Tim L'Amoureux's recollections of Laurel and Hardy's run-in with
a player piano are basically correct.  The film was not entitled
"The Piano Movers" but is in fact called "The Music Box".  The
three-reeler was written and filmed 78 years ago right now, in
mid-to-late December of 1931, and released on April 16, 1932.

The piano used in the opening of the film may well have been an
Ampico upright reproducer, but the piano that Stan and Ollie have
just delivered to a hilltop home up an enormous flight of stairs was
"an old broken-down upright... made so it could be chopped to pieces
easily," according to T. Marvin Hatley.

Hatley was the music director at the Hal Roach Studios in Culver City,
California.  He provided the music for the piano just out of camera
range, playing "Turkey in the Straw" which was the first tune of what
the piano roll leader calls "Patriotic Medley".

"I played with lots of tremolos, like a player piano," Hatley said,
adding that as actor Billy Gilbert smashed the piano with an axe, he
watched Gilbert's actions "trying to catch all of his axe hits."

The piano demonstrated at the beginning of the film was playing "The
King's Horses (and the King's Men)," and may well have been an actual
piano roll rather than Hatley playing.

The Academy Award-nominated composer Hatley wrote Laurel and
Hardy's theme song, "The Cuckoo Song" (often called "Ku Ku"), and was
a musician who could play any instrument, "except the harp," he told
me in 1979.

The breakaway piano was rigged by Roach prop man Thomas Benton Roberts,
who told me in 1986 that an actual piano was in the shipping case that
the boys carry up the stairs, "to give it weight and authenticity, that
the boys were actually working with a heavy object."  I doubt his memory
a bit as at one point in the action, the shipment ends up in a large
fountain and the case floats.

"Professor Theodore von Schwarzenhoffen, MD, AD, DDS, FLD, FFF und
F", played by Billy Gilbert, is the reluctant recipient of Laurel and
Hardy's delivery.  They have managed to wreck half of his house in
their duties, and as they clean up their mess, they start the piano,
performing a dance of sorts as they retrieve debris from the von
Schwarzenhoffen living room.  When the homeowner arrives, he proclaims
his disdain for pianos ("I hate and detest pianos, they are mechanical
blunderbusses!"), and he chops the instrument into kindling.

When Billy Gilbert tears the front off the instrument, it is obvious
that the spool box is merely a box affixed to the front.  There is no
air motor or pneumatic stack in evidence.  There are real piano action
parts inside -- hammers and piano wire, etc. -- but the entire instrument
is reduced to a shambles in very short order.  When the patriotic medley
goes into "The Star-Spangled Banner," Stan and Ollie face forward and
salute.  Professor von Schwarzenhoffen momentarily ceases his hacking
as he does likewise.  He snaps out of his temporary calm and shuts the
roll off, resuming his destruction.

The film concludes when Mrs. von Schwarzenhoffen arrives and informs
her husband that she bought the piano to surprise him on his birthday!
He apologizes profusely to Stan and Ollie, asking "What can I do to
show you how sorry I am?"  Ollie asks for his signature on the bill of
lading, snapping his fingers to gain his partner's attention and saying,
"Stanley, the pen."  Gilbert opens the pen only to prove the writing
implement is certainly a fountain pen as it sprays its ink directly in
his face as the Laurel and Hardy Transfer Company make a hasty exit.

On November 18, 1932, "The Music Box" won the Academy Award for "Best
Short Subject (Comedy)" of 1931-32.

The monumental flight of stairs used in the film is a public alley way
between 923 and 937 Vendome Street (at Del Monte) in the Silver Lake
district of Los Angeles, and the stairs appear now very much as they
did in 1931, although a hand rail and street lights have been added.
Neighboring homes are virtually identical to their 1931 appearance!
Incidentally, there are 131 steps in the stairway.

The stairs were used by the Hal Roach Studios in other films,
including 1925's "Isn't Life Terrible?", a Charley Chase silent film
which co-starred Oliver Hardy, and again in July of 1927 in "Hats Off",
a lost Laurel and Hardy silent comedy wherein the boys are door-to-door
washing machine salesmen who climb the steps repeatedly carrying the
heavy appliance.  "Hats Off", the 'Holy Grail' of lost comedy films,
was reworked into "The Music Box" four years later for what is now
considered one of Laurel and Hardy's best comedies in their 106-film
partnership.

