Air Raid Wardens is a Laurel & Hardy sound feature film released 30 April 1943.
Summary[]
Not long after the Pearl Harbor attack, Stan and Ollie try various business ventures. Their store opens and closes in different guises but without success. They finally open it as a bicycle store, but it goes bankrupt and they close it down to enlist in the Army. They fail in every attempt in the military and return to their home town Huxton only to find out that their store now is open, with a man named Eustace Middling in charge, selling radios instead of bicycles. But Middling offers them to share the space in a joint venture. Stan and Ollie don't realize that Middling in fact is a German spy, using the shop as a front to cover a base for espionage on the US military.
The boys also join the civil defense by becoming air raid wardens in Huxton. To complete their training, they have to take part in an advanced military drill, and Stan receives a complicated assignment. They set out on their mission to rescue a very prominent banker, J.P. Norton, from a fire. They fail, burying the banker alive in a huge load of sand. Still, they are given one more chance to prove their aptitude as air raid wardens, tasked with ensuring that all the town citizens turn off their lights at night. They get into a quarrel with one of the more troublesome inhabitants, Joe Bledsoe, resulting in a commotion and a rumor that spy activity is taking place in Joe's home. The boys are knocked out, and in the end they are finally dismissed from the corps altogether.
When they return to their shop, they happen to overhear the spies speaking German, and follow them to a hide-out outside of town. They find out that Middling's real name is Mittelhause, and overhear him talking about blowing the town's magnesium plant to pieces with another spy, Rittenhause. They try to send a message to the civil defense, but instead they are captured by the German spies. Stan accidentally knocks out one of the spies and the boys flee and alert the civil defense, who arrive at the plant just in time to stop the sabotage. Stan and Ollie also expose Middling as a German spy.
Cast[]
- Stan Laurel as Stan
- Oliver Hardy as Ollie
- Edgar Kennedy as Joe Bledsoe
- Jacqueline White as Peggy Parker
- Horace McNally as Dan Madison
- Nella Walker as Millicent Norton
- Donald Meek as Eustace Middling
- Henry O'Neill as Rittenhause
- Howard Freeman as J.P. Norton
- Paul Stanton as Capt. Biddle
- Robert Emmett O'Connor as Charlie Beaugart
- William Tannen as Joseph
- Russell Hicks as Maj. Scanlon
- Philip Van Zandt as Herman
- Frederic Worlock as Otto
- Charles Coleman as Norton's Butler
- Don Costello as Heydrich