The Finishing Touch is a 1928 short comedy silent film produced by Hal Roach, directed by Clyde Bruckman and starring Laurel and Hardy. It was released February 25, 1928 by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
Synopsis
Stan and Ollie are hired by a homeowner (Sam Lufkin) to finish building a house for him. Furthermore, they are offered a $500 bonus if they do a speedy job. They then proceed on their appointed task with zeal but experience one disastrous result after another. Compounding their difficulties is a nearby hospital whose small but feisty head nurse sics a policeman (Edgar Kennedy) on the finishers for being too loud in their work. The policeman tries to keep Stan and Ollie as quiet as possible. In doing so, he unwittingly gets in the firing line and suffers numerous indignities, including having a bucket of glue and a stack of shingles fall from the roof onto his head.
Eventually the home is finished, and Stan and Ollie seem to have done a passable job. The homeowner arrives. Pleased at what he sees, he gladly pays Stan and Ollie their promised $500 bonus. Moments later, however, a tiny bird lands on the house's chimney, causing the chimney to collapse and crash through the roof, which weakens the entire structure of the new house. The enraged homeowner demands his $500 back. Stan and Ollie refuse and engage in some creative teamwork to keep the $500 in their hands.
Production and exhibition
The Finishing Touch was filmed in November and December 1927. The film is a descendant of two of the duo's solo films: Laurel's Smithy (1924) and Hardy's Stick Around (1925). The paperhanger character played by Hardy in the latter film "was justly important to [Hardy], originating an embryonic form of his eventual screen character."
The Finishing Touch is set in an area undergoing real estate development in 1927; its wide open spaces provide a sense of a more pastoral Los Angeles that would soon vanish as more structures filled it in. The ill-fated structure in question here was built by the Roach construction team on Motor Avenue near the Fox studio. It was supposed to collapse completely when the duo's truck rolled through it, but an overzealous crew ignored designer Thomas Benton Roberts's design specs and made it too sturdy — so the truck lodged halfway through and ground to a stop.
The Finishing Touch was filmed on location in the neighborhood of Cheviot Hills, Los Angeles. The house under construction in the film was at 2830 Motor Avenue and was destroyed after filming. The hospital scene was filmed at 2728 McConnell Drive at a house that still stands today. Additionally, several other houses in Cheviot Hills can be seen in the background, most prominently 2839 Forrester Drive.
Script into film
L&H historian Randy Skretvedt unearthed the original action script for The Finishing Touch and discovered gags that were either unfilmed or unused in the finished picture. One gag finds Stan and Ollie in adjacent rooms: Ollie drives a nail in the wall to hang his coat on, but in the next room, the nail snags Stan's sleeve so he drives it back out. On his side of the wall, Ollie cannot figure why his coat is on the floor, but he has his suspicions; just as he steps into Stan's room to confront him, Stan has stepped into his through another door. The nail gets hammered back and forth, until it ultimately hits pay dirt — in the beleaguered hide of cop Kennedy.
The script also provided additional backstory on how the duo came to be hired to work on the house to begin with: an unfilmed scene portrayed the original construction crew having the same difficulties with the same folks from the same nearby hospital and quitting in frustration. Another change from the script was definitely an improvement: by the time the cameras rolled, the stern male physician of the script had morphed into the petite but spicy nurse played by Dorothy Coburn. Her spirited domination of both The Boys and Kennedy is made all the funnier by her gender and small stature. She makes up in spunk what she lacks in body mass — Skretvedt calls her "the quintessential tough-cookie."
The picture's finale also evolved between script and screen. In the final film, a dainty animated bird alights on the chimney, triggering a domino-effect collapse of the entire house. On the printed page, Stan himself was to be the catalyst for the implosion: he left his derby up on the roof and when he clambers up to get it, the catastrophic sequence commences. As different items tremble and fall, the homeowner takes back more of the money he has paid them, until he has taken all of it back.