My Comfort Blanket Movie: Way Out West | Little White Lies

In Praise Of

My Com­fort Blan­ket Movie: Way Out West

14 May 2020

Words by David Jenkins

Two men in suits and hats hiding under an awning, in a black and white image.
Two men in suits and hats hiding under an awning, in a black and white image.
This Lau­rel and Hardy gem from 1937 reminds David Jenk­ins of a time when he almost died laughing.

There are some films you watch when you need a warm hug from a famil­iar source. There’s no new ter­rain to explore, no out­side world, no alarms and no sur­pris­es – they are sim­ply sooth­ing. Since a glob­al pan­dem­ic was declared on 11 March, dai­ly life has become so strange that the solace offered by com­fort blan­ket movies is enhanced. In this series, we want to cel­e­brate them, in what­ev­er form they take.

I typed the words Way Out West” into Google so as to dou­ble check the release year of this Lau­rel and Hardy clas­sic, and was shocked (but not sur­prised) to notice that the top result yield­ed by my search direct­ed me to an annu­al rock fes­ti­val held in Gothen­burg, Swe­den. I don’t resent the fes­ti­val as there’s clear­ly no copy­right on the name Way Out West (hell, it may even be an homage?), but it’s sad that James W Horne’s 1937 film has been nudged down the pow­er rank­ings, as now more than ever it deserves to lux­u­ri­ate in the limelight.

I have select­ed this hour-long slap­stick com­e­dy as my com­fort blan­ket movie for two rea­sons. The first is that it is a relent­less­ly fun­ny film. Not a sin­gle scene pass­es by with­out some sil­ly sight gag or a pro­longed com­ic pause or an immac­u­late­ly exe­cut­ed prat­fall. It opens with our heroes rolling up into Brush­wood Gulch with the task of deliv­er­ing the deed of a gold­mine to one Mary Roberts.

For rea­sons per­tain­ing to the deliv­ery of unadul­ter­at­ed, no-strings-attached plea­sure, we join the pair as they are stood in front of a saloon while a lit­tle singing troupe kicks off the yodel-core clas­sic, Com­mence­ment to Danc­ing’. At first, Lau­rel and Hardy resist the pull of the music, yet from their body lan­guage they clear­ly know the song. And then, slow­ly but sure­ly, they exe­cute a per­fect dance rou­tine of the sort you might reserve as an after-din­ner par­lour game, and would like­ly involve a woman and a man. In this case, Lau­rel and Hardy inhab­it duel gen­ders to make the dance work.

I some­times watch this sequence on YouTube when I need a rea­son to laugh, or if time con­straints won’t allow me watch the entire film. This sequence is the rea­son why Way Out West is wide­ly her­ald­ed as a com­ic mas­ter­work – it is a pris­tine stand-alone set piece which almost oper­ates as short­hand for every­thing that’s won­der­ful about the film as well as a lengthy check­list of rea­sons as to why Lau­rel and Hardy are still con­sid­ered to be the great­est com­e­dy dou­ble act in all cin­e­ma (with apolo­gies to Chris Far­ley and David Spade).

Me and my brother were literally rolling on the floor, clawing the sofa, tears streaming down our eyes.

The sec­ond rea­son I chose this film is that it’s makes me remem­ber a vivid moment from my child­hood when I laughed the hard­est I have ever laughed. And not only that, I was in the com­pa­ny of two oth­er peo­ple who were laugh­ing extreme­ly hard at the same time as me (though I don’t pre­sume to know whether this would also be deemed an all-time hilar­i­ty high on their part).

The rea­son why the moment is so mem­o­rable is because the oth­er peo­ple were my younger broth­er and my late grand­fa­ther, who owned vast, record­ed-from-TV hold­ings of clas­sic-era com­e­dy, cov­er­ing every­thing from the Marx Broth­ers and Buster Keaton to Chap­lin and WC Fields. We would vis­it him about every oth­er week, and it was nev­er con­sid­ered to be a chore because we knew, after the tea, bis­cuits and for­mal­i­ties, he’d be as eager as we were to slap some Lau­rel and Hardy on the TV while my moth­er would knit and roll her eyes.

The scene in ques­tion which caused this laugh­ter melt­down was not the dance sequence, because that actu­al­ly took a lit­tle longer for me to ful­ly appre­ci­ate. It’s actu­al­ly a lat­er scene where Stan Lau­rel is being chased around a bed­room by a con­niv­ing moll who is pre­tend­ing to be Mary Roberts in order to secure the deed. He refus­es to give it over and slips the deed into his vest, and so she tick­les him as a way to force him to relin­quish it.

Laurel’s laugh­ter just sent us all – in trip­li­cate – over the very edge. I remem­ber me and my broth­er were lit­er­al­ly rolling on the floor, claw­ing the sofa, tears stream­ing down our eyes, while my grand­fa­ther was in his easy chair next to us. His laugh was grainy and abra­sive – a bit like when a cat scowls – per­haps due to the fact that he was a very heavy smoker.

This must have been when I was about ten and he died when I was 18 of nat­ur­al caus­es. He was an extreme­ly gen­er­ous man, often want­i­ng to give more than he actu­al­ly pos­sessed. We watched many Lau­rel and Hardy films togeth­er, most­ly Sons of the Desert, Block­heads and The Fly­ing Deuces. All of them I hold very fond­ly in my heart, but it’s Way Out West that reminds me of the time that my broth­er, my grand­fa­ther and I almost per­formed hara-kiri by laugh­ing on one oth­er­wise unspec­tac­u­lar Sun­day afternoon.

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