“Liberty” was released in January 1929 and was the 28th short comedy Laurel and Hardy had made together. It stands today as one of their funniest achievements but also as an important transitional moment in their film-making.

By the time the film was being written in September 1928 by Stan and his regular director, Leo McCarey, the Hal Roach Studios had virtually committed to moving production to synchronised sound. This was a risky and expensive undertaking and would take months. Already in the can, “Habeus Corpus”, a spooky silent comedy about grave-robbing was being readied as the first Stan and Ollie “sound” picture. A synchronised soundtrack of comic sound effects and an orchestral score would be shipped out on records alongside the film itself to theatres in December. The onus on Roach’s film-makers at this time therefore was to save money and make money in readiness for the uncertain times ahead.

McCarey had just directed the boys in a cheeky domestic romp entitled “We Faw Down”. It’s noticeably more sophisticated than the usual Laurel and Hardy effort, largely filmed in close-up with some subtle performances, it sees the team as two rather nasty, rebellious husbands lying to their wives and getting their just desserts! Making these silent movies often saw the cast improvise around a scenario on set or location and clearly this worked as the movie came in at 10 minutes longer than required. Eager to use some of the discarded footage of the boys swapping trousers in the streets of Culver City, Stan built an entire new film of two convicts on the run around it.

Laurel and Hardy had in their 2 years together as a team established themselves as one of the biggest box office draws in the world. But arguably the King of Comedy at the time was another of one of Hal Roach’s collaborators, Harold Lloyd. What better way to guarantee a hit for the studio but to ape one of Lloyd’s biggest successes? 5 years earlier Lloyd had wowed audiences with the thrill-picture “Safety Last” with his character seemingly climbing a Los Angeles skyscraper. To create this illusion a multi-storey facade was built on top of an already high building, so although not actually risking his life Lloyd was believably seen hanging above the streets. McCarey and Laurel would use this technique to even greater effect for the climax of their new picture entitled “Liberty”.

On the roof-top car park of the 10 storey Western Costume Building, where Hollywood stars would go for their costume fittings, designer Thomas Benton built an additional 3 storeys of wooden scaffolding to look like a skyscraper under construction. The effect is dizzying for even modern audiences, and was not without its risks. Sporty Babe Hardy was keen to prove to his partner that the set was safe by jumping from one level to another beneath them. The wooden platform shattered and Hardy fell another 20 feet onto a safety net or mattress below, but only suffered minor injuries.

The first half of the film, sees the “We Faw Down” footage opened out to a truly hilarious 10 minutes of camp farce, as Laurel and Hardy’s escaped prisoners having ditched their uniforms mistakenly put on each other’s pants. The extended gag is that to those around them on the street (including a suspicious cop)  here are two men hiding in an alleyway or in a cab attempting taking off one another’s trousers.  Never the most macho couple of characters, it remains entirely understandable how people jump to the wrong conclusion about Stan and Ollie in this sequence. And another example of how their increasingly clever comedy was working on a number of different levels for audiences of all ages.

As one of the last of the team’s movies before the studio was fitted to record speech on set, “Liberty” looks back to the great stunts of silent clowns like Lloyd and Buster Keaton, but it also looks forward, being released with a synchronised musical score in those theatres that adopted the new technology. It sees Stan and Ollie teetering on the edge of an uncertain future in showbusiness, where, happily, they would ultimately triumph.