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EXTRAS STACK PAYS TRIBUTE
directors to win Best Picture, Best Director
and Best Screenplay Academy Awards). It was
McCarey who was the first to recognise the
onscreen chemistry between Laurel and Hardy,
even before they themselves realised what
they had. And perhaps more importantly, he
recognised their potential for becoming a
permanent and successful filmmaking duo.
Next to Roach and Laurel, McCarey was the
man most responsible for developing the unique
Laurel and Hardy brand of comedy that would
follow.
In June of 1927, with McCarey in the director’s
chair, they began filming the first “official” Laurel
and Hardy team-up movie: The Second Hundred
Years. No-one at the Roach studios, not even
their director, could have possibly known that
“The Boys” onscreen antics were going to
make movie audiences across the world guffaw
with laughter for the next 15 years.
To be continued...
calling him “Baby” at first, then Babe – and the
name stuck.
Over the next ten years Hardy would appear
in a staggering 250-plus silent one-reel films,
including the “Fatty” and “Plump & Runt”
series. His rotund physique meant he invariably
played the roles of heavy villains or comical fat
characters, but his prolific output of movies
helped him hone his acting skills in front of the
camera. Through exaggerated facial expressions
he demonstrated an uncanny ability to
communicate a whole range of emotions that an
audience could understand, without the need for
dialogue.
In 1917 Hardy relocated to Los Angeles and
freelanced for several Hollywood studios,
including the Vitagraph Company (which was
eventually sold to Warner Bros.). He was then
teamed with silent comedian Larry Semon (now
long forgotten, but at one time Semon’s films
were more popular than Chaplin’s) for a number
of comedy movies, including an early version of
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (released in 1925)
with Hardy in the Tin Man role.
January 1925 saw Hardy working as a jobbing
actor at the Hal Roach Studios. Roach was an
independent film producer whose output of
comedy productions challenged Mack Sennet’s
sobriquet as the King of Comedy. Roach
had produced the Harold Lloyd “Lonesome
Luke” films and the very popular “Our Gang”
series, initially distributing them through
Pathe, and in 1927, through the then fledgling
studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. It was at the
Roach studios that Hardy met Stan Laurel
again, although Hardy barely remembered the
Englishman who had appeared with him in the
one-reel comedyThe Lucky Dog some seven
years earlier.
Since appearing in that early movie with
Hardy, Stan Laurel had made a further 80 short
films but had struggled to find a character that
suited and matched his vaudevillian style of
comedy. He had practically given up on a career
in front of the camera and was now employed
as a gag writer and novice film director for Hal
Roach Productions.
Hardy was about to start
filming Get ‘Em Young, which
was to be co-directed by
Laurel – a film that has since
attained legendary status in the
Laurel and Hardy saga because
of an accident that befell Hardy
the night before shooting
began, which consequently
marked Stan Laurel’s return to
film acting. Hardy’s wife had
torn the ligaments in her leg and
was bedridden, leaving him to
undertake the cooking of their
dinner. Whilst removing a leg of lamb from the
oven, Hardy accidently spilt the pan of scalding
grease over his wrist and hand, resulting in an
agonising injury which immediately placed him
on the sick list. Roach pressed a very reluctant
Stan into the absent Babe Hardy’s role of the
butler, where Stan introduced his famous
crying routine. Much to his surprise, Get ‘Em
Young was a huge success, so much so that
Roach insisted that Stan write himself into his
short films. Subsequently, for the next twelve
months, Stan alternated between acting and
directing several solo projects.
By the end of 1926, Babe Hardy had appeared
in eight short films either directed or co-written
by Stan Laurel, but they had still not appeared
together again onscreen. That is until Duck
Soup (1927), which was adapted by Stan from a
vaudeville sketch originally written in 1908 by his
father, Arthur Jefferson Snr. The story concerned
two tramps who hide out in a mansion, whose
aristocratic owner is on vacation. The part of the
second tramp had originally been allocated to
another Roach contract player, but for reasons
unknown and by a strange quirk of fate, it
was offered instead to Oliver Hardy. Although
neither of them were yet wearing any of their
famous trademarks, or had even developed their
characters of Stan and Ollie, it was here that
their movie partnership began to take shape.
A further six films followed, with both of
them playing separate characters within the
story rather than as a team. Their next short,
however, titled Do Detectives Think? (1927),
paired them as private detectives, and their
familiar and hallmark characteristics of crumpled
suits, bowler hats and childlike ineptness were
displayed onscreen for the very first time.
The production supervisor on this film and
Duck Soup was 30-year-old Leo McCarey (who
would go on to become one of the few film
Continued...
Norvell Hardy adopted the name
Oliver as a tribute to the father he
never knew.
Stan Laurel listens intently to instructions
from a scruffy, unshaven Oliver Hardy in
the comedy short Duck Soup (1927)
Laurel and Hardy as the two bumbling
detectives in Do Detectives Think? (bowler
hats and suits were actual uniforms of US
detectives in the 1920s)