Night Owls (1930 film)

Night Owls is a 1930 American Pre-Code Laurel and Hardy short film. It was filmed in October and November 1929, and released January 4, 1930.

Police officer Edgar Kennedy finds himself under pressure from his police chief to address a surge in burglaries within his jurisdiction or face dismissal from his position for lack of effort and attentiveness. Seeking a solution to appease his superior, Kennedy encounters vagrants Laurel and Hardy and devises a scheme to stage a burglary at the chief's residence in a bid to curry favor and appear to be effective and vigilant at protecting his community.

Initially hesitant due to the perceived risk, Laurel and Hardy are coerced into the plan by Kennedy's threats of severe punishment for their vagrancy. Assured by Kennedy that he will ensure their release upon apprehension, the duo reluctantly agrees to participate. However, their endeavor is beset by numerous obstacles and complications as they clumsily carry out the burglary.

Ultimately, as the plot unfolds, the chief discovers Kennedy alone and in inadvertent possession of the stolen items within his own home, causing the chief to falsely accuse Kennedy of committing all of the previous burglaries himself, and thus leading to the unraveling of his entire deceitful scheme. Despite encountering various challenges along the way, Laurel and Hardy manage to evade capture, escaping the predicament unscathed. The implications are that (1) despite actually having had nothing to do with the other burglaries, Kennedy still got what he deserved, since he actually HAD been both perpetrating a burglary on his own and selfishly victimizing Stan and Ollie, and (2) it was actually very fortunate that The Boys were never connected with the burglary, since in all likelihood, the deceitful Kennedy would not actually have kept his promise to "take care of it" on their behalf with the courts, but instead had secretly planned to just "throw The Duo to the wolves" --- i.e., let them take the entire blame for both that present burglary and all of the previous ones, which of course would have resulted in a far more hefty penalty than they'd have ever suffered from merely a vagrancy-conviction.

• Stan Laurel as Stan Laurel
• Oliver Hardy as Oliver "Ollie" Hardy
• Edgar Kennedy as Officer Kennedy
• James Finlayson as Butler Meadows
• Anders Randolf as the Police Captain

This was the first film to use their celebrated theme tune, "The 'Ku-Ku' Song", written by Marvin Hatley. The Film Classics reissue print features the instrumental version of Marvin Hatley's "Honolulu Baby" from the Sons of the Desert soundtrack in place of "The 'Ku-Ku' Song."

The film was also released in an alternate Spanish version,^[1] Ladrones,^{[2] [3] [4]} expanded to nearly four reels in length instead of the English two reels. The film was also released in an Italian version,^[1] Ladroni, and in an Esperanto version Ŝtelistoj, which are both now lost. The foreign versions retained not only the headliners, but Edgar Kennedy and James Finlayson as well. The English and Spanish versions are available on DVD.

• Night Owls at IMDb
• Night Owls at the TCM Movie Database
• Night Owls at Rotten Tomatoes

• 1930 films
• 1930 comedy films
• 1930 short films
• 1930s American films
• 1930s English-language films
• American black-and-white films
• American comedy short films
• English-language comedy short films
• Films directed by James Parrott
• Films scored by Marvin Hatley
• Films with screenplays by H. M. Walker
• Laurel and Hardy (film series)
• Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer short films

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• Short description is different from Wikidata
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• Rotten Tomatoes ID same as Wikidata
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