USA 1929 | Director: Lewis Foster | Script: Leo McCarey | Cast: Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, Jean Harlow | Production: Hal Roach/MGM | b/w | 35mm | 19 min | silent | amer. INT | Bonner Kinemathek / Beta Film GmbH

Laurel and Hardy looking for work – 1929, it’s the Depression. You can pick the insinuation that pleases most: that the manager of a grand hotel on Park Avenue is so poorly trained that he takes Laurel and Hardy for a European prince and his adjutant – or that in the imagination of American society, members of the upper echelons of European society get about like Laurel and Hardy. The film simultaneously skewers two figures of cinema, one invented by Stroheim, the other by Murnau. (…)

The reference to Stroheim’s films is so perfect because the actor who plays the prince is a dead ringer Stroheim. (Frieda Grafe, “Film-Historical Hotel Guide”, 1990)