Scrolling through a social media channel, as one does when the mind is at its idlest, I saw a familiar film clip, posted with the intention of making us happy. Certain clips have gained seemingly eternal traction online, recurring as some new person discovers them or someone reposts them because they know the clip will always attract an audience. With sufficient likes, a clip should last forever. And high on the list of clips that deserves to last for all time is ‘Commence to dancing” from the Laurel and Hardy film Way Out West (USA 1937).
Way Out West is a spoof of the Western genre. Laurel and Hardy are on a quest to discover locate Mary Roberts, the owner of the deeds to a gold mine, whose father has died. At the town of Brushwood Gulch they encounter several people intent on gaining ownership of Roberts’ wealth, but through accident and ingenuity the duo and the heiress are triumphant. As the well-constructed story unfolds, there are three musical numbers, each of which feature the duo at their peak, not just as comedians but as something that represents the best of us. One is ‘Trail of the Lonesome Pine‘, whose sublime comic timing combined with a catchy melody made it an unlikely hit on the British pop charts in 1975. Another is Irving Berlin and Ted Snyder’s ‘I Want To Be in Dixie’, which features at the end of the film.
‘At the Ball, That’s All’, played by the Paragon Ragtime Orchestra (Edward Pleasant baritone), a 2012 recording showing how the song would first have been heard in 1913
The stand-out song is ‘At the Ball, That’s All‘, a ragtime number by the African-American composer J. Leubrie Hill. It was written for a 1913 show My Friend from Kentucky, which Hill produced and starred in, one of the famous series of Darktown Follies that played at Harlem’s Lafayette Theatre. The song was purchased by Florenz Ziegfeld for his Ziegfeld Follies, which would have ensured its popularity until the point where Laurel and Hardy lifted it into immortality.
The song is not familiar under its correct title, however. Most know it as ‘Commence to dancing’, the words sung at the start of the chorus by vocal quartet the Avalon Boys, which spark Laurel and Hardy into dance. The 1913 version starts with the words ‘Commence advancing’, as in the opening steps of the dance. The relative stiffness of the original is transformed by the Avalon Boys into a yodelling round with a touch of swing that makes things take to the air. Hearing this, what else can you do but dance?
The Laurel and Hardy dance from Way Out West
The scene begins with the Avalon Boys, one of them playing guitar, seated outside a Western saloon. Several shots show them singing the opening bars of ‘At the Ball, That’s All’. Laurel and Hardy arrive, seen from the rear. They tie up their mule before heading for the saloon entrance. A reverse angle shot shows the duo from the saloon point of view, with a rear-projected scene of the town behind them, people and horses crossing. The very artificiality of this feels like an echo of the number’s theatrical origins.
A beatific smile passes over Hardy’s face. Out of sheer instinct and respect, the pair begin to dance. They sway slightly to each side and lightly tap their feet. Hardy adjusts his hat. They move their feet slightly to the left, then turn slightly and repeat to the left. They step backwards, then forwards, pointing out their feet which rise a little higher with each turn. Then they each lift on leg at the knee to their side so that it touches their hand, almost leaving the ground as they become one with the music.
They motion to the right, they motion to the left, repeat, then each touches a knee. A brief close shot has them hold hands, before we return to the main shot as they circle hand in hand, first clockwise then anticlockwise, with a flick of the feet as they do so. The motion to the left and right is repeated, before they skip round in a semi-circle as they join together in a tango-like movement (the lyrics refer to a ‘tango jiggle’), towards the camera and back. They skip towards the camera, pirouette, then hold up their hands for a brief pause, in close shot. We reverse back 180-degrees to the saloon shot with the pair’s backs now facing us. They dance closer to the saloon steps, each holding up their coat tails. Turning again to us, they lift their hats, jiggle their legs, then with outstretched arms hop on one leg, first to the left, then to the right. Repeat, turn, then up the stairs hand-in-hand, back, forward and in through the saloon doors. The singers laugh. The dance is done.
One could conceivably choreograph the exact steps and find a pair of dancers who roughly matched Laurel and Hardy’s physiques, and dressed them in their clothes, yet the result would miss the mark. The specialness is in their movement, their delight, and in all the love and respect that they had earned in their ten years as a fixed comedy team. The dance could only happen at this moment, with these people. It is what film does – it gives us the fleeting, eternal moment.
It is the epitome of grace. Grace is one of those ancient words (deriving originally from the Latin gratus, meaning pleasing), whose import lies beyond its dictionary definitions. Grace is movement in a fluid manner, a charming appearance, a sense of rightness, courteousness of behaviour, and in Christian thinking a state of virtue or of being pleasing to God. These meanings are interrelated – they each point in their way to something that cannot be defined literally, but is instead sensed (grace is often paired with style, another word that is easier to recognise than it is to describe). Grace is an evanescent quality. It is understood more by its effects than its actions. It is charm, rightness and virtue, all somehow reflected in movement.
Laurel and Hardy were grace personified. Everything they did for the screen was graceful. Their every movement was a part of a dance, so that ‘At the Ball, That’s All’ merely epitomises that which they always were. It’s a quality, chiefly comic in effect, that is rooted in the human condition. We are shabby, brow-beaten, at the mercy of implacable authorities, intemperate neighbours and malign inanimate objects. Everything pits its wits against us. All we can do is turn that which assails into something that uplifts. Misfortune brings out the grace in us. We have only to hear a tune, tip our hats, sway from side to side, point our toes and move as the heart bids. Our virtue will come through.
Some thirty or so years ago the National Film Theatre in London held a season of Laurel and Hardy short films. Probably it was the largest retrospective of their work held to that date. The cinema was packed for the first screening, the anticipation among the audience high. As a member of that audience, I witnessed a remarkable thing. Those watching the first short films tried too hard. They laughed too forcibly, too eager as they were to find in the duo the very peak of screen humour. They were laughing not at what they saw but at what they had read about what they were seeing. There then came about a magical change. The audience adjusted to the pace, tone and indeed grace of Laurel and Hardy. The two knew everything there was to know about holding an audience, and by laughing with them rather than laughing because of them, we changed. We found ourselves in their hands, an audience choreographed by the entertainers. We laughed truly, and as one.
The greatness of the Way Out West dance lies in the fact that we are the dancers too. Laurel and Hardy move as we believe we could. How they move is how we would want to be able to move. We would not, usually, want to be a ballet dancer or someone else who expresses technical excellence in movement – all we can do is admire them from afar. But we should all want to move like Stan and Ollie. It is not just the movement of the happy amateur – or rather the appearance of the happy amateur, since the duo rehearsed the dance sequence over many hours, with painstaking professionalism. It is because in so dancing that we would discover our inner grace, our special virtue. In their dance we must see how beautiful things can be.
Links:
- Way Out West Tent is name of the fifth chapter of the Sons of the Desert, the Laurel and Hardy appreciation society. Its site includes a section devoted to Way Out West, with story, cast, lyrics, some of the script, and reviews
- On J. Leubrie Hill and the Darktown Follies, see Thomas L. Riis, Just Before Jazz: Black Musical Theater in New York, 1890 to 1915 (Washington/London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1989)
- Musician and broadcaster Neil Brand is currently hosting a UK-wide tour of Laurel and Hardy silent short films, running to May 2026 – see https://www.laurelandhardypresentedbyneilbrand.co.uk
- The feature film Stan & Ollie (2018) features John C. Reilly as Oliver Hardy and Steve Coogan as Stan Laurel, at the end of their careers when they were touring UK music halls. It ends with the duo dancing on stage to ‘At the Ball, That’s All’. They make a good go of it
