Laurel & Hardy: The Music Box

In remaking the notoriously lost film Hats Off, the boys deliver a crated player piano to the home atop a steep hill. This film won the Academy Award® as “Best Short Subject, ” the first short ever to be so honored. Critics then and now have exhausted all superlatives in celebrating The Music Box. Laurel himself conferred his personal endorsement as the best picture the partnership produced. The Library of Congress enshrined the short on its National Film Registry deeming it to be “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant. ” The most famous, most askedabout shooting location in all Hal Roach comedies is the terraced staircase shown here. Official city street signs and an etched black marble plaque mark the site today in the Silver Lake district of Los Angeles. Directed by James Parrott. With Billy Gilbert and Charlie Hall.