This time it was 1922's The Pest, starring Stan Laurel solo instead of w/ Oliver Hardy:
Or: YIKES does this have an uncomfortable moment completely out of nowhere. A bad day, a random YouTube search and a recent mutual’s remark led me down this path. How little-seen this Stan Laurel short is was only discovered after the fact. A few days ago a longtime mutual commented on my review of Keaton’s The Scarecrow and mentioned a few silent comedians, including solo Stan Laurel before he teamed w/ Oliver Hardy. As solo Stan was a journey I had not taken before, a random YouTube video of this short was discovered.
Laurel played a book salesman-attempting to sell tomes based on Napoleon-who has various encounters throughout… he has to wear what is basically a mascot’s animal costume for a few minutes, he’s chased by a dog, he meets a woman who has to deal with an A-hole forcing marriage on her and the titular pest is a separate woman, an older dame who surprisingly only has a small role. This was incredibly spotty yet there were enough amusing gags of all sorts where “fine” is the rating this earns.
However, the “uncomfortable moment” has to be addressed. One of the gags involved Brazil nuts; those are dark in color and a century ago, in the United States they had a horrifying name-it’s on Wikipedia if you must know. That history was known to me beforehand yet it was still incredibly jarring to see those be referred to not as “Brazil nuts” on a sign in a market but rather the worst racial slur of all. Slang so prevalent that stores used the term—at least there’s been some positive change in the past century when it comes to racism.
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