Laurel and Hardy - The Music Box

932-935 Vendome Street, Los Angeles

One of my favorite Laurel & Hardy comedy shorts is The Music Box, in which the boys are hired to deliver a piano to a house located at the top of a long flight of stairs. The boys struggle to push the piano up the stairs, becoming trampled by the piano in the process. Not until they reach the top do they realize there was a driveway that lead to the top! The film won an Academy Award for best short comedy subject at the 1931-1932 awards.

932-935 Vendome Street "Music Box" Stairs

The stairs that were used in The Music Box are still standing, located between 932-935 Vendome Street, just south of Sunset Boulevard in the Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles. Above is a picture of how the stairs look today. Not only were the stairs used in The Music Box but they are featured in an earlier Laurel & Hardy film from 1927, Hats Off. In this film the boys were delivering vacuum cleaners.

Plaque located at base of The Music Box stairs.

At the base of the stairs you will find a plaque ackowledging the significance of these steps. The Los Angeles Cultural Heritage Board has made this location a cultural landmark. Not only is their plague but there is now also a street sign for this particular location.

Here is a wonderful video that shows The Music Box stairs as they appear today and also, if you watch through to the end, you will see clips from the short itself. The video does a good job of showing the steps from different angles and comparing to footage from the film.