Of Laurel and Hardy, Spike Milligan once said: “From the moment I saw them on the screen I knew they were my friends”. This quote from one of Britain’s greatest clowns, a man much influenced by this ultimate comedy team, I think, sums up why Stan and Ollie continue to be loved and still matter as film-makers and performers. It is also a quote I heartily endorse. My next talk will attempt to get under the skin of these lovable comic geniuses, and explore how they came to make some of the funniest comedies in the history of cinema. It is also a personal journey for me.
In 1981 our family moved from Bristol to Reading. I was only 9 and it felt like the end of the world. New house. New school. New uniform. Where were all my friends? 100 miles away. Well, not all of them. Thanks to BBC2 I had two familiar faces who’d pop up on my TV screen just before dinnertime. As the smell of a baking shepherds pie wafted in from the kitchen I’d just have time to catch a fat pompous bloke and his nervous little friend in matching bowler hats get themselves into a ludicrous, often highly dangerous, scrape. Two strangely childlike adults adrift in a confusing world where nothing seemed to go right for them. Aside from the jaunty music, the crazy stunts and the weirdly exotic black and white world of old Hollywood, what most appealed to me was these characters’ resilience, their dogged and dignified determination to get things done, despite their lack of talent for anything practical. Be it working in a lumber yard, fixing a car or even something as simple as the washing up. Ollie’s resigned look to camera after yet another failed plan, while Stan bursts into tears seemed to sum up my life at that time. I’m not a Christian, but they seemed to suffer for me. To make me laugh on a dark evening when there wasn’t a lot else to laugh about.
I spent hours in the local library reading books about these men, introducing me to a world of film-making long gone. There was no Youtube, no DVDs or even home videotapes in those days so my viewing of these short talking movies (made at the Hal Roach Studios between 1929 and 1935) was fleeting, but they made an impact. I discovered that Stan Laurel was actually Arthur Stanley Jefferson and he’d been born in England. In a place called Ulverston, in Cumbria. I think it was my dad who announced in 1983 or 1984 that near where Stan grew up was a brand-new museum. A museum to Laurel and Hardy. Did the idea of a summer holiday in the Lake District pre-date this revelation? I’ve no idea. I was an obsessive kind of kid so maybe I badgered my parents into it. Anyway on a rainy August morning there I stood in a basement, belonging to former Mayor of Ulverston, Bill Cubin. It was a low-ceilinged complex of cluttered rooms full of memorabilia and wallpapered with Laurel and Hardy news-cuttings. I learnt about how Stan had grown up cared for by his grandparents as his own mum and dad pursued their own theatrical careers, about his broken marriages and the tours of Britain later in their careers as Stan introduced Ollie to his homeland. There was a tiny cinema playing Laurel and Hardy movies on a loop. SILENT Laurel and Hardy movies from 1927-1929 I’d never seen and I settled down to watch the surreal caveman antics of “Flying Elephants”. It was an unforgettable day, that allowed me to walk in the footsteps of my comedy heroes.
