On November 18, 1932, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy’s The Music Box won the first-ever Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film. In the movie, the two play a pair of movers tasked with delivering a piano to a house atop a long flight of steps. In the process, they encounter several problems and end up sending the piano sliding back down the stairs multiple times. The biggest problem, however, turns out to be the recipient of the piano, who, upon discovering the duo in his house, proclaims that he actually hates pianos and proceeds to destroy the instrument they spent so much time trying to get to him.
The 30-minute short remains one of Laurel and Hardy’s most popular and was added to the National Film Registry in 1997. One fan of particular note was Pink Panther and Breakfast at Tiffany’s director Blake Edwards, who actually planned on doing a remake of the team’s lone Oscar-winner at one point in the early ‘80s. While working on The Man Who Loved Women with Burt Reynolds in 1983, Edwards realized that Reynolds was versatile enough to play Oliver Hardy in a modern adaptation of the film. Reynolds agreed, and before long, the project was announced to the public.
For the Stan Laurel part, Edwards was hoping to enlist Richard Pryor. The stand-up legend happily said yes to the proposal, presumably because he was also a fan of the famous comedy team. With the two leads firmly in place, all Edwards needed was a script, which he didn’t think would be much of an issue considering that the premise didn’t call for a huge amount of dialogue. Production was scheduled to begin in February 1984, and for a brief period there, it seemed like be the trio’s take on The Music Box would appear on the big screen sooner rather than later.
How things managed to fall apart from there isn’t exactly clear, but the movie did eventually get made…in a way. It didn’t involve Reynolds or Pryor or follow the storyline it was originally expected to. Instead, what landed in theaters in 1986 was A Fine Mess—the title being a play on Oliver Hardy’s famous catchphrase, “Here’s another nice mess you’ve gotten me into.” The box-office flop starred Ted Danson and Howie Mandel as two friends who find themselves on the run from the mob after one of them overhears a plan to fix a horse race. To make matters even more disappointing, it only briefly involved a piano, which wasn’t even used for comedic effect.
The experience reportedly left Edwards outraged, and he blamed poor test screenings and studio interference for the film’s ultimate outcome. Suffice to say, A Fine Mess didn’t take home the Academy Award in any category, nor was it nominated for one.
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