AllMovie

Many years before Oliver Hardy teamed up with Stan Laurel, he was half of another comic duo. During his tenure at Vim in the mid-1910s, he became Plump to Billy Ruge's Runt. This one-reel comedy starring yet another comedy duo, Walter Stull and Bobby Burns as Pokes and Jabbs, marks the first appearance of the characters Plump and Runt, although Hardy and Ruge had both been working at the studio for several months. When the whole staff at the Eagle Hotel walk out, the desk clerk, in need of help, hires a couple of street cleaners -- Plump and Runt -- as porter and bellboy. Meanwhile, Jabbs (Burns) checks out and goes to the train station with his wife and mother-in-law. When the women come back to the hotel, they are acosted by a man who comes onto them. The ladies ask Plump and Runt to keep an eye out for them, and the men mistake Jabbs -- who has missed his train and returned to the hotel -- as the masher.