Laurel & Hardy: Year Three

2-DISC BLU-RAY EDITION

Following the acclaimed Laurel & Hardy: Year One and Laurel & Hardy: Year Two collections, Flicker Alley and Blackhawk Films® are proud to announce the culmination of the duo's silent years. Laurel & Hardy: Year Three brings to Blu-ray disc nine of L&H's most beloved classic shorts, newly restored and joined by a host of rare archival material that also includes several of their earliest sound films.

Unparalleled in their ability to adapt to the changing cinematic landscape, Laurel and Hardy’s upwards trajectory was only bolstered by the arrival of sound. Their first sound short, appropriately titled Unaccustomed As We Are, begins to incorporate sync sound gags and was so well received by audiences that the duo would go on to win the Academy Award for The Music Box just a few years later, an impressively rare feat for the time.

Restored shorts on the Laurel & Hardy: Year Three set include:

Liberty
Wrong Again
That's My Wife
Big Business
Unaccustomed as We Are (Silent Version)
Double Whoopee
Berth Marks (Silent Version)
Bacon Grabbers
Angora Love (Silent Version)

The 1929 shorts include many of Laurel and Hardy’s best known films and, thanks to painstaking restoration efforts by Blackhawk Films®, each short offers pristine picture and audio, backed by fascinating and contextual bonus features, including audio commentaries, alternate edits, and rare archival footage. What’s more, the set includes both silent and sound versions of Unaccustomed as We Are and two bonus full sound shorts from 1929, They Go Boom! and The Hoose-Gow

Each film features newly recorded scores from some of the best silent film composers working today, including Neil Brand, Andreas Benz, Robert Israel, and Maud Nelissen, three of the scores featuring a 5.1 audio mix. The release is curated by film historians and Laurel and Hardy specialists; Randy Skretvedt, Richard W. Bann, Serge Bromberg, and Eric Lange.

A fascinating historical glimpse into a rapidly evolving cinematic landscape, Laurel & Hardy: Year Three delivers timelessly hilarious gags, as undeniably funny today as they were nearly a hundred years ago. Give the goat a donut, shake the crustaceans out of your pants, and put the horse on the piano: the final silent masterpieces from Laurel and Hardy are here to complete your collection.

BONUS MATERIALS INCLUDE:

• Audio Commentary Tracks - For each film by historians and authors Randy Skretvedt and Richard W. Bann
• Additional Musical Scores – Alternate audio options, including fully restored original 1929 Vitaphone tracks on Liberty, Wrong Again, That’s My Wife, Bacon Grabbers, and Angora Love
• Laurel & Hardy On-Location in Year Three – A video essay by historian John Bengtson on selected location exteriors
• They Go Boom! (1929), The Hoose-Gow (1929), and Unaccustomed as We Are (1929) – Three bonus full sound shorts from late 1929, proof positive of Laurel & Hardy’s adaptability to the innovations of the “talkies”
• The Hollywood Revue of 1929 (Excerpt) - Laurel & Hardy deliver a magic act in this segment from MGM’s theatrically released variety musical
• Spanish Version of Berth Marks (1929) (Fragment) - An example of how foreign language editions were prepared and released and a testament to Stan and Ollie’s international appeal
• Dubbed Version of Double Whoopee (1929) - A rare presentation of Double Whoopee dubbed decades later in 1970 by Chuck McCann, included with an introduction from McCann’s presentation at the Hollywood Party Tent in 2013
• MGM Convention 1930 Announcement - Virtually unseen, Laurel and Hardy deliver a special message for MGM’s annual sales convention
• Film Specific Image Galleries – Containing original publicity materials, press reviews, and rare production stills
• Souvenir Booklet – Containing new introductions by Leonard Maltin and Serge Bromberg, film notes by Richard W. Bann and Randy Skredvedt, and restoration text by Serge Bromberg
• English SDH Subtitles
• Blu-ray Authoring by David Mackenzie of Fidelity In Motion
• All Region Encoding (A,B,C)