Hats Off

Infobox Film
name = Hats Off


image_size =
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director =
producer =
writer =
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starring = Stan Laurel
Oliver Hardy
music =
cinematography =
editing =
distributor = Hal Roach Studios
released = 5 November 1927
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country = USA
language = silent film
English intertitles
budget =
preceded_by = "The Second Hundred Years"
followed_by = "Do Detectives Think?"
website =
amg_id =
imdb_id = 0017967

"Hats Off" is a silent short film comedy made in 1927 by the Hal Roach Studios. It starred Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy and is considered a lost film.

Plot

Stan and Ollie are salesmen attempting to sell a washing machine; they fail constantly after several near misses. One would-be sale has them carrying the machine up a large flight of steps, merely to find out that a young lady wants them to post a letter for her. The boys later get into an argument knocking off each others' hats, which eventually involves scores of others. A police van eventually carts all those involved away except Stan and Ollie, who afterwards try and find their own headgear amongst the hundreds of others lying on the street.

History

The film was apparently an enormous success when first released which made considerable headway in establishing the Laurel and Hardy team with the film-going public. After being last publicly shown in 1928, "Hats Off" vanished without a trace, and is now considered a lost film. It was heavily reworked into their Academy Award winning classic, "The Music Box", in 1932. It incorporated the same location used in "The Music Box" five years later, a long flight of concrete steps in the Silverlake district of Los Angeles, California.

The film also features in support Jimmy Finlayson and Anita Garvin.

In 1945, many of the scenes from "Hats Off" were reworked into a short film starring Edgar Kennedy entitled "It's Your Move". It was made by the same director, Hal Yates. The reworking of these sequences were seemingly not recognized or noticed for over 40 years until "It's Your Move" was shown on BBC 1 very early one morning in January 1988.

See also

*Laurel and Hardy films
*Laurel and Hardy
*Stan Laurel
*Oliver Hardy
*Lost films

External links

* [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0017967/ "Hats Off"] at the Internet Movie Database
* [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0214804/ "It's Your Move"] at the Internet Movie Database
* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAwoprgQ3ZQ "Hats Off With Laurel and Hardy"] at youtube.com