Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy were arguably the most successful comedy team of all time, thriving during the early Classical Hollywood era of American cinema from the late 1920s to the mid-1940s. Known and loved throughout the world under a large variety of names (among them Dick und Doof
in Germany, Flip i Flap in Poland, and Cric e Croc in Italy), to the English-speaking world they were of course Laurel and Hardy: Stan the loveable simpleton and Olly the ambitious but pompous butt of many a “fine mess”.
The duo, like W C Fields and the Marx Brothers, had deep roots in stage and music
hall before making the successful transition from stage to screen. Stan Laurel began his career, when he was plain Arthur Jefferson, as Charlie Chaplin’s understudy when they were both stablemates of “Fred Karno’s army”, Karno being an influential theatre impresario and pioneer of slapstick comedy. Oliver Hardy, meanwhile, was cutting his teeth performing vaudeville and working for the Lubin motion picture production company, appearing in scores of one-reeler movies, mostly playing the “heavy”. Their paths began to cross when both worked for Hal Roach Studios in the early 1920s, but it was in 1927 that the two shared screen time together in the silent comedy films, Slipping Wives, Duck Soup, and With Love and Hisses. The positive audience reactions to the pairing was noted, and a comedy duo was born, and then cemented as they transferred so perfectly to the advent of the talkies.
Their comedy timing was impeccable, their physical comedy honed to perfection. With a pair of unmistakeable, born-for-comedy faces and physical morphology, just looking at a picture of them is enough to bring a smile to the face. Whilst so much early comedy has become dated, the comedy of Laurel and Hardy remains timeless, a whole eighty-odd years later. Testament to their enduring charm is the large group of modern-day Laurel and Hardy fans known as the “Sons of the Desert” (taken from their 1933 film of the same name) with chapters all over the world. A few years ago I took the family to a screen showing of some Laurel & Hardy reels at Birstall, and was both amused and reassured to see some of the chaps in the audience sporting the trademark Sons of the Desert fez! I was equally delighted to see my young daughters lapping up the physical comedy and giggling at these gags from a distant age.
Here, I have chosen a nice clip of the two getting into typically amusing bother, with Olly, as usual, paying for his imperious and blustering treatment of Stan, by coming off considerably the worst. It’s from the 1935 film, Thicker Than Water.
