February Meeting 2026 February 13, 2026

This month we’ll be celebrating the 120th university of the birth of Anita Francis Garvin, born February 11th 1906.    She appeared in 11 Laurel & Hardy films….7 silents, 2 talkie-shorts, and 2 features.  We plan to show 2 of these and  a nod of the Derbie hat to a third.  (NB This total excludes the foreign versions but Anita did appeared in all 3 versions of the film “Blotto” …English, Spanish &  French).

We will start the evening with the silent “From Soup to Nuts (1928)” where Anita plays the gracious and funny Mrs Culpepper, who hires the Boys to serve at a swanky dinner party.  This film will be shown from the US 1928 year3 restorations boxset in full HD with randy Skredvedt’s commentary.  This will be followed by the talkie feature “A Chump At Oxford (1940)”, which includes a reworking of the silent film, with Anita reprising her role, but this time as Mrs Vandevere!  Maybe she got divorced and remarried!  This would be Anita’s last film with Laurel & Hardy.  After the break, we will show a slideshow of film stills that reconstructs the Boys film, “Hats-Off(1927)”, which is now sadly lost. The Boys are door-to-door washing machine salesmen.  Anita is a potential buyer but she lives right on “top of the stoop” of a long flight of steps….plot sounds familiar?  Yes, “Hats Off”was later reworked as “The Music Box” in 1932.

I’ve also selected two talkie shorts we haven’t seen in quite a while.  The first is the rather politically scandalous film , “Chickens Come Home (1931)”, which is quite topical at the moment in the news.  The second film is  “They Go Boom (1929)” – this is the last talkie short to show that hasn’t been seen since the pandemic. 

I’ll also be showing yet Another Fine L&H based cartoon in the intermission – this will be  “Truancy or Consequences”  from the Larry Harmon series of “Laurel & Hardy Show” cartoons created by Hanna Barbera in 1967.   In this cartoon, the Boys discover the importance of a good education which links nicely with their Oxford education in our feature film.