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The Battle of the Century (1927)
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Overview
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Release Date:
31 December 1927 (USA)
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Plot:
Fight manager (Hardy) takes out an insurance policy on his puny pugilist (Laurel) and then proceeds...
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User Comments:
Pretty much impossible to rate in its current form
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Cast
(Credited cast)| Stan Laurel | ... | Prize fighter | |
| Oliver Hardy | ... | Manager | |
| rest of cast listed alphabetically: | |||
| Jack Adams | ... | Undetermined Role | |
| Ed Brandenburg | ... | Warring pedestrian | |
| Dorothy Coburn | ... | Pie victim boarding auto | |
| George B. French | ... | Dentist | |
| Anita Garvin | ... | Slips on pie | |
| Dick Gilbert | ... | Sewer worker | |
| Charlie Hall | ... | Pie delivery man | |
| Jack Hill | ... | Ringside spectator | |
| Ham Kinsey | ... | Ringside spectator | |
| Sam Lufkin | ... | Boxing referee | |
| Gene Morgan | ... | Ring announcer | |
| Bob O'Connor | ... | Warring pedestrian (as Bob O'Conor) | |
| Eugene Pallette | ... | Insurance agent | |
| Bert Roach | ... | Ringside spectator | |
| Dick Sutherland | ... | Dental patient | |
| Lyle Tayo | ... | Woman at window | |
| Ellinor Vanderveer | ... | Lady in car (as Ellinor Van der Veer) | |
| Dorothea Wolbert | ... | Warring pedestrian | |
| Charley Young | ... | Fruit vendor | |
| Noah Young | ... | Thunder-Clap Callahan | |
Additional Details
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Runtime:
19 min (original version)
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1.33 : 1 more
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Fun Stuff
Trivia:
An entire day's production from the Los Angeles Pie Company - some 3,000 pies - was used in the famous pie fight.
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Goofs:
Continuity: 'Lou Costello' leaps from second row to ringside between shots.
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Movie Connections:
Referenced in Abbott and Costello Meet Jerry Seinfeld (1994) (TV)
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FAQ
List: Wacky boxingmore
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This is one of the lost films of Laurel and Hardy--or at least partially lost. Today only about half of the film remains--all of the boxing sequence (which is pretty good) and bits and pieces of the giant pie fight. The rest, sadly, appears gone forever, though fans of the team hold out hope--after all, newly discovered bits and pieces have been found of many great supposedly missing or truncated films (such as the great recent find of a longer version of METROPOLIS). Because this film isn't totally intact, it's not fair that anyone should have to give it a numerical score, but IMDb forces this for all reviews. My score of 6 is because I really didn't think much of the pie fight and there just isn't enough of the original film left to get a better score.
By the way, according to IMDb, Lou Costello is an extra at ring side. I looked but couldn't really tell he was there. Perhaps he was the guy who caught Hardy at the end of the fight. The problem is that Costello would have been a lot thinner and younger--as he had himself been an amateur boxer about this same time period.
As far as pie fights go, this is probably the best and was the inspiration for the one in THE GREAT RACE many years later. Despite people thinking this is a slapstick cliché, there were actually very few pie fights ever shown on film and the few that did occur were rarely as big or crazy as this one--usually just a pie or two (like you'd see in a couple of The Three Stooges' films).
Also, and this is an odd one, during the fight scene, you see a pretty lady walking by "The Pink Pup". This is the same place you see featured in THAT'S MY WIFE and THEIR PURPLE MOMENT--two other silent Laurel and Hardy shorts.
If you do want to see this ten minute film, it's included in the huge UK DVD Laurel and Hardy collection.