Laurel and Hardy

Laurel and Hardy were an American-based comedy duo who became famous during the early half of the 20th century for their work in motion pictures. The members of the duo were the thin British-born and -reared Stan Laurel and his heavier American partner from the state of Georgia, Oliver Hardy. The pair are considered among the most famous and finest double acts in cinema history. Each brought talents from their solo careers to the team.

The two comedians briefly worked together in 1921. After a period appearing separately in several short films for the Hal Roach studio during the 1920s, they began appearing in movie shorts together in 1926, and Laurel and Hardy officially became a team in 1927. Between 1927 and 1940, they starred in sixty-two shorts and thirteen feature films (discounting numerous cameo roles in others' films), becoming Hal Roach's most famous and lucrative stars. Among their most popular and successful films were the features Sons of the Desert (1933), Way Out West (1937), and Block-Heads (1938); and the shorts Hog Wild (1930), Helpmates (1932), and their Academy Award-winning short, The Music Box (1932).

The pair left the Roach studio in 1940, then appeared in eight low-budget comedies for 20th Century Fox and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer until 1944, when they retired from films to concentrate on their stage show. They made their last film, Atoll K, in France in 1950 and 1951 before retiring from the screen.

History

Before the pairing

Stan Laurel

Stan Laurel (June 16, 1890 – February 23, 1965) was born Arthur Stanley Jefferson in Ulverston, Lancashire (now Ulverston, Cumbria), England. His father, Arthur J. "A.J." Jefferson, was a showman, having served as actor, director, playwright, manager, and all-around theatrical entrepreneur in many northern English cities.

Laurel began his career in Glasgow Britannia Theatre of Varieties and Panopticon music hall, colloquially know as as the Panopticon, at the age of 16, where he crafted a comedy act largely derivative of famous music hall comedians of the day, including George Roby and Dan Leno. Over the next several years he gradually worked his way up the ladder of supporting roles until he became featured comedian, as well as an understudy to Charlie Chaplin, in Fred Karno's comedy company. He emigrated to America in 1912, where he decided to change his name - being the more publicity minded of the pair,he worried that "Arthur Jefferson" was too long to fit onto posters.He took his middle name "Stanley",shortened it to "Stan",and added "Laurel",maybe because of his girlfriend,Mae Laurel.He made his first film appearance in 1917 (Nuts in May), continuing to make more than 50 silent one- and two-reelers for a variety of producers, including Gilbert M. 'Broncho Billy' Anderson, Hal Roach Studios, and Universal.

While he experienced modest success as a solo comedian, wide-spread fame eluded him. Producer Hal Roach later speculated that this was due in part to the difficulty in photographing Laurel's pale blue eyes on early pre-panchromatic film stock, perhaps giving the appearance of blindness, which audiences may have found disturbing. But it seems more likely to have been attributable to a lack of an identifiable or easily marketable screen character, like that of Chaplin, Harold Lloyd or Buster Keaton, as well as personal problems.

Oliver Hardy

Oliver Hardy (January 18, 1892 – August 7, 1957) was born Norvell Hardy in Harlem, Georgia near Augusta, Georgia, in the United States of America. As he turned 18, he changed his first name to that of his father who had died some years previously,thenceforth calling himself 'Oliver Norvell Hardy'. He was nicknamed 'Babe'.

Before Hardy started his film career as a "heavy" actor in 1914 (Outwitting Dad), he had been a movie house projectionist/manager at the Palace Theater in Milledgeville, GA. Before his partnership with Stan, Oliver appeared solo in more than 250 silent one- and two-reelers, only about 100 of which are extant.

Hardy was a trained singer, and often enjoyed performing for those on the set as well as singing in his own movies.

"Stan" and "Ollie": Hal Roach years

The first film encounter of the two comedians (as separate performers) took place in The Lucky Dog, produced in 1919 by Sun-Lite Pictures and released in 1921. Several years later, both comedians appeared in the Hal Roach production 45 Minutes from Hollywood (1926). Their first "official" film together was The Second Hundred Years (June 1927), directed by Fred Guiol and supervised by Leo McCarey, who suggested that the performers be teamed permanently.

From 1927 onwards, the pair starred in Hal Roach comedies, including silent shorts, talkie shorts and feature films. While most silent-film actors saw their careers decline with the advent of sound, Laurel and Hardy made a successful transition in 1929 with the short Unaccustomed As We Are. Laurel's English accent and Hardy's Southern American accent and singing brought new dimensions to their characters. The team also proved skillful in their melding of visual and verbal humor, adding dialogue that served to enhance rather than replace their popular sight gags.

