Laurel and Hardy

My "lonely guy" New Year's Eve, the last day of a year I will not remember fondly, was spent indulging in one of my longest enduring pleasures--I watched several Laurel and Hardy movies. I have loved them for so long I don't know when it started, certainly before the age of ten, because my father is a big fan as well. I am a connoisseur of the golden age of comedy, and appreciate Abbott and Costello, The Marx Brothers, Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton, but my greatest affection is for Stan and Ollie.

For a time when I was a teenager a local Detroit TV station played their films every day after school. This was easy to do because the greatest Laurel and Hardy movies are two-reelers--about a half-hour long. In one thirty-minute time slot it was possible to see two of the greatest geniuses of comedy in action. Stan Laurel, who was a Brit, a member of Chaplin's troupe, and owner of perhaps the most sublimely blank face ever to be captured on celluloid, and Oliver Hardy, an American from Georgia, rotund and forever dignified, even when falling off of roofs or being hit in the head with frying pans, were a team matched not in heaven but by Hal Roach, for whom they made most of their films. Both began in silent films--Hardy played the Tin Man in an early version of The Wizard of Oz--when Roach heard angels singing and decided to team them. They are the only comedy team that were popular in silents but then continued their popularity in the sound era, embellishing it by adding phrases to the cinema lexicon: "There's another nice mess you've gotten me into," and "Why don't you do something to help me?"

It started with the imagery--two men, one thin, one fat, in coats, vests and ties, derbies perched atop their heads. It was unspoken for the most part why they were together--friends, certainly, but tied together by some celestial bond that was beyond explanation. Most often they were single, and struggling to find employment, but were also married, hen-pecked husbands betrothed to shrewish wives who wore the pants in the family. Hardy played the smarter character, at least he thought he was smarter, while Laurel was the sweet and dumb one, though when pushed had a wicked mean streak. Hardy's most frequent comic gimmick was his Southern gentleman's dignity--wiggling his tie when he was embarrassed, and constantly getting hoisted on his own petard, while Laurel's blissful ignorance usually served him just well enough for him to survive, almost always coming out of things better than his more blustery partner.

Their best films are simply constructed, with the two hapless men trying to accomplish something but facing opposition by physics. There's Towed in a Hole, in which they attempt to renovate a boat, or Busy Bodies, when they start their first day working at lumber mill, or their greatest achievement, The Music Box (which won an Academy Award for Best Short Subject) which documents their Sisyphean struggle to carry a player-piano up a steep flight of stairs. When I visited Los Angeles my friend indulged me by making a pilgrimage to the location of that shoot, a short way off of Sunset Boulevard. The stairs are still there, marked by a plaque, and I bounded up them the best that I could.

They also specialized in the "tit-for-tat" film, the most famous of which was their greatest silent film, Big Business. The boys are Christmas tree salesman who get in a feud with a home-owner, played by James Finlayson, who would go on to be a foil in many of their films (he was something of a comic genius himself, a squinty-eyed, bushy-moustached little guy who would provide Dan Castellenata the "d'oh!" for Homer Simpson). Taking turns, Stan and Ollie rip apart Finlayson's house while Finlayson destroys the boys' car. They would repeat this magic with another comic foil, vertically-challenged Charlie Hall, in Them Thar Hills and it's sequel, Tit for Tat. What's so amazingly funny about these films is that there is a certain code to the mayhem. Ollie would stand still, watching curiously, as Hall would douse Ollie's trousers with gasoline and then light it, as if Ollie were admiring the handiwork.

Laurel and Hardy made some bad films, too, mostly the features late in their career. When physical comedians start to look old there's something dispiriting about their efforts. But they did make a fantastic four-reeler, about an hour long, called Sons of the Desert. This was their best married-life film, about two lugs who attempt to trick their wives so they can go to a convention of their lodge in Chicago. Ollie comes up with the idea to fake a nervous breakdown so a doctor can tell the missus that only a cruise to Honolulu is the answer. The only fly in the ointment comes when the ship they were supposed to be on sinks, and thus when they arrive back with ukuleles and pineapples, they have to hide in the attic. This is the set-up for one of my favorite bits of dialogue in any of their films, and one that my father and I still share. The boys have set up a hammock in the attic and bed down for the night. Stan says, "Here we are, just like two peas in a pot." Ollie patronizingly corrects him, "Not pot. Pod," drawing out the consonant D with a professorial air. He turns out the light and there is a beat of silence before Stan mimics him, "Pod-duh."

It's very few things that one loves in childhood that actually hold up well into adulthood, and Laurel and Hardy do for me. As I watched The Music Box the other night I still laughed like an idiot at such simple joys as Ollie getting poked in the eye by the end of a ladder, or the exquisite minute or so of film of them struggling to try to get the right hat on each of their heads. These two wonderful men gave cinema a forever-lasting gift.