According to a 1960s interview with Billy Gilbert for the Blackhawk Films catalog, the object Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy had to carry up the stairs was changed from a washing machine (in the earlier silent version, Hats Off) to a piano because a piano, while heavy and massive, is also delicate. Gilbert also said that several dummy pianos were made up for the film, and a number of them were completely destroyed. He used a German accent in the film to avoid confusion with James Finlayson and Edgar Kennedy, who also played comic villains in Laurel and Hardy movies.
The crate that Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy wrestle with was empty, but the one shown sliding down the staircase really did have an upright piano in it. As it careens down the steps muffled, discordant tones can be heard.
The film was reportedly half-improvised and was made mostly as a contractual obligation between Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy and Hal Roach.
The idea for the film came to a Hal Roach comedy writer in 1927 when he passed a long flight of stairs in the Silverlake area of L.A. and thought it would be a good idea to have Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy trying to move something heavy up them.
The mansion at the top of the stairs was not really at the top of the stairs, but was a set on the Hal Roach Studios lot. The actual stairs led to a cul-de-sac.
The monumental staircase in the film still exists, in the Silver Lake district of Los Angeles, between 923 and 937 Vendome Street. There are 131 steps.
This is reported to be a remake of one of their earlier silent films, Hats Off, which is presumed lost.
This won the Oscar as "Best Short Subject" of 1932, the only such honor bestowed on a Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy film, and was also the first short to be so honored.
Laurel and Hardy's famous piano moving scene from 1932's The Music Box was filmed in the Silverlake district of Los Angeles. The scene shows Laurel & Hardy struggling futilely to haul a heavy piano up a long flight of steps. The 131 steps are still in existence today, and are a public staircase (they do not lead to a single residence as in the film). They connect Vendome Street (at the base of the hill) with Descanso Drive (at the top of the hill). They are located near the neighborhood where Sunset Boulevard and Silver Lake Boulevard intersect. The address is 923-935 Vendome Street near the intersection of Del Monte Street. A commemorative plaque was set into one of the lower steps between 1993 and 1995. The "Music Box" steps can be seen in the background of an earlier Charley Chase silent comedy produced at the Hal Roach Studios, "Isn't Life Terrible?" (1925), during a scene in which Chase is trying to sell fountain pens to Fay Wray.