“They can’t make more movies, yet they want to continue until death.” “They had run out of stuff, yet they’re trying to do material and buoyed up by the fact that people love them,” says Louvish. Insult gags are a crudity we avoid,” they said.Īnd yet, they were determined to keep performing. “Present-day comedians, particularly those in America, gain laughs at the expense of someone else’s discomfort. At an appearance in Newcastle, England, in 1952, they “looked down their noses at the modern generation,” TIME reported. “They were both very ill in their later years,” says Louvish.Įven then, Laurel and Hardy never lost their commitment to self-deprecating humor, as opposed to put-downs.
The film depicts the period as one of intense disagreement between the two when asked whether they had a notable falling out, Louvish, who has not seen the film, says that if they argued in real life it was probably less because they didn’t like each other anymore and more because they were running on fumes. “They embraced these demanding tours which were quite physically exhausting,” says Louvish.
LAUREL AND HARDY MOVIES MOVIE
While filming the movie originally entitled Atoll K in 1950 (later released as Utopia in 1954), Hardy’s general health worsened, exacerbated by his obesity, and Stan Laurel’s pre-existing diabetes was worsened by prostate issues and colitis.
If you don't get the confirmation within 10 minutes, please check your spam folder. Click the link to confirm your subscription and begin receiving our newsletters. Witless innocence was their hallmark.”įor your security, we've sent a confirmation email to the address you entered. They were “interested more, as Hardy once said, in ‘human appeal’ than in ‘straight clownish antics.'” Describing what made them special in 1965, TIME noted that “they were lovable caricatures of the dolt in Everyman, a bow and fiddle striking delightfully dissonant chords in a mad world. Their relatability was a key part of what made them funny. They take failure and make it into something you can laugh about. They’re always trying to do the right thing, but get into a fine mess. “During the Great Depression, people are so desperate, and they need comedy,” says Louvish. They rose to fame at a period in history when Americans needed a good laugh. Their seamless transition from silent to sound pictures was notable, winning them recognition as “virtually the only silent comedy stars to repeat their phenomenal success in talkies, probably because their miming spoke louder than words.” And the hard work that Laurel & Hardy put into lugging a piano up a staircase in The Music Box clearly hit the right note with the Academy, as the film won a 1932 Oscar.Īnd their popularity went even deeper than their talent. Together, as TIME put it, they became Laurel - “slim, sad-eyed master mime” and “the brain behind the gags and the on-screen butt of them all” - and Hardy, “the master of mime and the bowler-bouncing doubletake” and “the withering glare.” They made dozens of silent film shorts in the late 1920s, such as Duck Soup, and began doing talkie shorts in 1929 and feature-length talkie films in the mid-’30s. Hardy was the son of an Atlanta politician, and studied law at the University of Georgia before he decided to pursue a career in singing. Laurel (born Arthur Stanley Jefferson in Ulverston, England) had been an understudy for Charlie Chaplin and a member of the London Comedians troupe run by Fred Karno, who is credited with having a role in launching Chaplin.
LAUREL AND HARDY MOVIES TV
The funnymen were introduced to the public in the mid-1920s by Hollywood film and TV producer Hal Roach, who thought putting together a skinny Englishman and a rotund American would be comedic gold, says Simon Louvish, author of Stan and Ollie: The Roots of Comedy: The Double Life of Laurel and Hardy and a visiting lecturer at the London Film School.
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