Great Guns

Great Guns marked Laurel and Hardy's return to the screen following their departure from Hal Roach Studios. Now working for 20th Century-Fox, the team encountered challenges with unsuitable scripts and limited creative autonomy, contrasting sharply with the freedom they enjoyed at their former studio. The team's biographer John McCabe wrote: "On the set [of Great Guns] they were given their marching orders. It was: do it the studio way or not at all. Any attempt to do things the old way, the Laurel and Hardy way, was not only resisted but put down."^[2] More specifically, Stan Laurel had been accustomed to contributing creatively both on- and off-screen at Roach, but at Fox he was employed only as an actor, and was not allowed to contribute to the writing, directing, or editing.

Despite the limited artistic success, Great Guns was an unqualified boxoffice success, earning $1,089,000 during its theatrical run. The film had cost $280,000 to produce. Producer Sol M. Wurtzel had enough confidence in Great Guns to sign Laurel and Hardy for additional features before the first one was released, and the handsome financial returns justified Wurtzel's judgment.^[3]

Alan Ladd appears briefly as a photo-store customer.

Wikiquote has quotations related to Great Guns.

• Great Guns at IMDb
• Great Guns at the TCM Movie Database (archived version)
• Great Guns at the AFI Catalog of Feature Films
• Great Guns at Rotten Tomatoes