The solo comedies Stan Laurel made before he teamed with Oliver Hardy in 1927 vary a great deal in quality: some are funny and engaging, others barely watchable. Mother's Joy is a fairly decent two-reeler which provides some moderate-sized laughs. It's neither the best nor the worst short Stan made during these early years, but the real point of interest here isn't the comedy, it's the leading lady. For viewers interested in Mr. Laurel's private life this film offers a good look at Stan's longtime stage partner and common-law wife, Mae Dahlberg.
Mae was a controversial figure in Stan's life. She was an Australian music hall performer said to possess a crude sense of humor and a bad temper. Stan and Mae met in 1918, back when he was still known as Stan Jefferson. They formed an act together and then toured in vaudeville for a number of years. The couple lived as man and wife but never married, apparently because Mae's husband back in Australia wouldn't give her a divorce. It was Mae who came up with the name "Laurel" for her partner (and herself) which was certainly a positive contribution, but she also gave Stan a lot of grief behind the scenes. It would appear that those angry wives who hurl crockery in the later Laurel & Hardy comedies owe something to Stan's real-life experiences with Mae. When Stan began his second series of comedies for Hal Roach in the early 1920s Mae insisted on continuing their stage partnership in his movies, but she met with resistance. To put the matter politely, Mae was no ingénue. She was older than Stan, looked it, and she didn't photograph well. In most of the surviving films in which she appears, Mae is cast in "character" roles appropriate to her appearance. Even in Mother's Joy, in which she is the leading lady, Mae's screen time is limited and she has a rival in the form of a housemaid who is younger and prettier.
Mother's Joy is structured as a parody of 19th century stage melodramas, the kind already considered old-fashioned and laughable when the film was made. The story is introduced in flashback as an elderly aristocrat, Baron Buttontop (Jimmy Finlayson) tells his attorney McFumble about a painful episode from his past. It seems that, years earlier, his hefty daughter Dottie defied his wishes by having a romance with a man named Angus Dippytack. (And what a relief to note that later on, in the Laurel & Hardy comedies, the filmmakers stopped relying on silly character names for easy laughs!) In the flashback Stan plays Angus as a goofy Victorian nerd with muttonchop sideburns and a handlebar mustache. He and the baron's daughter elope, but we're told that Angus deserted his bride in Honolulu and she had to swim back. Dottie returns home dressed in a Red Riding Hood-style cape, carrying her baby in a basket. The baby is also played by Stan, posing in an over-sized bassinet in a gag that looks like a rehearsal for the Laurel & Hardy classic, Brats. But the baron rejects his wayward daughter and her child and casts them out. Years have passed, and now the remorseful old man wants his daughter and grandson found. Lawyer McFumble locates Basil the son (Stan, that is) working as a cabman with a horse-drawn coach. Basil and his mother are reunited with the baron, and then Basil is set up to marry a wealthy woman, Miss Flavia de Lorgnette. (This is where Mae comes in.) Flavia is first seen at a tea party at the baron's home, wearing a flowered hat and looking rich and bored. She also seems distinctly unimpressed with Basil, especially when he entertains the guests by singing "Mother, Hold My Aching Head." As usual in silent comedy, bad singing is indicated by sour reactions from the listeners and sight gags such as paintings falling from the wall. Somehow, Flavia agrees to wed Basil anyway and the movie concludes with their wedding ceremony.
In reality, Stan and Mae never married because they weren't able to do so legally, so the finale of Mother's Joy is one of those scenes that make you wonder what was going through the actors' minds when they were filming it. The sequence is played for laughs, of course: first Basil rushes away from the altar because it's time to feed his horse, then when he gets back Flavia says she's changed her mind, she won't marry him because she's taken a dislike to him. Basil, in turn, replies that he won't marry Flavia because he's taken a dislike to HER. Finally, the disgusted minister says he won't perform the ceremony because he's taken a dislike to BOTH of them! Fade-out, and Finis.
The behind-the-scenes story of Stan and Mae's relationship is probably the main reason to see this film, though it does provide a chuckle here and there. I also enjoyed a beautifully filmed sequence in downtown Culver City, when Stan the cabman stops his coach in the middle of an intersection and sets a table, complete with tablecloth, in order to feed a nicely prepared lunch to his horse. Fans of Roach Studio comedies will recognize the intersection, and if you watch the edge of the frame you can see amused spectators enjoying the spectacle. Most likely the citizens of Culver City eventually got accustomed to this sort of thing.
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