Laurel and Hardy's shorts, produced by Hal Roach and released through Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, were among the most successful in the business. Most of the shorts ran two-reels (twenty minutes), although several ran three-reels long, and one, Beau Hunks, was four-reels long. In 1929, they appeared for the first time in a feature in one of the revue sequences of Hollywood Revue of 1929 and the following year they appeared as the comic relief in a lavish all-color (in Technicolor) musical feature entitled: The Rogue Song. This film marked their first appearance in color. Considered a "lost film," only portions of this production have survived, along with the complete soundtrack. In 1931, Laurel and Hardy made their first feature film (in which they were the stars) Pardon Us. Following the success of this film, the duo reduced the number of shorts they made to concentrate on feature films. Future Laurel and Hardy features included Pack Up Your Troubles (1932), Fra Diavolo (or The Devil's Brother, 1933), Sons of the Desert (1933), and Babes in Toyland (1934). Laurel and Hardy made the classic short The Music Box in 1932, which won the first Academy Award for Best Short Subject, Comedy.

Because of the competition from the double feature and block booking, Hal Roach cancelled all of his short subject series, save for Our Gang. The final short in the Laurel and Hardy series was 1935's Thicker than Water. The duo's subsequent feature films included Bonnie Scotland (1935), The Bohemian Girl (1936), Our Relations (1936), Way Out West (1937) (which includes the famous song "On the Trail of the Lonesome Pine"), Swiss Miss (1938), and Block-Heads (1938).

Style of comedy and notable routines

The humour of Laurel and Hardy was generally slapstick in nature. A typical sequence would be their collaboration on the construction of a house: Hardy holds a number of nails in his mouth, Laurel warmly claps him on the back, Hardy swallows the nails. Much of their comedy involves a process they referred to as "milking", where a simple idea is used as the basis from which to build several gags. Many of their films have extended sequences constructed around simply featuring the types of problems the pair can cause for themselves in a given situation, without following a strict or set narrative.

In some cases, the comedy bordered on surreal "white magic." For example, Laurel might light his pipe by flicking his thumb upwards from his clenched fist as if he held a cigarette lighter. His thumb would ignite, and he would light his pipe. Hardy, seeing this, would attempt to duplicate it. When, after many attempts he actually would achieve the same effect, he would be surprised to discover that his thumb was actually burning, and would cry in pain and hastily blow it out.

A famous routine the team often performed was a bizarre kind of "tit-for-tat" fight with an opponent. In the basic scenario, the pair would begin the fight by damaging something that the opponent valued, while that opponent did not defend himself. However, when the pair were finished, the opponent would then calmly retaliate by damaging something that Laurel and Hardy valued, while the pair strangely refrained from defending themselves. The pair then dispassionately retaliated with an escalating act of vandalism and so on, until both sides were simultaneously destroying property in front of each other.

On-screen characterizations

The Laurel and Hardy on-screen characters are of two supremely brainless, eternally optimistic men, almost brave in their perpetual and impregnable innocence. Their humor is physical, but their accident-prone buffoonery is distinguished by the stars' friendly, kindly personalities and their devotion to each other. Stan and Ollie are grown-up children: a skinny-and-fat pair of life's innocent bystanders who always run afoul of irate landlords, pompous citizens, angry policemen, domineering women, antagonistic customers, and apoplectic bosses.

Laurel and Hardy had an inbuilt physical contrariety to aid them, and they enhanced this ludicrousness with little touches, being very careful never to desert reality. Stan kept his hair short on the sides and back, but let it grow long on top to create a natural "fright wig" through his inveterate gesture of scratching his head at moments of shock or wonderment and simultaneously pulling up his hair. To achieve a flat-footed walk, he removed the heels from his shoes (usually Army shoes). When talking with Ollie, he would frequently look at his partner's forehead instead of his eyes, enhancing his out-of-this-world coloration.

Inescapably, the ideogram for Laurel and Hardy is a pair of derby hats. The quasi-British formality of this headgear is in perfect consonance with their bone-bred politeness. Whatever else they are, they are gentlemen -- "Mr. Laurel and Mr. Hardy."

Off-screen, Laurel and Hardy were the opposite of their movie characters: Laurel was the driven, ambitious leader, while Hardy was more easygoing. Although Hal Roach employed writers and directors such as H.M. Walker, Leo McCarey, Frank Capra, James Parrott, James W. Horne, and others on Laurel and Hardy films, somewhere between twenty-five and ninety-five percent of each was reworked by Stan Laurel on his own. Laurel would rewrite entire sequences or scripts, have the cast and crew improvise on the soundstage, and meticulously reviewed film dailies, often moonlighting to achieve all of these tasks. While Hardy also made contributions to the routines, he preferred to follow Laurel's lead and spent most of his free time on hobbies such as golf.

