"You have to learn what people will
laugh at, then proceed accordingly."
Stan Laurel
Like most people my age or younger (which is most people these days), my introduction to Laurel and Hardy didn't come in a movie house, but on television. Local stations in the 1950s had a lot of air time to fill, and one thing they filled it with was old movies. Assembly-line westerns from the 1930s were a staple, along with comedies from the same era produced by Hal Roach, and Hal Roach meant Laurel and Hardy.
Stan Laurel (born in England in 1890) and Oliver Hardy (born in Georgia in 1892) both had comedy careers in silent films before they teamed up, but their chemistry together made them more than the sum of their two parts, and from the time they joined forces working for Roach, they were a team. Laurel (the thin one) was the idea man and the creative force behind their best movies. (He'd come to America as Charlie Chaplin's understudy in a traveling stage company.) But the material really clicked because Hardy (the heavy one) knew exactly what to do with it and played along.
From the 1920s to the 1950s, they made more than 100 movies together - silents and talkies, two-reelers and features. The more notable ones include these:
Shorts:
"The Battle of the Century" (1927 / Clyde Bruckman
and Leo McCarey)
A legendary two-reeler, long lost but lately restored, starting with Stan in a boxing ring getting knocked cold, and ending with the screen's most spectacular pie fight.
"Big Business" (1929 / James W. Horne and Leo McCarey)
The boys play door-to-door Christmas tree salesmen. James Finlayson (a frequent foil) plays a reluctant customer. They demolish his house. He destroys their car.
"Double Whoopee" (1929 / Lewis R. Foster)
Stan and Ollie play the footman and doorman at a luxury hotel, where a prince who resembles Erich von Stroheim falls down an elevator shaft and a teenaged Jean Harlow famously loses her skirt.
"The Music Box" (1932 / James Parrott)
Stan and Ollie try to move a piano up a long, long, long flight of stairs. The movie won an Academy Award.
"Busy Bodies" (1933 / Lloyd French)
Laurel and Hardy go to work in a sawmill, a setup that's as funny as it is terrifying.
Features:
"Sons of the Desert" (1933 / William A. Seiter)
The boys tell their wives they're going to Hawaii for Ollie's health, but sneak off to a lodge convention in Chicago instead. Naturally, the wives find out. The international society of Laurel and Hardy enthusiasts took its name from the title of this film.
"Babes In Toyland" (1934 / Gus Meins
and Charley Rogers)
Stan and Ollie play toymakers in a Mother Goose story that used to show up on TV every year at Christmastime. Alternate title; "March of the Wooden Soldiers".
"Way Out West" (1937) / James W. Horne)
This movie contains two of Laurel and Hardy's most famous routines: the soft-shoe dance number in front of the saloon (with backup from Chill Wills and the Avalon Boys) and a vocal duet to "The Trail of the Lonesome Pine".
"Swiss Miss" (1938 / John G. Blystone and Hal Roach)
Stan and Ollie play mousetrap salesmen in Switzerland. They're trying to move a piano (again) across a suspension bridge, when they meet a gorilla . . .
"A Chump At Oxford" (1940 / Alfred J. Goulding)
The boys somehow end up in college in England. A window drops down and hits Stan on the head, turning him into a stuffy academic. A rare chance to see Laurel play something other than his usual dim-witted self.
Bonus Feature:
"Stan & Ollie" (2018 / Jon S. Baird)
A biopic tracking their last music-hall tour of the UK in 1954. Steve Coogan and John C. Reilly play Laurel and Hardy. They're good.
Some Laurel and Hardy fans insist that their silent short films are their best, but sound gave them another dimension to work with, and longer running times gave them more room to expand and perfect their slow-building routines.
A typical Laurel and Hardy gag would start with something trivial or accidental, but feathers would be ruffled and somebody would be offended, and an escalating game of tit-for-tat would end in apocalyptic chaos. Stan and Ollie did that better than anybody.
They made all their best movies for Roach. In the 1940s, they move to Fox and MGM, where they had less creative control and their work noticeably declined. Their last movie, "Atoll K" (1951) was a critical and commercial failure, and by then, age and health issues were starting to catch up with them.
Stan died 60 years ago and Ollie died in 1957, but their films are still out there. You can find a lot of them on YouTube.
Stan, looking confused (and being confused) and Ollie's long-suffering stares into the camera. Ollie twiddling his tie and Stan ruffling his hair. The visual jokes that are twice as funny because you can see the punchline coming, and funnier still when something else immediately tops that. The bowler hats and the "Cuckoo Song". The essential innocence and childlike simplicity of their characters, and their underlying devotion to each other. All trademark Stan and Ollie.
The world's not always an amusing place, especially these days, but you can bet it'd be even sadder without Laurel and Hardy.
"Here's another nice mess you've gotten me into."
Oliver Hardy to Stan Laurel
in "Atoll K"
(Hardy's last words on screen)
