# ADSactly Comedy: The Laurel and Hardy story

*They are there for our entertainment, they make us laugh each and every time and we think they’re the funniest people in the world, but are they? My generation grew up with the antics of Laurel and Hardy, the most famous comedic couple in the world, yet, by the time I was watching them on TV, they were already in the past, their lives and careers ended on a rather sad note.*

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_{[source](https://buffalonews.com/2019/01/24/the-enduring-appeal-of-laurel-and-hardy-takes-one-man-back-to-his-childhood/)}</center>

Laurel and Hardy belong to the Hollywood Golden Age - they first appeared together back in 1927, a time when slapstick comedy was all the rage. Yet, it is not something Hollywood invented as this particular form of entertainment originates in the Italian commedia dell’arte of the 16th century

> Slapstick, a type of physical comedy characterized by broad humour, absurd situations, and vigorous, usually violent action.

Originally, a ‘slapstick’ was a harmless paddle composed of two pieces of wood that slapped together to produce a resounding whack. In commedia dell’arte, Arlecchino would run around on stage pretending to hit the other actors with his slapstick. In the Hollywood version, you’d have the unfortunate Hardy infinitely suffering the consequences of his hapless partner’s screw-ups. Every time, Hardy came up with a plan, Laurel would find a way to ruin it.
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Laurel and Hardy were brought together by chance. They both had their individual careers, which were going rather fine. However, sometime in 1926, Oliver “Babe” Hardy injured himself in a kitchen mishap and the Hal Roach Studios decided to replace him with Stan Laurel for an upcoming movie. Seeing that Laurel did great in a part written for Hardy, Hal Roach wanted to try them as a duo, in two shorts -**’Slipping Wives’** and **’Duck Soup’**. The public loved them, so they got their first full-length movie together **‘Putting Pants on Philip’** (1927).
Much of their act was based on the visual aspect, starting with the contrast between the fat Ollie and the short scrawny Stan, although, in fact, Laurel was of a normal height, the difference in size being exaggerated by clever use of make-up and props. For instance, Hardy was always dressed in a tight-fitting suit with a button ready to pop, whereas Laurel’s jacket was loose, making him appear even thinner. If you remember Ollie as the idea man, always coming up with a plan Laurel only ruins, it must be said that the situation was quite different in real life. While Hardy was the easy-going type, Laurel was not the blundering fool he played on screen, but a studious hard-working guy. What was real both on and off screen was the friendship between the two of them. In their over 20 years together, Laurel and Hardy made 23 full-length feature films, 32 silent shorts, 40 short sound films, and 12 cameo appearances.

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_{[source](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/comedy/comedians/laurel-and-hardy-funniest-lines/laurel-and-hardy-funniest-lines7/)}</center>

They developed a whole arsenal of catchphrases and visual trademarks the audience expected at every appearance of the duo. At some point, you simply had to have an exasperated Hardy staring into the camera with a pained expression, while an ashamed Laurel would scratch his head crying loudly. Or there was an awkward Hardy fiddling with his tie in embarrassment, his famous ‘tie twiddle’. And again an exhausted Ollie saying *"Well, here's another nice mess you've gotten me into!"*, while his friend looks the other way with a very innocent look on his face.

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In a previous ADSactly Cinema post, I quoted Hitchcock saying ‘fear lies in anticipation’, in the Laurel and Hardy movies humour worked pretty much the same way - the viewer knew from the very beginning they were going to mess up, Ollie would get injured somehow, the house would be destroyed. The following photo is from ‘The Music Box’, and you just know there’s no chance they can carry it up stairs and it’s going to be hilarious.

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Things went great for the duo until the 1950s when their popularity started to wane and their career was put on hold. Since the cinema had no more use for them, they decided to tour together, not only for the money, but also to get a feeling that they’re still relevant. The result was the 1953-54 tour of England, basically the epilogue of their career, which was featured in the biographical movie ‘Stan and Ollie’, released in 2018.

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_{[source](https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-devon-46762940)}</center>

Called ‘Birds of a Feather’, the tour took them to various cities where they performed several shows in a theater, but the halls were rarely packed. In a letter from that period, Laurel blamed the economic conditions in the UK, with high unemployment and strikes, so people had neither the money, nor the mood for slapstick comedy. Another factor was television, a way more modern form of entertainment than the old duo. Laurel found this quite puzzling, writing in the same letter:

>”The TV programs I've seen, would certainly drive people INTO a theatre - even to see a bad show! They are awful!"

Ironically, the same television that robbed them of their live audience would later on grant them immortality. For some reason, ‘Laurel and Hardy’ were quite popular in Eastern Europe well into the 1980s, decades after their deaths. Without television, my generation wouldn’t have known them.
The UK tour came to an abrupt halt on the 17th of May 1954, when Hardy suffered a mild heart-attack after a show in Plymouth. Amazingly, while Hardy’s distress was obvious to the audience, their performance was brilliant. This is how a woman in the audience remembers that night:
>"We sat near the front and the slapstick was absolutely brilliant - you cried with laughter it was so funny.”
>
Hardy was unwell, his friend was probably worried sick seeing him struggle, but the clowns did their jobs, they made people laugh.

They went back to the US, where their last appearance together was in a TV interview. Hardy lost a lot of weight, something like 150 pounds (68kg), and although officially he was taking care of his health after the heart-attack, Laurel privately acknowledged his friend had cancer. After several strokes, Oliver Hardy died in 1957, at the age of 65.

Laurel was himself sick at the time and could not attend the funeral, saying ‘Babe would understand’.
How do you go on when you’re the surviving half of a duo? You don’t. Stan Laurel refused to perform alone. As an experienced actor he might have pulled off a decent show, but he didn’t feel it was right to appear without his friend. In a public letter to his fans, he wrote:
> “I feel lost without him after 30 odd years of close friendship & happy association.”

When he did accept invitations to various events it was to reminiscence of the times when he played with Babe Hardy, once again making people laugh, despite his sadness.If we look at today’s celebrities living behind high-fences and always surrounded by body-guards, Laurel was quite the opposite. He lived in a modest flat in Santa Monica, California. His phone number was in the phone directory and he’d gladly talk with his fans.
On February 19, 1965 he suffered a heart attack and died four days later. According to his biography, few minutes before his death he told his nurse he’d rather be skiing, to which the woman replied she didn’t know he was a skier. "I'm not," said Laurel, "I'd rather be doing that than this!" That was the last laugh he got. However, he did not want people to mourn his death.

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After a lifetime spent making people laugh, you’d expect a comedian to have things pretty much figured out, yet Stan Laurel was brutally honest about it:

### “A friend once asked me what comedy was. That floored me. What is comedy? I don't know. Does anybody? Can you define it? All I know is that I learned how to get laughs, and that's all I know about it. You have to learn what people will laugh at, then proceed accordingly.”

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**Post authored by @ladyrebecca.**
**References:** [1](https://www.thevintagenews.com/2017/06/17/when-his-best-buddy-oliver-hardy-died-stan-laurel-refused-to-act-in-another-film/), [2](https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-devon-46762940), [3](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurel_and_Hardy).</center>