"The Music Box" is not the only film where Laurel and Hardy have an
encounter with automatic music.  Among the numerous "musical" comedies
are the following: In "Night Owls" (1930), newly-recruited cat burglars
Stan and Ollie accidentally start a reproducing grand piano that bursts
into a spirited, up-tempo rendition of "Under the Anheiser Busch" as
the boys stuff cushions and whatnot under the lid to muffle the
commotion!

A coin-operated piano is seen and heard in "The Live Ghost" (1934),
and an organ grinder (with a gorilla instead of a monkey!) plays for
donations in the feature "Swiss Miss" (1938).

Non-automatic musical interludes in Laurel and Hardy films include
"Beau Hunks" (1931) when Oliver plays a baby upright piano which is
soon reduced to scrap when he falls on the instrument; "Dirty Work"
(1933) when chimney sweeps Laurel and Hardy smash the broom extensions
into an upright piano; in "Way Out West" (1937) Stan and Ollie hide
inside a grand piano to evade the villain (mustachioed, squint-eyed
James Finlayson), who slams the lid on the boys, breaking the bottom
out of the instrument.

"Below Zero" (1930) finds Stan playing "In the Good Old Summertime" on
a portable melodeon accompanied by Ollie on string bass.  It's snowing
in the dead of winter!  Both instruments are soon flattened; the silent
short "Wrong Again" (1929) finds Laurel and Hardy returning the stolen
"Blue Boy" to its owner, who tells them to put "him" on top of the
piano -- he always keeps him there!  The owner was expecting the
Gainsborough painting, but stable hands Laurel and Hardy were returning
a same-named race horse, which they eventually do manage to get atop a
grand piano!

Stan and Ollie's epic battle delivering a player piano in "The Music
Box" inspired an event at the 6th International Convention of the
Sons of the Desert which our local Laurel and Hardy club and I hosted
in Saint Paul, Minnesota in 1988.  Contacting a piano tuner friend of
mine, I obtained five old upright pianos which we intended to smash
to smithereens in our "Professor Theodore von Schwarzenhoffen, MD, AD,
DDS, FLD, FFF und F 'I Hate and Detest Pianos' Piano Demolition."
The tuner assured me that the instruments were beyond repair.

In a public park overlooking the Mississippi River and across the
street from our convention hotel, a pair of L&H look-alikes moved
one piano into position as I played the irate professor.  As local
television cameras rolled, I single-handedly reduced an upright piano
to a fairly flat pile of kindling using a sledge hammer.  Then it was
the conventioneers' turn.

The four remaining pianos were systematically bashed into oblivion,
with each participant getting three whacks at the instruments.  One
piano actually looked pretty nice and a talented conventioneer played
ragtime on it until it was the last piano standing.  This particular
piano seemed to defy the assault and refused to fall.  After
considerable bashing, the instrument finally met the same fate as its
predecessors.

All this action took place July 15, 1988, during a heat wave that sent
the day's temperature to 103 degrees F (with a 114 degree heat index!).
Laurel and Hardy buffs retrieved pieces of the pianos as souvenirs of
their part of the event.  (Participants received a "Certificate of
Musical Depreciation" signed by Professor von Schwarzenhoffen.)  The
only drawback to the occasion was that the refuse company we had hired
to bring a dumpster to the site for the disposal of the remains
neglected to open the end of the receptacle.  Our clean up crew had to
hoist the heavy sounding board and harp assemblies over the five-foot
high sides of the dumpster in that searing heat!

Besides having a great interest in automatic musical instruments,
I am the "Grand Sheik" (president) of the Twin Cities Block-Heads
tent of the Sons of the Desert, the international Laurel and Hardy
club.  A great web site for information on your nearest associate
chapter is http://www.wayoutwest.org/ and another site with outstanding
and interesting background on the Laurel and Hardy films is
http://www.laurel-and-hardy.com/ 

Tracy M. Tolzmann