Eve's Love Letters

Agnes Ayres was apparently a star of feature film who is top billed in this one-off Hal Roach short. She does well as the woman at the centre of the story, but it's pretty plain that it's actually the comic mind and performing talents of Stan Laurel, who plays her butler, that make this two-reel short shine.

We start with a fairly standard plot about a woman who is being blackmailed with love letters from before her marriage, but they get destroyed fairly quickly and when she is almost caught by her husband at the blackmailer's house the comedy turns into a fast-paced, wonderfully choreographed, inventive and funny farce in which Ayres and Laurel collaborate of a series of escalating tricks to confuse and humiliate the tipsy husband.

Laurel, showcased here, is very close indeed to the "Stanley" characterization that would make him famous (as others have noted, the blackmailer is amusing named "Sir Oliver Hardy"), though a little cleverer -- he is very memorable blowinga safe with strong liquor, pantomiming floating into heaven while faking his death, and spending much of the short doing a humorously bizarre drag act while seducing the husband.

A great absurdist farce and example of Laurel at the top of his game at the top comedy studio just before his fateful teaming with the real version of Oliver Hardy.