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approached again, this time by Universal
Pictures, for whom he made four films.
For the next few years, Stan jumped
between travelling the country with his
vaudeville act and making two reel comedy
shorts for various nondescript Hollywood
studios. Unlike the successful comedy
movie star characters such as Chaplin’s
Little Tramp, Harold Lloyd’s Lonesome Luke,
Roscoe Arbuckle’s Fatty and Buster Keaton’s
Stoneface, Stan struggled to create a
distinctive comedic character that audiences
could identify with; his early spasmodic career in
movies was, frankly, not very funny.
In late 1919, again finding himself in Los
Angeles for yet another vaudeville run, Stan
got a call from film producer G.M. “Broncho
Billy” Anderson. Anderson was a motion picture
pioneer and the very first cowboy star appearing
in Edwin S. Porter’s famous silent movie The
Great Train Robbery (1903). He made hundreds
of two-reel westerns and then retired from the
screen to produce films for Metro Pictures.
His offer to Stan was to star in a film where
he would play a young gentleman about town
who is falsely accused of dog-napping. The film
was titled The Lucky Dog (released in 1921).
Unbeknownst to Stan at the time, the character
actor who played the dastardly villain in the
film would have a life changing effect on him,
although they wouldn’t appear onscreen together
for another seven years. That actor’s name was
Oliver “Babe” Hardy.
To be continued...
rise as a movie star.
With their star player gone, vaudeville
bookings dried up, and six months later, the
remaining Karno group called it a day and
made arrangements to return to England.
But Stan and two other members from the
now disbanded Karno Company decided
to stay in the States and try to break into
vaudeville with an act they called The Three
Comiques. Stan wrote a number of sketches for
the trio and managed to get them booked into
a theatre in Chicago, but they were out of work
more weeks than were in it.
By 1915, Stan had renamed the group
The Keystone Trio, cleverly impersonating
the characters of Charlie Chaplin, Chester
Conklin and Mabel Normand, who by now
were extremely popular Keystone movie stars.
This Chaplinesque act finally secured them
more regular vaudeville bookings. However,
early in 1917, following a bust up with his
two former colleagues, Stan separated from
them and formed a duo with Australian dancer
Mae Dahlbergh. This change of partner also
brought about a name change, and the duo hit
the vaudeville circuit as Stan and Mae Laurel
(this new name of Laurel was adopted from
a favourite picture in a book owned by Mae,
depicting a laurel tree).
The couple’s relationship both on and off the
stage was tempestuous, with Mae being quite
handy with her fists. Stan would often have to
apply copious amounts of makeup to disguise
his bruised and black eyes before taking to the
stage, and quickly earned a reputation as a hen-
pecked lover. (He would later put this experience
to good use in the many Laurel and Hardy scripts
he would write, where both he and Hardy played
weak, frightened, hen-pecked husbands.)
Adapting an old Karno sketch concerning
a burglar and a girl with a toothache, Stan
and Mae’s act proved popular with vaudeville
audiences, which quickly elevated them from
second rate theatres to major theatrical reviews.
Whilst appearing at the Hippodrome in Los
Angeles, Stan was approached backstage by a
Hollywood talent scout and asked if he would be
interested in making a series of comedy films. He
eagerly accepted the offer and two days later had
shot his first motion picture, Nuts in May (1917),
which featured him as an asylum inmate who
believes he is Napoleon Bonaparte. However,
the obscure film production company failed to
raise the cash to continue the series and Stan
returned to the stage. But a week later he was
Continued...
The Stan and Mae Laurel duo Vaudevillian Stan Laurel
The first movie appearance of Stan Laurel and
Babe Hardy, together in The Lucky Dog (1921)
Unbeknownst to Stan at the time, the character actor who played the
dastardly villain in [The Lucky Dog] would have a life changing effect on him,
although they wouldn’t appear onscreen together for another seven years.
That actor’s name was Oliver “Babe” Hardy.