Swiss Miss

Mousetrap salesmen visit Switzerland where they run into difficulties with a disagreeable gorilla and a tyrannical chef at a Tyrolean hotel. The film features a romantic subplot with opera singers Walter Woolf King from Broadway (and the Marx Brothers’ A NIGHT AT THE OPERA) and Della Lind from Vienna (later a neighbor of Laurel’s at his Oceana Hotel residence in Santa Monica during the 1960s). Eric Blore from the Astaire-Rogers pictures adds just the right note. Many individual scenes are notable, including where Stan feigns illness and creates a “snowstorm” to trick a St. Bernard dog into giving up his keg of brandy. Expensive production values (as demanded by Laurel in his new contract) befitting a picturesque spectacle, including location shooting at Stone Canyon and Lake Arrowhead, contributed to a huge financial loss, the worst in the studio’s history to date. Laurel’s private life was in shambles at the time, and in a key disagreement with Roach, he failed to see the wisdom in some editing The Boss ordered. It was during a swaying trestle bridge scene involving a piano and that certain gorilla, a sequence made famous by noted critic James Agee’s celebration of it. Directed by John G. Blystone. With Anita Garvin, persuaded by Laurel to return to the company.

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