Hats Off (Missing 1927 Silent Laurel and Hardy Film)

Hats Off is a silent two-reel short film starring American comedy double act Laurel and Hardy, the tenth in order of production. While other Laurel & Hardy thought lost movies such as Duck Soup and Why Girls Love Sailors were re-discovered in the past decades, Hats Off is the only one who is enterely missing today.

The movie involved Stan and Ollie as salesmen attempting to sell a washing machine; they fail constantly after several near misses. One would-be sale has them carrying the machine up a large flight of steps, merely to find out that a young lady wants them to post a letter for her. The boys later get into an argument knocking off each other's hats, which eventually involves scores of others. A police van eventually carts all those involved away except Stan and Ollie, who afterwards try and find their own headgear amongst the hundreds of others lying on the street.

The movie  was remade by Laurel and Hardy as a talike called The Music Box, utilizing the same flight of steps in the Silver Lake district of Los Angeles. While a washing machine was delivered in Hats Off, a piano would be delivered in The Music Box. It was  also remade by the same director (Hal Yates), in 1945 as It's Your Move, starring Edgar Kennedy, but utilizing a different staircase although located in the same vicinity

Hats Off was an enormous success when first released which made considerable headway in establishing the Laurel and Hardy team with the public. After being last publicly shown in Germany in 1930, Hats Off vanished without a trace, although t here have been several unconfirmed rumors of sightnings of the movie in the 50s . Laurel and Hardy historian Randy Skretvedt dubbed Hats Off "The Holy Grail of Laurel and Hardy movies".

Lake, an early TV film distributor, listed Hats Off as available for TV bookings, but since there were many other silent movies that nowadays are considered lost, rather than cataloging the movies in his possession, he copied titles from old releases charts under the assumption that the prints were available.

The original script, several frames and posters of the film survive, but as for 2014, there is no video sequence available to the public.