We Faw Down - Production and Exhibition

Production and Exhibition

This is the first Laurel and Hardy film with Leo McCarey in the director's chair after more than a year guiding the team's characters' development as "Supervisor." He would go on to direct their best silents, and eventually to win Best Director Oscars for the feature films The Awful Truth (1937) and Going My Way (1944).

A contemporary account says that the basic story was contributed, unusually, by Oliver Hardy, who had heard similar gossip from his laundress. Critic/historian William K. Everson makes a different contention, tracing the story back to the Mack Sennett comedy Ambrose's First Falsehood.

Interior shooting took place at the Hal Roach studio; exteriors were shot both on the Roach back lot and on several locations in Culver City.

The original Victor sound discs for We Faw Down were thought lost until the 1990s, when a set was discovered. Certain European DVD editions feature this original synchronized score, but American DVDs (Region 1) still have music cannibalized from other Laurel and Hardy Victor soundtracks.

This short is better known for what got cut out of it than for what remained in it. As originally scripted and shot, the team flee the girls' apartment having pulled on each other's pants, then dart from spot to spot in town trying to find a private place to rectify the situation. An irate husband, a suspicious cop — even a belligerent king crab — all conspire to thwart the swapping of the pants. Thoough excised from We Faw Down, the footage would be used for their next film Liberty.

Ten years later, Stan Laurel would dust off his final shot concept from We Faw Down to end the feature film Block-Heads (1938).