When Harry Langdon made this film he was down on his luck and struggling to regain his footing. His second divorce left him all but penniless, his career as a star of feature films appeared to be over, he'd been fired by Hal Roach and now found himself cranking out short comedies for Poverty Row studio Educational Pictures. On top of all that, he was still straining to adapt his unique style, so suitable for silent cinema, to the very different demands of film-making with sound. As it happens, some of the talkie shorts Langdon made for Educational are surprisingly enjoyable, while others are awkward retreads of his silent material. But there was reason to expect that The Stage Hand might be something special: Harry co-authored the script and directed this short, his first directorial job since his ill-fated hitch at First National five years earlier. Under similar circumstances at the same studio in the mid-1930s Buster Keaton pulled himself together and produced Grand Slam Opera, his best film of the period; could Harry manage the same feat?Sadly, it's difficult to judge the quality of Langdon's work based on what survives of The Stage Hand. I've seen two prints of this film and both seem to be missing a middle section that's crucial to the plot. The surviving footage runs about as long as a typical two-reeler, so it's unclear whether this film originally had a longer running time or if Harry's bosses at Educational compelled him to trim it prior to release. It's also possib