As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film

Stan Laurel (himself), Oliver Hardy (himself), Charley Chase (himself), Mae Busch (Mrs Lottie Chase Hardy), Dorothy Christy (Mrs Betty Laurel), Lucien Littlefield (Dr Horace Meddick, veterinary), John Elliott (Exalted Exhausted Ruler), Charley Young, John Merton, William Gillespie, Charles McAvoy, Robert Burns, Al Thompson, Eddie Baker, Jimmy Aubrey, Chet Brandenberg, Don Brodie (Sons of the Desert coterie), Philo McCullough (Assistant Exhausted Ruler), Charita (lead hula dancer), Harry Bernard (bartender/police officer), Sam Lufkin, Ernie Alexander, Charlie Hall (waiters), Baldwin Cooke (man who introduces steamship official/extra at the Sons convention), Max Wagner, Stanley Blystone (brawny speakeasy managers), Pat Harmon (doorman), Ty Parvis (singer at Sons convention), Blade Stanhope Conway (also known as Bob Cummings) (crowd extra during steamship radiogram scene), The Hollywood American Legion Post (Sons Oasis "13" crowd dress extras), The Santa Monica Lodge of Elks (people parading in the newsreel footage), Billy Gilbert (voice-over as Mr. Ruttledge).Director: WILLIAM A. SEITER. Story: Frank Craven. Story continuity: Byron Morgan. Additional dialogue: Frank Terry. Gag-men: Stan Laurel, Charley Chase, Glenn Tryon. Photography: Kenneth Peach. Film editor: Bert Jordan. Associate director: Lloyd French. Titles editor: Nat Hoffberg. Dance director: Dave Bennett. Song, "Honolulu Baby" (Parvis, Charita), by Marvin Hatley. Song, "Sons of the Desert" (chorus) by Frank Terry (lyrics), Marvin Hatley, William Axt, George M. Cohan, O'Donnell-Heath, Marquardt, and Le Roy Shield (music). Sound recording: Harry Baker. Producer: Hal Roach. A Hal Roach Production.Copyright 27 December 1933 by Metro Goldwyn Mayer Corp. New York opening at the Rialto: 11 January 1934. U.S. release: 29 December 1933. U.K. release: 12 May 1934. 7 reels. 68 minutes. (Available on a Hallmark DVD. I've not seen this, but I can vouch for the excellent VHS tape).U.K. release title: FRATERNALLY YOURS.Alternate titles: SONS OF THE LEGION, CONVENTION CITY.SYNOPSIS: Stan and Ollie are sworn to attend a fraternal convention, but the wives have other ideas. Pretending sickness, Oliver has a doctor order him on a long sea voyage, with Stan in attendance. The ruse works, and they are off to the convention. The very day that they return, however, word is received that "their" ship has been wrecked. Grief=stricken, and to pass the time while waiting for news, the wives go to a movie — where they see a newsreel in which their husbands...NOTES: One of the ten top-grossing movie releases at the domestic box-office in 1934. The movie did far less business in Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand where the Depression was starting to bite and movies like "Sons of the Desert" were not regarded as fit for adult entertainment anyway, but were formatted strictly for kids. It was not until Abbott and Costello arrived on the scene in the 1940s, that Laurel and Hardy enjoyed a mite of reflected glory! COMMENT: Many critics regard this entry as the best of the team's sound features, and I'm tempted to agree. For once, L&H had a reasonably classy director, and just look at that cast!

