Post by Hal EricksonPost by p***@SPAMSUCKSoptonline.netPost by Jimmy FinI've seen this material in the Spanish version.
It is actually very funny.
Do you know why this scene was not included in the American version?
The way it is arranged in the Spanish version, the continuity is a bit
perplexing . Why does Walter Long waste valuable time escaping from jail
to try to rape June Marlowe in a burning building?
There's too many climaxes and crises there.
Evidently L&H had previewed the fire scene and decided that a simpler
version of the jailbreak would play better, so a different ending was
filmed; that's the one you see in the American version.
In countries other than the US, it was hard to market a Hollywood film
that ran less than 60 minutes. PARDON US runs 56 minutes in its final
release form, which currently is only available if you happen to have an
old Nostalgia Merchant VHS.
I think the fire scene was re-inserted in the foreign-language prints to
pad the running time.
Similarly, IIRC, during the early 30s there was a rule concerning British
imports of American films regarding running times, stipulating that no
American import could run less than an hour. The British version of
PARDON US, the one which is apparently now "standard" on TCM and other
cable services, runs about 65 minutes. The padding mainly consists of
outtakes and extensions of existing scenes (notably the blackface segment,
and in Wilfred Luca's scenes as the warden). In one instance, an entire
segment (Stan and Ollie thrown into solitary) is used twice, though the
second time includes a slightly different soundtrack. It's easy to spot
the padding in this version: the background music suddenly stops (watch
the jailbreak scene, when Stan and Ollie try to sneak out unnoticed only
to be picked up by a searchlight). I believe that this sort of padding
occured in other under-an-hour American features like NIGHT WORLD and
TRIAL OF VIVIENNE WARE when they ran in Britain, to satisfy some sort of
quota rule or other.
There could be another reason that the fire scene exists in the Spanish
version: June Marlowe is wearing a very flimsy negligee. Spanish-language
versions of Hollywood films often included
extra scenes with underclad ladies: compare the revealing outfits worn by
the ladies in the Spanish-language DRACULA to the primly dressed maidens
in the English-language version. Also check out that belly dancer in the
4-reel Spanish version of BLOTTO.
--Hal E.
included.