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018 MAY 2015 JB Hi-Fi
the boys) are sailors who arrive in town on
leave. Pandemonium ensues when each set of
twins is mistaken for the other. The mistaken
identities gag works throughout the 74-minute
running time because the duos don't discover
each others' presence until the final minutes
of the film.
In 1937 MGM released Laurel and
Hardy's full length masterpiece, the comedy
western Way Out West . Stan and Ollie have
to locate the daughter of a deceased gold
prospector and present her with her inheritance
– the deeds to a gold mine. The superb mix
of visual and verbal gags is truly masterful,
inventive filmmaking. An example of this
is when they cross a lake (actually situated
on the Roach lot and named the Laurel and
Hardy lake). Stan crosses it without incident
but Ollie always manages to find the deepest
part, leaving just his bowler hat floating on
the surface. When the prospector's daughter
asks what her father died of, a vacant looking
Stan replies, "I think he died of a Tuesday, or
was it of a Wednesday?". This and Stan and
Ollie's dainty soft shoe shuffle to the Avalon
Boys rendition of At the Ball, That's All are
absolutely timeless cinematic moments.
Between 1933 and 1939, Laurel and Hardy
made 14 full length feature films and 12
shorts at the Roach studios, the last, Saps
at Sea (1940) was completed just before
their contracts with Roach expired. As the
new decade began, both Stan and Ollie
found they owed serious back taxes to the
US Government. Adding to their financial
woes, their ex-wives (Stan was married five
times and Ollie three times) were publicly
claiming they had been left destitute and
were now chasing them for huge amounts of
alimony. Consequently, they did not renew
their contracts with Roach but instead formed
their own corporation, Laurel and Hardy Feature
Productions, and signed a ten-picture deal
with 20th Century Fox.
Stan would later state that signing the Fox
contract was the worst career decision he
ever made. At the small independent Roach
studios, Stan had always insisted that the L&H
films were shot in sequence, which allowed
him to seamlessly integrate the gags in line
with the plot. However, at the vast Fox studios,
every film was shot out of sequence to save
production costs. And much to his annoyance,
Stan was not allowed to contribute to the
storyline or the dialogue.
But much worse, just as MGM had tried
to reinvent Buster Keaton (which destroyed
his movie career), Fox attempted to reinvent
Laurel and Hardy by discarding most of their
trademarks. Their unique magical comedy
routine was gradually stifled with each Fox
picture they made, and although they were still
able to raise plenty of laughs, their scenes were
now no more than episodic asides to the main
story, and the boys knew it. Subsequently in
1945, when Fox offered them a further five year
extension to their contract, they both declined.
Following a disastrous European motion
picture titled Atoll K, released in France in 1951,
Laurel and Hardy's film career came to an
end. After several triumphant tours of Britain
with their music hall act, they finally called it a
day and formally retired in 1954. Oliver Hardy
died aged 65 in August 1957. In 1961, Stan
Laurel, who never recovered from his dear
friend's death, was awarded an honorary Oscar
for his lifetime contribution to films. His one
regret was that his friend Ollie was not alive to
share the award. Stan died in 1965, aged 74.
Through television and DVD, Laurel and
Hardy's legacy of laughter lives on as each new
generation discover and enjoy their timeless
comedy routines. And no doubt, whatever the
viewing medium will be in another hundred
years, the childlike curiosity of Stan and the
false pomposity of Ollie will still be generating
laughter from their future audience.
Stan performs his lighted thumb routine
in Way Out West.
The Laurel and Hardy appreciation society,
which today has thousands of members
worldwide and its own coat of arms
End note: The opening scene of the
Laurel and Hardy 1927 silent short The
Battle of the Century features Stan as
a prize fighter and Ollie as his trainer-
manager. In the front row of the boxing
ring crowd, just to the right of Hardy, can
be seen a slightly rotund, dark haired young
man. His name was Louis Francis Cristillo
and in 1927 he was a freelance film extra
and stuntman who yearned to be a movie
comedian. Ten years later he would link up
with the best vaudeville straight man in the
business, and together they would become
known to moviegoers as the comedy duo-
Abbot and Costello.