Swiss Miss Information

Swiss Miss, is a 1938 comedy film directed by John G. Blystone, produced by Hal Roach and starring Laurel and Hardy. It also features Walter Woolf King, Della Lind and Eric Blore in support.

Plot

Stan and Ollie are mousetrap salesmen hoping for better business in Switzerland, with Stan's theory that because there is more cheese in Switzerland, there should be more mice. While visiting one village, a cheese shop owner cons them out of their wares with a bogus banknote, and they are forced to work as dishwashers in a nearby hotel after ordering a slap-up meal they are unable to pay for. A Viennese composer present at the hotel is disrupted by the presence of his wife - an opera singer who upstages him constantly; Ollie subsequently falls in love with her. After various adventures (including a confrontation with a gorilla on a perilously-perched rope bridge), the boys overpower the hotel's burly chef and leave the hotel and village, but only to discover the opera singer is indeed married to the composer and then be confronted by the vengeful gorilla (in crutches) before they depart.

Cast

• Stan Laurel as Stan
• Oliver Hardy as Ollie
• Walter Woolf King as Victor Albert
• Della Lind as Anna Albert
• Eric Blore as Edward
• Adia Kuznetzoff as Chef
• Charles Judels as the Cheese Shop Owner
• Ludovico Tomarchio as Luigi
• Franz Hug as a Flag Thrower
• Jean de Briac as Enrico
• George Sorel as Joseph
• Charles Gemora as a Gorilla

Production

Producer Hal Roach is said to have indulged in artistic interference during the film's editing, much to Stan Laurel's exasperation. Always a large creative force behind the camera, Laurel objected to Roach's removing scenes, including the addition of a bomb in the composer's piano, where the tapping of a particular key would set it off. A drunken Stan is seen touching the piano keys during the piano delivery sequence involving the gorilla; Laurel initially thought the inclusion of the bomb would give the scene more power. A musical number in the cheese shop was also removed; only a few lyrics remain in the film. (The bomb in the piano gag would later be used in a Bugs Bunny/Yosemite Sam cartoon Ballot Box Bunny.)

Charles Gemora, who plays the gorilla, had six years earlier appeared in the title role of a Laurel and Hardy theatrical short called The Chimp.