As good or as faulty as one's memory might be after fifty or sixty years, I'd say that this Laurel and Hardy flick is the one that managed to permeate my brain the best with a whole host of memorable catch phrases like the one in my summary line. Others include that business about two peas in a pod-duh (emphasis on the 'd'), and Ollie's ubiquitous exclamation about 'another fine mess you've gotten me into'. Oh yeah, and can't forget the one about 'every man should be king in his own castle'. It's no wonder Stan and Ollie have remained so popular over the years, I just love these guys.For me, the puzzler in this story is why the boys would go with the Hawaiian cruise gambit to put one over on their wives. Seems to me the girls should have jumped at the chance to go along and then we'd have had an entirely different picture. But since they went with it, I got a kick out of hearing that 'Honolulu Baby' song from nightclub crooner Ty Purvis. I'm pretty sure that song was parodied in one of those old Warner Brothers cartoons so I'll have to stay attentive to catch it some time. And this wouldn't have been the first time I noticed how well Stan fractures the English language with statements like "I think he's suffering from a nervous shakedown". Seems to me Leo Gorcey must have been well inspired by the malapropisms his predecessor came up with. But to my mind, the biggest baffler with the boys in this or any other picture, is how they managed to have such good looking wives. Mae Busch as Lottie Hardy and Dorothy Christy as Betty Laurel - go figure! One last thing, with Charley Chase as the obnoxious convention attendee, he kept using this word 'darb' so much that I had to look it up. Turns out it's an out of use expression that back in the day meant that a person or thing was excellent. So coming full circle on that, I'd have to recommend this film for all of you who haven't seen it yet, because after all is said and done, it's quite darb.

Arguably the funniest of Laurel and Hardy's feature-length movies, Sons of the Desert is simply crammed with gags, most of which are as funny as anything you're likely to see from 30s Hollywood. Much has been written about why the advent of sound spelled the beginning of the end for such giants of the silent comedy as Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd – and, to an extent, Charles Chaplin, who didn't make a sound film until 1941 and whose output came to a near standstill once sound was established. There seemed to be no place for the physical comedy of the greats, and they seemed incapable of using words to win laughs. The likes of the Marx Brothers and Eddie Cantor were an entirely different breed of comedian from those who had reigned just a few years before their rise, and the plot was suddenly more important than the physical antics on-screen.And yet, there were Laurel & Hardy, already a successful double act in silent days, effortlessly and seamlessly gliding into the world of sound with perfect voices for their characters and builds. They possessed none of the physical brilliance of Keaton or the graceful dexterity of Chaplin or Lloyd but they had something indefinable that left them unscathed while all about them were falling by the wayside.Perhaps the key to their success was the fact that they combined both verbal and physical dexterity. Stan can get laughs both times that he mistakenly calls the Sons of the Desert's Exalted Leader their 'exhausted' leader while big Ollie can make tripping over a case look like child's play (have a try at it sometime and see how convincing you feel you were…). Laurel & Hardy also play characters who aren't too bright, which somehow made them more lovable than Chaplin's tramp and Lloyd's go-getting spectacles character. Sons of the Desert plays on the fact that Stan and Ollie aren't as smart as they try to be – and are definitely no match for their formidable wives. They hatch a plan to enable them to attend the Sons of the Desert convention in Chicago by pretending to go to Honolulu for Ollie's health while their wives go hunting bear in the mountains. With typical bad luck, the liner they would have caught home from Honolulu sinks in a storm and the boys have to hide in their own attic so that the wives don't catch on. Of course, even this simple ruse goes wrong and they find themselves falling into both a barrel full of water and the waiting arms of the law… The laughs come thick and fast in Sons of the Desert, interrupted only by Honolulu Baby, a musical number featuring the rare sight of a belly dancer with no belly button.

As members of the mason mens club The Sons Of The Desert, Stan & Ollie are desperate to go away to one of the clubs conventions in Chicago. This idea is given the no no from the boys' wives {Mae Busch & Dorothy Christy}, so Ollie fakes ill health and the boys wangle a supposed sea voyage to aid his recovery. Of course they head to Chicago for their boys own fun, unbeknown to them that the ship they had told their wives they were travelling on has sunk at sea!I think this stands the test of time as one of the best Laurel & Hardy pictures because it's one of the most professional that they made. Laurel wasn't wholly satisfied with a couple of preceding features that they did, he felt it was becoming slapstick for slapstick's sake, so in came a new writing team to work with him to give us a tighter character driven laugh fest. The films main triumph is the integration and impact of the wives, they add greatly to the comedy with sparky dialogue and visual madness. So many great moments that I don't wish to point any single one out, you just need to see it and enjoy. The songs are fun, the narrative is as tidy as they would do, and the underlying honesty is the best policy message is one we all should heed. 9/10.