A-Haunting We Will Go

**A-Haunting We Will Go** is a *Laurel & Hardy* sound feature film released 7 August 1942.

## Summary

Stan and Ollie are hobos roaming the Arizona countryside. Arrested for loitering, they spend a night in jail. Released the next day, they are ordered to leave town immediately. They travel as escort to a coffin transporting a corpse to Dayton, Ohio.

Stan and Olilie are happily unaware that the men who have hired them, Frank Lucas and Joe Morgan, are gangsters, working as henchmen for their boss Darby Mason, who is wanted by the law. Mason's real name is Norton, but this name is known to the police. Mason has seen in the newspapers that a search for an heir to a very large fortune has started in Dayton. The heir’s name is Egbert Norton, and Mason plans to sneak unseen into Dayton and pretend to be the heir once he is inside the city limits. Mason has planned to hide at a sanatorium, run by the dubious Doctor Lake, until he can re-surface and collect the inheritance from the attorney, Malcolm Kilgore.

Stan and Ollie are trusted with loading the trunk, with Mason in it, onto the train. They mix up the trunk with a similar one belonging to Dante the magician. Once aboard the train, Stan and Ollie are tricked by two con-men, Phillips and Parker. For their last dollars they buy a fake money-making machine from the con-men. They are so poor they can't even pay for dinner on the train. Dante the Magician picks up their bill for them, and they promise to repay him once they get to Dayton, where the magician is to perform on stage.

Arriving in Dayton, the trunk with Mason in it is sent to the theater where Dante will perform, while the magician's trunk is sent to the sanatorium, where Lake awaits its arrival. Lake opens the trunk and realizes that there has been an accidental switch of trunks. He contacts the attorney, Kilgore, telling him that Norton isn't available for an interview that day.

Stan and Ollie go to the theater and pay back what they owe to Dante. They are so silly and Dante finds them very amusing. He hires them on the spot as assistants and comic relief added to his magic act that very night.

Lake finds out that the trunk with Mason has been sent to the theater, and goes there to collect it. Lake is tailed by henchman Morgan and another guy named Dixie Beeler. They suspect Lake of trying to double-cross them in some way.

Kilgore goes to the sanatorium to talk to Lake about his patient Norton, and finds the magician's trunk, full of handbills. Confused by this, he also goes to the theater to see if he can find out what is going on. He arrives at the theater just as the show begins.

Morgan orders Stan and Ollie to find Mason. They run around the theater in search of the right trunk. As the show begins they discover the trunk involved in the first trick, standing directly in front of the audience, where they can’t reach it without making a commotion. Dante performs his trick, and discovers Lake’s dead body in the trunk when he opens it.

Stan and Ollie are separated from each other in the theater. Ollie starts searching for Stan. A police officer, Lt. Foster, arrests the stage manager Tommy White and Dante on suspicion of murdering Lake. Ollie finds attorney Kilgore knocked out on the floor of the theater. Mason knocked him out when he was suspiciously wandering around the theater. Ollie explains to Kilgore how the three men he works for are looking for the coffin, and that he told them to exit the theater unnoticed. Tommy finds out about the mishap and explains that the exit Ollie showed the three men leads to a trap door into the lion cage in the basement. They realize that the gangsters have fallen into the lion cage. They rush down and find Mason and his men trying to get escape the lions.

Kilgore reveals that he is in fact a federal investigator by the name of Steve Barnes, and that the inheritance was only a sugar trap to flush out Mason from his hiding and catch him. Trapped in the lion cage, Mason confesses to killing Lake and putting him in the trunk. The gangsters are all arrested. Ollie continues his search for Stan. He finally finds him inside what he believes is a giant egg. He then realizes that he has been shrunk by magic.

## Cast

* Stan Laurel as Stanley
* Oliver Hardy as Ollie
* Harry August Jansen as Dante The Magician
* Sheila Ryan as Margo
* John Shelton as Tommy White
* Don Costello as Doc Lake
* Elisha Cook Jr. as Frank Lucas
* Edward Gargan as Police Lt. Foster
* Addison Richards as Attorney Malcolm Kilgore
* George Lynn as Darby Mason
* James Bush as Joe Morgan
* Lou Lubin as Dixie Beeler
* Robert Emmett Keane as Parker
* Richard Lane as Phillips
* Willie Best as Waiter
* Harry Blackstone as Magician
* Wade Boteler as Police Announcer
* Buz Buckley as young admirer
* Barry Downing as young admirer
* Mary Lou Harrington as young admirer
* Terry Moore as young admirer
* Leon Taylor as young admirer
* Roland Carpenter as Dante's stage assistant
* Violet Church as Dante's stage assistant
* Mildred Gaye as Dante's stage assistant
* Les Clark as Dante's stage assistant
* Harry Benjamin Carter as bit role
* Edgar Dearing as officer
* Tom Dugan as motorist
* Ralph Dunn as officer
* Frank Faylen as railroad detective
* Wilbur Mack as railroad passenger
* Mantan Moreland as railroad porter
* Eddy Waller as Wilcox, baggage man
* Bud Geary as electrician
* Paul Kruger as stage hand
* Margaret Roach as showgirl
* Walter Sande as expressman