Movies
Babes in Toyland (MGM 1934, Stan Laurel, OIiver Hardy)
A classic Laurel and Hardy comedy about two toy-making apprentices who live in Toyland. They’re fired from their jobs after they make 100 six-feet-tall soldiers for Santa Claus instead of 600 one-foot-tall soldiers. The duo do not know how they are going to pay their room and board to Mother Peep. Mother Peep’s daughter Bo is busy fending off the advances of evil Barnaby, who owns the mortgage on the Peep home. Laurel and Hardy save the day, rescuing Bo’s love Tom-Tom from the land of the bogeymen, and unleashing the toy soldiers on the bogeymen who run rampant through Toyland.
Harry Kleinbach, the German-born actor who plays Barnaby, ‘the meanest man in Toyland,’ later changed his name to Henry Brandon and was an imposing villain in many films, notably Scar in John Ford’s The Searchers (1956).
In 1961, the Disney company made a lavish version of Babes in Toyland, starring a post-Mousketeer, pre-Beach Party Annette Funicello as the Bo-Peep character.
production details
USA | MGM | 73 minutes | 1934
Directors: Gus Meins, Charles Rogers
Producer: Hal Roach
Cinematography: Francis Corby, Art Lloyd
Editors: Bert Jordan, William H. Terhune
Music: Frank Churchill, Victor Herbert, Glen McDonough
Script: Frank Butler, Nick Grinde, Glen McDonough
cast
John George as Barnaby’s Minion (uncredited)
Ellen Corby as Townswoman at Tom-Tom’s Trial (uncredited)
Charlie Hall as Townsman (uncredited)
Henry Brandon as Silas Barnaby
Ham Kinsey as Townsman (uncredited)
Florence Roberts as Mother Widow Peep
Tiny Sandford as Dunker (uncredited)
Johnny Downs as Little Boy Blue
Stan Laurel as Stannie Dum
Oliver Hardy as Ollie Dee
Charlotte Henry as Little Bo-Peep
Felix Knight as Tom-Tom Piper
Virginia Karns as Mother Goose
Marie Wilson as Mary Quite Contrary
Scotty Beckett as Schoolboy (uncredited)
Billy Bletcher as Chief of Police (uncredited)
Jean Darling as Curly Locks (uncredited)
Dickie Jones as Schoolboy (uncredited)
Alice Lake as Townswoman (uncredited)
Joy Lane as Schoolgirl (uncredited)
Jack ‘Tiny’ Lipson as Nobleman (uncredited)
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