Just rewatched Pardon Us, Laurel & Hardy's first feature film having been a success in two-reel shorts for years. It wasn't originally supposed to have been. See, producer Hal Roach had wanted to use the prison set of his distributor M-G-M's The Big House for his L & H parody but got upset when he was informed he would have to loan them to Leo the Lion's studio in return. So he had the expensive set duplicated at his Culver City lot with the decision to pad the film to recoup costs. Anyway, while the added scenes do seem extraneous, I got plenty of laughs anyway so it's all good. Like that scene with James Finlayson as a professor trying to teach his students and getting lots of nonsense answers when asking for certain facts. That sequence is all the sweeter as it plays the Our Gang theme of "Good Old Days" by Leroy Shield since it's reminiscent of a similar one in one of their shorts. Oh, and the version I'm reviewing is the longer preview print running 65 minutes that I taped off of AMC back in the '90s. Since Black History Month is in several days, I'd like to also note that the singers at the plantation scenes are that of Etude Ethiopian Chorus as directed by Freita Shaw. Oliver Hardy himself has a marvelous singing voice as evident when he warbles "Lazy Moon" with them. By the way, the blackface on both him and Stan doesn't cross the line to offensive since they don't look or act like the stereotype caricatures one associates with the makeup when it's put on. Really, all I'll say now is if you're a die hard Laurel & Hardy fan, I highly recommend this extant version of Pardon Us.