They dubbed themselves for the foreign versions. Their characteristic accents add to their comicality in the Spanish soundtracks.

Decline

By 1936, the relationship between Laurel and Hardy was under strain, and both were distanced from Hal Roach. Laurel in particular frequently argued with Roach, and extended stand-off periods became common during the late 1930s. In 1938, The Roach studio switched distributors from MGM to United Artists. Laurel and Hardy made two more films for Roach before they split with the studio in 1940.

Hoping for greater artistic freedom, Laurel and Hardy signed with the larger studios 20th Century Fox and MGM. However, at these studios, the pair were relegated to the b-film divisions, where they made eight films through 1944. These features, on which the duo were not allowed to improvise or provide much input, were not critically successful, and were not fondly remembered by the comedians themselves. Only one of the Fox films, Jitterbugs, has received some recognition in recent years, mainly because the team was given a little more creative freedom and Hardy worked well with actress Lee Patrick.

In 1943, Laurel and Hardy filmed a silent sequence for the Department of Agriculture's patriotic short, The Tree in a Test Tube. The duo demonstrated the uses of wood, especially as part of the war effort. The most remarkable thing about the film, narrated by MGM's Pete Smith, was that it was filmed in Kodachrome, only the second of their films to be shot in color. (There are also color home movies of Laurel and Hardy, some of which have been included in video releases of their Hal Roach films.)

Oliver Hardy made two solo appearances without Laurel in 1949. He played the comic sidekick to John Wayne in Republic's The Fighting Kentuckian. Then, Frank Capra cast him as a racetrack gambler in an uncredited appearance in Riding High, starring Bing Crosby.

After spending the rest of the 1940s performing on stage in Europe, Laurel and Hardy made one final film together in 1950. Atoll K (also known as Utopia) was a French-Italian co-production directed by Léo Joannon, which suffered language barriers, production problems, and Stan Laurel's grave health during shooting. The film was a commercial and critical disappointment, and brought an end to Laurel and Hardy's film careers.

Final years

After Atoll K, Laurel and Hardy took several months off, so that Laurel could recuperate. Upon their return to the European stage in the early 1950s, Laurel and Hardy undertook a successful series of public appearances in a short sketch Laurel had written called "Birds of a Feather". In December of 1954, the team made their only American television appearance, surprised by Ralph Edwards on his live NBC-TV program, "This Is Your Life". An audible gasp went up from the studio audience when they were introduced, since — unlike Europeans — many were unaware that they were still alive and well. By the mid-1950s, partly due to the positive response from the television broadcast, the pair were negotiating again with Hal Roach for a series of NBC television specials (in color) to be called Laurel & Hardy's Fabulous Fables. (They also appeared on the BBC in the United Kingdom.) However, the plans for the specials were shelved, as the aging comedians suffered from declining health.

Under a doctor's advice, Hardy lost over one hundred pounds in 1956. However, he suffered several strokes — some say partly due to the rapid weight loss — and died of a major stroke on August 7, 1957. A depressed Laurel did not attend his partner's funeral, due to his own ill health, explaining his absence with the line "Babe would understand."

For the remaining eight years of his life, Laurel refused to perform, even turning down Stanley Kramer's offer to make a cameo in his landmark 1963 movie, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. In 1960, Laurel was given a special Oscar for his contributions to film comedy; he was invited to appear at the ceremonies but declined; when he received the statue, he immediately dubbed it "Mr. Clean" since he was an avid television viewer and familiar with the popular commercials for the cleaning product.

Despite not appearing on-screen after Hardy's death, Laurel did contribute scripts and gags to several comedy filmmakers, and did some personal writing as well. Late in life, he hosted many visitors of the new generation at his modest seaside apartment, including Dick Cavett, Jerry Lewis, and Dick Van Dyke. The latter (who became a great friend of Laurel) did an imitation of Stan on his television show in the early 1960s, which Laurel saw and wrote — much to Van Dyke's amusement — a lengthy set of "tips" to perfect the imitation. Laurel would live until 1965, surviving to see the duo's work rediscovered through television and classic film revivals. He died in Santa Monica, and is buried at Forest Lawn-Hollywood Hills in Los Angeles, California.

Afterwards

A few months after Laurel's death, the inaugural meeting of The Sons of the Desert, the official Laurel and Hardy appreciation society, was held in New York City. Since that time, chapters of the organization have formed across North America and Europe, as well as in Australia.

