The Dancing Masters

The Dancing Masters is a 1943 black and white American comedy film directed by Malcolm St. Clair, produced by 20th Century-Fox, and featuring Laurel and Hardy. A young Robert Mitchum has a small, uncredited role as a gangster posing as an insurance salesman. Plot Dancing instructors Laurel and Hardy accept a phoney insurance deal from two gangsters posing as insurance salesman. At the same time, Grant Lawrence, a young inventor is working on creating a new invisible ray machine that will revolutionize jungle warfare for World War II. Trudy Harlan, Grant's girlfriend and one of Stan's dancing pupils, invites Grant and the boys to her house for tea when her parents are away. Trudy's father Wentworth Harlan almost discovers Stan and Ollie when he returns home but finds Grant and angrily confronts him. Grant is ordered to leave and never talk to Trudy again, while the boys narrowly escape being found by Trudy's parents once again. The next morning, Stan and Ollie are confronted by their angry landlord Mr. Featherstone to pay the rent on their dancing school by twelve noon that day or else face eviction. When Ollie declares that he has not got the money to the pay the rent, Stan suggests paying the rent with Ollie's nest-egg money. Although he initially refuses, Ollie eventually gives in and reluctantly decides to draw the money out of the bank. On their way to pay the rent, however, the boys become sidetracked by an auction that they are passing. In a situation reminiscent of Thicker Than Water, the boys keep bidding against each other for an antique grandfather clock, which they were merely initially wanting to purchase for a lady who had left her money at home. While crossing the street with the clock, Stan trips and his hat falls off. The boys lay the clock down in the middle of the street while Stan retrieves his hat, but the clock is destroyed by a passing truck. Back home, Stan and Ollie decide to help Grant promote his invisible ray gun, by means of Stan posing as the inventor, an eccentric foreign scientist, and with Grant later revealing himself as the real inventor. Although the demonstration is a success at first, Stan forgets to turn the machine off after firing it and it explodes. Grant is dismayed at the destruction of his invention, but the demonstration has earned him the approval and respect of Mr. Harlan.