Mae Busch

Oliver Hardy's authority looks provisional as soon as Mae Busch sets herself against it in Sons of the Desert (1933). As Mrs Lottie Hardy, she makes impatience funny without requiring us to take her husband's side. We laughed at his discomfort, but it was her refusal to be impressed that pleased us most. She gives the familiar business of a husband facing his wife's objections a contest worth watching.

Before the domestic comedies came substantial silent-film work with Erich von Stroheim, including Foolish Wives (1922), in which she played Princess Vera Petchnikoff. The Unholy Three (1925), directed by Tod Browning, cast her as Rosie O'Grady alongside Lon Chaney. The seductive or morally ambiguous women of that period were a different sort of restriction from the angry wives that followed. Her first Mrs Hardy came in the sound short Unaccustomed as We Are (1929). In all, she appeared in thirteen Laurel and Hardy comedies.

The comic timing matters because Busch has to keep up the pressure without making Ollie's wounded dignity uninteresting. In Sons of the Desert, her forcefulness gives him something substantial to be uncomfortable about; she is doing useful work for both of them. Yet the film's affection is directed chiefly towards its foolish husbands, and that leaves the women with fewer opportunities. Dorothy Christy's Mrs Betty Laurel is similarly given little to do beyond objecting to the men's pleasures. We would have liked both wives to have more to enjoy for themselves.

Being repeatedly cast as a volatile wife made that restriction harder to escape. The sharp dialogue and crockery-throwing gave Busch opportunities for both verbal and physical comedy, but also helped fix the familiar type. Her final Laurel and Hardy film was The Bohemian Girl (1936); later work often meant small or uncredited parts. Start with Sons of the Desert, and watch Busch rather than merely waiting for Ollie's response.