The Tree in a Test Tube (1942)

The Tree in a Test Tube (1942)

„The Tree in a Test Tube“ is a 1942 World War II educational propaganda short film directed by Charles McDonald.

Stan and Ollie are walking in the street carrying a suitcase, seemingly picked at random, and stopped by narrator # 1 (Pete Smith), who asks them if they know what wood based products that are in everyday use they have on them. They profess not to have any wood in their possession. First of course is their newspaper (from wood pulp) but soon they find all types of wood based plastics, rayon, and chemicals in the contents of a suitcase and their wallets. All manufactured from wood.

At one point Ollie indicates that Stan’s head is made of wood, to Stan’s annoyance.

They have some fun with a piece of woman’s underclothes on Stan, and later a pair of Stan’s colorful undershorts, both of which are made from wood based material.

The boys end up chasing a car that most of their clothes and belongings were put upon when unpacking them.

A second narrator (Lee Vickers) shows us how important wood is for the war effort and talks about the Agricultural Department’s Wood Laboratory in Madison, Wisconsin, where they have tree grown in a test-tube. The film ends with patriotic music playing, and the American flag flying on screen.

A 1942 World War II educational propaganda short film directed by Charles McDonald, produced by the U. S. Department of Agriculture, cinematography by Harold S. Sintzenich, starring Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, with narration read by MGM narrator and producer Pete Smith, and Lee Vickers. Distributed by the U.S. Forest Service.

Their routine lasts around five minutes and was shot silent but in color. Laurel does not audibly speak, but Hardy makes two utterances (laughter and an utterance of „Ain’t that the truth!“) that were dubbed into Smith’s audio track. The second half of the film is unrelated documentary film footage, which shifts focus toward wood’s importance to the World War II victory effort. Included in the documentary footage are visits to a research laboratory in Madison, Wisconsin and a demonstration at the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus in which an elephant stands on a piece of laminated veneer lumber without breaking it.

Laurel and Hardy shot this short during their lunch hour on the back lot of Twentieth Century-Fox on November 29, 1941, eight days before the attack on Pearl Harbor, while they were filming „Jitterbugs“ (1943).

Before forming the famous comedy duo with Oliver Hardy that would delight and make the entire planet laugh out loud, Stan Laurel was an experienced burlesque artist who knew how to give the full measure of his talent as a gag designer and director.

The two men had very different origins and goals. Stan Laurel, the Englishman, was a child of the ball from a poor background and always had the ambition to be at the heart of the creative process, Oliver Hardy, the American, came from the classes average and simply wanted to have fun by acting to escape a sad world. Hardy the Epicurean led a peaceful existence entirely focused on pleasure, with a particular interest in golf and horse racing.

Modestly, Hardy always agreed to comply with the artistic demands of his companion. His only true ambition was to act and enjoy the life of a dilettante. But if Laurel was truly the soul of the duo and its kingpin, he never gave the impression of supplanting Hardy in the image. In their films, the two friends are treated on an equal footing. Hardy is the eternal optimist, always with his feet on the ground, who commands the eternally absent-minded Laurel, a lunar character whose clumsiness annihilates all the projects conceived by his comrade. The great strength of this comic duo is this natural opposition in the goals pursued by each mixed with a perpetual movement of the two men according to a law of action and reaction which quickly turns into caricature by accumulation.

Hardy generally only acts as an interchangeable partner for this or that star actor. However, some of his appearances sometimes anticipate the role he will play in the future alongside Laurel, but in most cases he blends more or less into the team formed by the second-rate actors.

The Tree in a Test Tube is Laurel and Hardy’s only known surviving professionally shot color film, shot in Kodachrome on 16mm. „The Rogue Song“ (1930), made in Technicolor and featuring the duo in their only other known professional color footage, is now considered a lost film, although a number of fragments have survived; some home movies of the two in the 1950s also exist in color.

This bland historical curio is really only of any interest at all because it is the only color movie made by the great comedy team of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. Laurel and Hardy could make almost anything entertaining, given the chance. But unfortunately they really don’t get a chance here. Most of the movie consists of Stan and Ollie being prompted by a narrator. As war propaganda goes, it could’ve been worse. The film is instructive, and it offers a very pleasant spectacle to which one would be reluctant to...

Cast:

• Stan Laurel – Stan
• Oliver Hardy – Ollie
• Pete Smith – Interlocutor (voice)
• Lee Vickers – Narrator (voice)