This is one of Robert Youngson's compilation features from the early 1960's. Youngson took clips from the silent slapstick films and spliced them together in a nostalgic look back at comedy of yester year. Youngson turned out a good number of these films and they all work to varying degrees.Here Youngson concentrates on some of the lesser known comedians from the era with varying degrees of success. The biggest names in this film are Laurel and Hardy and the section of the film that concentrates on their film appearances consists of an edited version of their classic silent film Two Tars. Two Tars consists of a giant traffic jam that deteriorates into a battle between drivers where everyone begins to wreck everyone else's cars. It's a very funny film that has been very craftily cut down to about one third of its running time. It's a good film but possibly the weakest of Youngsons films that I've seen. That said it still supplies a good many laughs and is worth your time

Film compilations like this are a treat for modern day viewers who weren't around when the stars of the 1920's made their mark in silent films. When I read that sentence, I realize there's virtually no one left today who was born that long ago and still with us. The clips in this picture were put together in 1957 by Robert Youngson, and if you don't mind the exclusion of Chaplin, Keaton and Lloyd, it's a nice little foray into the movie world of directors Mack Sennett and Hal Roach.

The lion's share of the film is devoted to Laurel and Hardy, although a real life lion shows up in various bits for some amusing visuals. All the clips are silent of course, haling from the 1920's and presenting many of the celebrities of the era. Clips featuring Will Rogers, Douglas Fairbanks, Tom Mix, Carole Lombard and Jean Harlow come and go rather quickly. A bit more time is spent on comics like Ben Turpin and Harry Langdon, considered by the narrator as one of the four greatest comedians of all time. Well, that was back in 1957, we've had a lot of time since then to produce a whole lot more. Langdon seems to be all but unknown today compared to his unnamed contemporaries I mentioned earlier.

There are some amusing bits here, one of the better ones comes from Laurel and Hardy's "Double Whoopee" featuring the Harlow skirt pull scene. If one's tastes run to the old pie toss routine, the all time extravaganza involving an entire neighborhood is presented courtesy of our pals Stan and Ollie once more. They're also at the center of a massive street brawl where just about everyone loses their pants. Get your mind out of the gutter, it wasn't like that; this one ended with the boys leaving the scene in a single pair of slacks, almost like a bicycle built for two.

For animal lovers, there's even a handful of scenes featuring some furry friends, with a checkers playing cat outwitting his human opponent, and a wily canine adept at cheating in a poker game. The animals seemed pretty talented for what was required of them, leading me to wonder why we don't see more clever critters in movies today. Then again, who wants to be upstaged by a cute kitty.