Stan Laurel

Growing up in Flint, Michigan, I had the opportunity to select from a wide array of theatres to enjoy my Saturdays in. I sometimes chose the Capitol, which ran the first-run pictures along with the Palace. They were the most elegant of their kind at the time with wide screens and huge stages that brought vaudeville performers from many groups to sellout crowds in the early twenties through the late 30's.

Both theater screens glistened to the 1980's until the advent of home movies took over. The Capitol stands with many private offices in its building still occupied. The Palace became a parking lot for the downtown revitalization of Flint, which has had it's up and downs.

I sometimes chose the Regent or the old Strand on Saginaw Street, where they had serial type films that kept you coming back week after week to see who would do what to whom. They also carried a lot of B grade westerns and comedies, along with some war type pictures.

It was there that I first encountered the comedy genius of one Stan Laurel. He was born Arthur Stanley Jefferson in 1890 and had his first debut on the vaudeville stages at age 16 at Pickard's museum in Glasgow. He was taken as an understudy of Charlie Chaplin early in the century while on his first tour of the United States.

In 1926, while in the Hal Roach Studios, he was partnered up with a young Oliver "Babe" Hardy in a short called "Forty Five Minutes From Hollywood." The two later were in "From Soup to Nuts" and later as stars in "Pardon Us" in 1931 as Laurel and Hardy. Stan was the brains of the duo but played the fall guy in most films.

Stan usually played a childishly innocent man who always looked up to his good friend Oliver Hardy, whether it was deserved or not. Common shticks included crying in cases of great predicaments, taking instructions literally at all times and mixing up his lines. With Oliver Hardy, they often had a scene in their films where they would get into a fight with another person that consisted solely of destroying property. The duo would destroy something the opponent values while the opponent looks on and does not resist. When they are done, the opponent does the same to the duo, while they refrain from resisting and so on.

Wide, "hanger-in-my-mouth" smile, spiky hair sported in all of his films, and of course, the "whiny face" for which he was famous. Laurel & Hardy are known as one of the best comedy teams. They retired from films in 1950, but Stan & Oliver went on a tour of England and appeared in many stage shows for years afterwards.

Stan loved western movies, and, for a while, his company produced singing cowboy pictures. It was only after his accountant advised him of a sagging box office return on his investment did he stop production. The Hollywood film industry has benefited from the input and labors of Laurel and Hardy.

These two men were a major impact on my early years and brought me many happy weekends. Later in my life, I began to collect a lot of their films on VHS format and have many in my archives with these gifted actors. Their humor has been copied by many but never duplicated with the same tempo.

Oliver Hardy passed away on August 7, 1957, and his ashes were interred in the Masonic section of Valhalla Memorial Park in California. Stan Laurel died on February 23, 1965 and is buried in Forest Lawn Hollywood Hills in Los Angeles.

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