The Bohemian Girl is a 1936 musical comedy film directed by James W. Horne, starring Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy.
It was based on the operetta of the same name by Michael William Balfe. Stan and Ollie are traveling Romani, aka "gypsies", somewhere in Europe—probably Bohemia! Ollie's shrewish wife is having an affair with Devilshoof, another gypsy. When Devilshoof is captured and flogged by Count Arnheim, the local nobleman who hates gypsies, Ollie's wife kidnaps the count's little daughter Arline in revenge. Mrs. Hardy soon runs away with her lover, leaving Stan and Ollie to raise little Arline. Years go by, and Arline grows to adulthood, having long forgotten her original family. One day, the gypsy caravan stops again on Count Arnheim's lands.
Child actress Darla Hood of The Little Rascals fame appears as young Arline. Thelma Todd makes her last film appearance, in a film released two months after her mysterious death in December 1935. Most of Todd's role was cut from the movie after she died but she can be seen singing song "Heart of a Gypsy" in the opening scene. (Her voice was dubbed.)
This film provides examples of:
- Alcohol Hic: Stan gets drunk while trying to siphon Ollie's wine into bottles. This proves inconvenient when they are trying to sneak through the Count's palace and Stan keeps hiccuping.
- Beautiful Singing Voice: Ollie hears a woman's lovely singing voice outside his trailer, and perks up with interest—and is shocked to find that it's Stan. Later in that scene Stan demonstrates that he's got the greatest vocal range in history, as he can also do a deep bass.
- Bittersweet Ending: The duo reunites Arline with her birth father and are spared. After the torture chamber, Stan and Ollie are now seen as a dwarf and a giant respectively.
- Body Horror: Stan is crushed in a sort of press and Ollie is stretched on the rack. The final shot reveals that Stan has been turned into a dwarf while Ollie's about nine feet tall.
- Comically Cross-Eyed: The bartender at the inn is comically cross-eyed. When he sets two tankards down on the bar his forearms are crossed, and then he misses the tankard when he attempts to pour wine.
- Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: While drunk, Stan manages to hold off the guards with a whip.
- Eye Poke: Ollie's clumsy attempt to tell a man's fortune by touching his eyeball (Stan did this as a means of picking the mark's pocket) turns into this. The man returns the favor by kicking Ollie in the shin. Later Stan pokes Jimmy Finlayson's palace guard in the eye that he always squints out of, leaving the guard to yelp "D'OH! My good eye!"
- Jerkass: Ollie's wife in this film has to be the worst.
- Karma Houdini: Mrs. Hardy cheats on her husband, kidnaps a child, steals Stan and Ollie's money, and disappears from the movie with her lover.
- Mathematician's Answer: A non-verbal example. Stan is eating a banana, and Ollie demands "Give me a part of that banana." Stan gives him the peel.
- The Musical: Stan and Ollie don't sing but other characters have a habit of breaking out into song at the drop of a hat.
- Refuge in Audacity: Stan and Ollie gain entrance to the palace by simply strolling through the gate behind the guards. It helps that Stan, who was leading the way, was drunk.
- Roguish Romani: Stan and Ollie are pickpockets. Ollie's wife commits a more serious crime when she kidnaps a child.
- A Taste of the Lash: Devilshoof is caught and flogged, on the count's orders. This is what motivates Devilshoof's lover, Mrs. Hardy, to kidnap the Count's daughter.
- Torture Cellar: Near the end when they try to rescue Arline, the soldiers grab Stan and Ollie and send them to the Torture Chamber where Ollie becomes stretched and tall as a giant while Stan gets flattened into a dwarf.
- Time Skip: Tewelve years pass before the gypsy caravan again visits Count Arnheim's estate.
