Laurel and Hardy's Laughing 20's

- Through a cardboard door out of the past

steps a beaming moon faced 23 year old comedian

named Oliver Norvell Hardy.

Oliver announces he's to be married

in this comedy called Fatty's Fatal Fun.

Made two world wars ago in 1915 when life and the movies

were both much simpler.

Babe Hardy, as he was then known,

made a striking figure in his striped pants

and cutaway coat.

And even plausible, though plump, lover.

But he was an obscure comedian in those days.

One of the unknown hundreds who dashed madly about

in the deluge of minor comedies

that flooded the silent screen.

Fame, stardom and an immortal partnership with Stan Laurel

lay some 12 long years and uncountable pratfalls,

pins in the pants and pies in the face ahead.

Young Stan Laurel looked like

this at the beginning of the decade,

which silent comedy at its height

was to make the laughing 20's.

Stan played a brash patent medicine salesman

in Kill or Cure, one of his early Hal Roach comedies.

Laurel, skilled at pantomime,

was polished at the best of schools,

Fred Karno's English Music Mall Company,

where he understudied the star Charlie Chaplin.

Behind that bush mustache lurks Oliver Hardy.

By the mid 20's Hardy had joined the Hal Roach organization

where he continued to play supporting roles

despite a mad studio search

for badly needed new comedy stars.

Vivien Oakland begins to succumb to the musical charms

of her new border, Milton the Mad Maestro.

In this 1926 blend of slapstick and French bedroom farce

husband Glenn Tryon completes the triangle

as Oliver fiddles while Vivien burns.

Six months later Laurel and Hardy were both to appear

in a Hal Roach comedy called 45 minutes from Hollywood,

but never in the same scene together.

Stan is almost unrecognizable behind that big black mustache

as an innocent hotel guest harassed

by a pair of battling intruders.

Hardy clad in a sheet is the house detective

struggling to break up the fight by breaking down the door.

By the following year, 1927, