Amazing how so many years later and their stuff can still make me laugh.
Anyone else a fan? What’s your favorite short and/or movie?
I like some of their silent ones, but I think they really hit their stride when they started making talkies. Starting around Berth Marks (1929) and just going right on through all the way to (in both shorts and movies) A-Haunting We Will Go (1942) with everything in between being pretty great.
Hopefully I’m not the only fan of their work on here.
You are NOT the only fan of their work. However, I am not one. There seem to be L&H people, Marx Brothers people, and Three Stooges people. I’m in the MB and 3S camps, but just never groked L&H.
No problem; we all shine on! If we were all the same, most of us would be redundant!!
I like to think of myself as an Abbott and Costello person, too, can’t forget them.
But they’re for another topic, hah.
Definite Laurel and Hardy fan here. I think my favorite is the one that ends with the boys fleeing Stan’s furious virago of a wife in a Model T. As it putters frantically away from her she calmly lifts a shotgun up and fires at the departing car which then disintegrates into a pile of junk with the boys trying to scramble out of the wreckage.
A story I just remembered: Stan often directed the shorts and enjoyed directing. Oliver had no interest in doing anything that prevented him from wrapping up the day’s shooting and getting in a few rounds of golf at Rancho Country Club.
Stan was aware of this and saw that Oliver tended to get antsy as the afternoon wore on, so he scheduled the scenes in which Hardy was to act angry, frustrated or extremely impatient for late in the afternoon when the sun was setting and the golf course was beckoning and Hardy was irritated and impatient to be done with acting for the day.
Hardy knew he was being used, of course, but there was little he could do about it, and he later admitted that Laurel’s ploy was very effective, and that he did his best acting when he was supposed to be angry and impatient-- because he was.
I always liked the The Music Box myself. I think they were at their very best in the shorts and although I like their films I just think the shorts were better.
I like them along with the Marx Brothers, Three Stooges, Our Gang etc. It has been a while since I’ve seen them only because I’m waiting for a good DVD release of their films.
One scene I remember, but don’t know which film, is Laurel taking trombone lessons. He and the instructor are playing No Place Like Home and Laurel is getting very emotional over it. Makes me smile just thinking of it.
I never got into them, but I acknowledge their genius. You might want to bookmark Mark Evanier’s homepage; he has a lot of links and photos about all things Laurel & Hardy. A couple weeks ago he posted a still of the boys in Zoot Suits, jamming with a young Orson Welles, back when Orson more closely resembled Laurel than Hardy.
I don’t remember much of their film work, but I did enjoy March of the Wooden Soldiers.
I read an anecdote years ago in which Oliver Hardy’s daughter was taking care of him after he’d had a stroke. He could no longer speak. Stan Laurel would come over to visit with him and they would communicate in pantomime perfectly.
In the UK BBC2 used to show L&H shorts all the time in the 70s/80s, don’t seem to be on much anymore. Got absolutely addicted to them as a kid.
I love the one where they are working in a lumber yard and Hardy gets sucked into the machinery.
Also one where they are getting the house tidy (aren’t they always) for the wives and Hardy takes a fall onto the table. Everything in the room must have been wired as absolutely the lot falls over on top of him in a great punchline.
Best one is the French Foreigh Legion where everyone has the same picture of the girl they are trying to forget, even the leader of the Arabs.
Read a book about their lives once, apparently Laurel’s last words on his hospital bed were something like:
<to nurse> I’d rather be playing golf
Do you play well?
Never played, but I’d rather be playing golf than this…
We recently got a 9-disk set of all their sound shorts and features, called “Laurel and Hardy: the Essential Collection” – wonderous! I’ve always been a big fan.
Love the “tit-for’tat” fights with (ususally) James Finlayson, where instead of going at each other, they’d take turns destroying something or poking the other person while each just stood there taking turns for it.
Finlayson’s is considered to the the origin of Homer Simpson’s more-abbreviated “doh!”
Stan Laurel said something I’m afraid I have to agree with: he couldn’t recall ever actually laughing out loud at a Harold Lloyd picture.
Back in the 90’s, the music for L&H and the Little Rascals, withno sheet music saved, was recreacted and released by the Beau Hunks
Love the Beau Hunks! I have the Our Relations soundtrack.
I remember seeing a short of theirs in which they were trying to play musical instruments and there was a music stand and sheet music getting stuck to the bottom of their shoes ect. This memory dates to a party in the early 70’s and we were watching in 8mm and extremely “herbed up”, so I that’s all I got, but I remember laughing hysterically at it. It would be interesting to watch it again to see if it was as funny as I remember sans smoking enhancement. Does my lame description sound like a real short or did I hallucinate it?
The scene where they are in a boat yard, Laurel is up a ladder painting the mast, meanwhile below Stan has his head stuck between the lower part of the mast and a bulkhead, he picks up a saw and cuts the mast to free himself, and just a moment before the mast goes over with Laurel on it, the camera picks up that look on his face, he knows something bad is about to happen, and that Stan is responsible, but not exactly what that something is.
Uh, Stan Laurel was simultaneously up a ladder and down below? How did that work? And what was Oliver Hardy doing during all this?
To answer the OP’s question, I am a big Laurel and Hardy fan. My 13 year old daughter is a huge L&H fan. She also likes The Marx Brothers and The 3 Stooges.
I watch the Marxes for dialog, L&H for atmosphere, and the Stooges for Christine McIntyre.
Stan Laurel’s face is nearly identical to my late grandfather’s.
I’ve always liked them a lot. My favorite moment is their dancing to “At The Ball, That’s All” in Way Out West.
My brother-in-law is a hardcore fan, especially of Oliver Hardy. He’s been a member of Sons Of The Desert for 30 years. He made me aware of Hardy’s genius with hand gestures.
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If you are a facebooker Jim Beaver’s page is a good one to like. Along with a lot of other movies he is critiquing all of L&H’s work one at a time. He is doing a pretty good job of it. (Jim Beaver once posted here as** jumblejim**)