The 1934 version of Victor Herbert’s popular 1903 operetta begins with Mother Goose singing "Toyland" and introducing the various nursery rhyme characters that will populate the film, including Little Bo Peep, Tom Tom the Piper's Son, The Three Little Pigs, The Old Lady Who Lived in a Shoe, and others. The sinister Silas Barnaby threatens the Old Lady with eviction for herself and her many children because she's behind on mortgage payments. Two boarders in the shoe, Stannee Dum (Stan Laurel) and Ollie Dee (Oliver Hardy) assume they can get the money from their boss at the toy factory, but they made a rather big mistake in completing an order for Santa Claus; instead of making 600 1-foot-high wooden soldiers, they made 100 6-foot-high soldiers. One of the soldiers goes out of control and destroys the toy shop leading to Dum and Dee getting fired. Barnaby then says that if the lovely young Bo Peep (who keeps losing her sheep) agrees to marry him, he will tear up the mortgage. But she's in love with Tom. Dum and Dee try to help and finally, after Bo Peep agrees to marry Barnaby, Dum dresses up as her in a heavy bridal veil and takes her place at the ceremony. The furious Barnaby exiles Tom to Bogeyland, home of apelike ogres, and at the climax, the Bogeymen invade the town, to be driven back by Dum and Dee and the lifesize wooden soldiers. Bo Peep and Tom can marry and the Old Lady can stay in the shoe.
This is basically a vehicle for Laurel and Hardy whose characters don't appear in the operetta but are based loosely on Gonzorgo and Roderigo, two of Barnaby's henchmen. They are amusing as they carry on like they would in any Laurel and Hardy film—at one point, Hardy uses a version of the "another fine mess" line they were famous for. Charlotte Henry (Alice in the Alice in Wonderland film from 1933) as Bo Peep and opera singer Felix Knight as Tom are fine, though this was Knight's only major film role. The sets are great, with Toyland looking a bit like Munchkinland would look a few years later in The Wizard of Oz. The operetta songs have mostly been stripped away or relegated to background score. Though Santa makes an appearance, Christmas isn't really part of the story, but this (later retitled March of the Wooden Soldiers) became a popular film to be shown by local TV stations around the holidays, partly due to its Toyland setting and partly because, as in the case of It's a Wonderful Life, the film entered the public domain for a time and could aired for free. I watched the colorized version on Freevee and, though I usually pass those up, the colorizing was well done and added to the fantasy element.
In 1961, Walt Disney used this material for his company's first live-action musical. The through line is essentially the same, with Mary Contrary (Annette Funicello) standing in for Bo Peep, Mary being the heroine of the original operetta. Though the Laurel and Hardy characters are gone, the original henchmen, Gonzorgo and Roderigo, are played by Henry Calvin and Gene Sheldon as Laurel and Hardy stand-ins and they do a nice job. Funicello, fresh from her stint on the Mickey Mouse Club, is OK as Mary though she ultimately has little to do besides fret, be threatened, and stand around at the climax doing nothing while poor Tom has to battle Barnaby. Tommy Sands as Tom is wooden and charisma-free, and has a goofy front hair clump that is distracting. Ed Wynn's Toymaker has a much larger role than in the 1934 version; the setting here is identified as Mother Goose Village but the last half moves to Toyland. Tommy Kirk (pictured with Wynn) is quite good as Wynn's well-meaning but goofy assistant Grumio who comes up with a toy making machine that malfunctions, and a shrinking machine that helps save the day. Ray Bolger as Barnaby would seem to be good casting, but he never quite comes off as evil or as comic as the character seems intended to be. Rated on visuals alone, the movie is spectacular, quite colorful with wonderful sets and fun choreography, but at 105 minutes, it drags something fierce, with a couple of the songs (especially "A Castle in Spain") going on way too long. This is one of the first movies I ever saw in a theater (a drive-in, actually) but I remembered very little about it except Ray Bolger who I knew from Oz. Actually, two of my favorite moments from the movie involved Bolger telling his henchmen, "Let us pussyfoot" as they exaggeratedly lifted their arms and legs and walked away. This was an expensive production and apparently lost money, and I imagine kids today would be bored out of their minds, but nostalgic boomers might like one more visit to Toyland. [Disney+]
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