70s. In New York, it was run on WPIX TV channel 11, as March of the Wooden Soldiers, and still runs on that station in daytime on Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Day: on Channel 11 and other stations, it has run more times than the nationwide network runs of The Wizard of Oz, It's a Wonderful Life, and A Charlie Brown Christmas. In more recent years, it has been shown in some markets on Christmas Day. In December 2009, the film aired on the ThisTV sub channel network throughout the U.S. and was also shown on KTLA-TV Los Angeles main channel 5.1.
In 1950, the 79-minute Babes in Toyland was edited down to a 73-minute version for Lippert Pictures theatrical reissue, as March of the Wooden Soldiers. For many years, most television prints were taken from this abridged edition.
The film was restored and colorized for TV showings and video release in 1991 by The Samuel Goldwyn Company.[3][4] In 2006, the complete print was restored and colorized by Legend Films, using the latest technology.[3][5][6] Although the Legend Films release was advertised under its reissue title, both the color and black-and-white prints featured the original title and opening credits.[5][7] Both colorized versions correctly depict Stan's hair as being red, not medium brown as it appears in other colorized Laurel and Hardy movies.
The film has been distributed by many home video companies over the decades. Thunderbird Films released 16 mm prints in the 1970s drawn from a heavily spliced (and incomplete) master. An "official" version has been released on DVD by MGM, the film's original distributor and now the ancillary rights holder (having inherited the film from the Samuel Goldwyn Company, the former owners of the picture). On September 14, 2010 Legend Films released the movie on Blu-ray titled March of the Wooden Soldiers With Laurel & Hardy. This Blu-ray also contains the animated 1948 short Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.
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