In this outing, Stan and Ollie play musicians who are boarding a train for a ride to their next onstage engagement in Pottsville; as Ollie proudly crows to a ticket-taker, "We're a big-time vaudeville act!" "Boarding" the train is easier said than done, however, as the boys nearly miss it and scatter dozens of sheets of music to the winds. Fortunately, Stan manages to keep ahold of his giant bass fiddle. On board the train, Stan and Ollie struggle to get into an upper sleeping berth and (bass fiddle in tow) change into their pajamas. Ollie snaps to Stan, "I wish I'd checked you with the baggage!"
In 1967, William K. Everson (in The Films of Laurel and Hardy) called Berth Marks "one of the few really poor comedies that the team made...a misfire all down the line." He blamed the decision to shoot the film both silent and sound, saying that the short "...is essentially visual pantomime, for more than half of the film consists of them trying to undress, get comfortable and go to sleep in a cramped upper berth on the train, and such a precise and limited comedy situation requires the expert timing which they just could not give it when the film was being shot for both sound and silent release. Wholly silent or wholly sound, it might have worked; the compromise between the two was merely tiresome." Everson does admire the opening scene, however--a scene that was entirely dependent on sound. Here, the boys try to make out the train conductor's rapid-fire callout of obscure town names. Everson writes, "there is some genuine wit in this episode, with dialogue used sparingly but to good effect. Unfortunately, it is quite nullified by the dull two reels that follow."
The sleeping-berth sequence from Berth Marks was reworked by the boys fifteen years later for their 20th Century-Fox feature The Big Noise (1944). Since that film is generally regarded as one of their weakest features, the bit fared little better than it did in 1929.
Producer: Hal Roach
Director: Lewis R. Foster
Story: Leo McCarey (uncredited)
Cinematography: Len Powers
Film Editing: Richard Currier
Titles: H. M. Walker
Cast: Stan Laurel (Stan), Oliver Hardy (Ollie), Pat Harmon (Stationmaster), S.D. Wilcox (Conductor), Eleanor Fredricks (lady in berth), Charlie Hall (train passenger).
BW-19m.
by John M. Miller
