Rant #2,265: Thursday Morning At the Movies

Good morning, everybody!

We are one day closer to Thanksgiving, probably my personally favorite holiday during the year, because it is a family holiday, nothing more, nothing less.

No gifts are required during the holiday; the only gift required is you, and to be with your loved ones.

So, as we creep closer to the magic day, is there any movie that symbolizes the holiday to you?

If you ever lived in New York, there is only one film that tells you that the holiday is here, and that is the classic film "March of the Wooden Soldiers" starring Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy.

Laurel and Hardy were the template for all of the comedy teams that followed them, from Bud Abbott and Lou Costello to Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis to, yes, Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong.

Stan and Babe--as he was affectionately called--were at the top rung of that ladder, and all the others reached for that top rung, and I believe only Abbott and Costello actually reached it--probably touched it--during their time together.

But in this particular film, Laurel (Stannie Dum) and Hardy (Ollie Dee) really solidified themselves as incredible screen comics, able to play off themselves as well as all the other characters around them without thoroughly eclipsing the other actors, which is a mean feat in itself.

I mean, I don't even know if at this point in time I have to go through the whole story of the movie, but it involves Little Bo Peep having to marry evil Barnaby because Old Mother Hubbard can't pay her rent.

Peep wants to marry Tom Tom, the Piper's Son, but Stan and Ollie devise a variety of plots to thwart this situation, and in one instance Stan marries Barnaby!

Anyway, Barnaby sicks the bogeymen--some netherworld characters--against the townspeople, including Old King Cole and the Three Little Pigs, but Stan and Ollie manage to thwart them using the life-size wooden soldiers that they unwittingly created when they got the specs for wooden soldier toys all wrong in the toyshop.

This film, which incredibly dates from 1934, is really and truly a special film, and people like me insist on watching it in black and white, the way it was meant to be shown.

Well, WPIX in New York is finally bowing to the whims of people like me, and on Thanksgiving morning, they will finally show the film in black and white. Showing it later in the day in color, WPIX will satisfy every whim related to this film by showing it both ways on this special day.

I don't believe they have shown the black and white film since the 1980s, so this will be a really special treat!

This 84-year-old movie will certainly be shown for many more generations, but as a side note, I have noted an extremely disturbing trend on social media, to knock the film as being both racist and anti-Semitic.

Some believe that the portrayal of the bogeyman is racist, because these netherworld characters appear to be portrayed by blacks, and are portrayed as savages.

I don't know about this. Yes, it appears that black actors are portraying many, if not all, of the bogeymen, but these are fantasy characters, nothing more.

By saying that the movie is racist, are you saying that "The Wizard of Oz" is anti-little people because most of those actors in the film are, well, midgets?

I have heard the hues of racism with this movie before--I believe that that is the main reason that the movie wasn't shown for awhile on television in the 1990s--but this thing about anti-Semitism is completely new to me.

Hal Roach, whose studio created this film, was thought to be an anti-Semite in real life. His "Our Gang" had only two Jewish members--Jackie Cooper was half Jewish and Jerry Schatz was the only full-blooded Jew in the group of kids--and Roach had ties to Benito Mussolini through the Italian tyrant's son.

"March of the Wooden Soldiers" is, say the naysayers, a fable about an obvious Jewish money lender, in the guise of Barnaby, who terrorizes a small town with his financial ways.

The wooden soldiers, say the naysayers, are actually Nazi storm troopers--I mean, look at the way they walk--and those storm troopers end up winning out, saving the village from the evil Jewishness of Barnaby.

Yes, people actually believe this tripe!

Whatever Hal Roach was--and nobody denies that he had anti-Semitic tendencies, in fact, his relationship with Jewish-led MGM soured when he entered into a film deal that never came to fruition with Mussolini's son--this film, based on a Victor Herbert operetta, does not get into that vile realm.

And more importantly, let's stop looking at things under a 2018 microscope. Things that would be seen today as being evil were the norm back then, had no evil messages on their underside, and you cannot change history--you learn from it.

So is "March of the Wooden Soldiers" actually a vile film, delivering messages of hate through its storytelling?

I think not, I really think not.

Social media tends to look for things, and you know what they say, you look for things, you are going to find them.

Enough.

Enjoy your turkey, and enjoy the movie.

I know that I will.