Larry Harmon became the owner of Laurel and Hardy's likenesses in the mid-1960s, and co-produced a series of animated Laurel and Hardy cartoons in 1966 with Hanna-Barbera Productions. The animated versions of Laurel and Hardy also guest-starred in a 1972 episode of Hanna-Barbera's The New Scooby-Doo Movies. Harmon voiced Laurel in the 1966 series, with Jim MacGeorge voicing Hardy; for the 1972 appearance on Scooby-Doo, Harmon did both voices.

In 1999, Larry Harmon produced a direct-to-video film, The All-New Adventures of Laurel and Hardy: For Love of Mummy, based upon the films of Laurel and Hardy. The film dealt with Laurel and Hardy's identical nephews falling into some of the same messes that their legendary uncles fell into. Actors Bronson Pinchot and Gailard Sartain took over the respective roles for this one film. Laurel and Hardy films have appeared frequently in television syndication and on cable television networks such as American Movie Classics, Turner Classic Movies, The Family Channel, and the Hallmark Channel. Many of the films are also available on home video and DVD.

Trivia

• As with many other comedy teams of the day, such as The Three Stooges, Laurel and Hardy used their real names in their films.

• Throughout Laurel and Hardy's career, the driving force behind the team was Laurel, who wrote the scripts and frequently produced (and sometimes directed) the films, and always insisted on being paid twice as much as Hardy.

• Part of Laurel and Hardy's on-screen appearance called for their faces to be filmed flat, without any shadows or dramatic lighting. To recall the traditional appearance of clowns, both comedians wore a light pancake makeup on their faces, and Roach's cameramen, such as Art Lloyd and Francis Corby, were instructed to light and film a scene so that the comedians would be "washed out". Art Lloyd was once quoted as saying "Well, I'll never win an Oscar [for Laurel and Hardy cinematography], but I'll sure please Stan Laurel."

• Laurel and Hardy's famous signature tune, known as "The Cuckoo Song", "Ku-Ku", or "The Waltz of the Cuckoos", was composed by Roach musical director Marvin Hatley as the on-the-hour chime for the Roach studio radio station. Laurel heard the tune on the station, and asked Hatley to use it as the Laurel and Hardy theme song. In Laurel's eyes, the song's melody represents Oliver Hardy's character (pompus and dramatic), while the harmony represents Laurel's own character (somewhat out of key, and only able to register two notes: "coo-coo"). The original theme was first used in Night Owls (1930), and was later re-recorded in 1935 with a full orchestra.

• The official Laurel and Hardy appreciation society is known as "The Sons of the Desert", after a fraternal society in the film of the same name. It was founded in New York in 1965 with the sanction of Stan Laurel.

• Ulverston, the place of Stan Laurel's birth, now hosts the Laurel and Hardy Museum. Another Laurel and Hardy Museum is located in the place of Oliver Hardy's birth, Harlem, Georgia.

• In a 2005 poll, The Comedian's Comedian, the duo was voted the seventh greatest comedy act ever by fellow comedians and comedy insiders, making them the most popular double act on the list.

• In the 1980s, many of the duo's short films were colorized for re-release. Because the original films were filmed in black and white, very few people knew that Stan Laurel actually had red hair, and so he is depicted as having brown hair in colorized shorts released by Hal Roach Studios. Interestingly enough, both colorized versions of March of the Wooden Soldiers have Laurel's correct hair color.

• Stan Laurel reportedly grew to hate the "crying" routine that he used when Oliver Hardy would berate him for his incompetence, but the showman in him compelled him to keep using it, because he perceived that the audience expected it.

• Oliver Hardy's catchphrase is often misquoted as "Well, there's another fine mess you've gotten me into". The quote is "Well, here's another nice mess you've gotten me into." Another Fine Mess was the title of one of their short films from the 1930s.

• The song, "Trail of the Lonesome Pine" is the biggest posthumous hit by an artist not making No.1. It is also the first after-death success for a duo. The song made No.2 in the UK charts in December 1975.

• In 2006, BBC Four showed a drama based on Laurel meeting Hardy on his deathbed and reminiscing about their career called Stan.

• A little known American Vaudeville team from the early 20th century known as "Zuhn & Dreis" may have been the source of Laurel and Hardy's on stage persona - here is a photo of "Zuhn & Dreis" -

• Laurel and Hardy make an appearance as Roman legionaries in the Asterix comic, Obelix and Co.

• Josh Ritter, an American folk singer, references the comedy duo in the songs Girl in the War and Thin Blue Flame both released on the album The Animal Years.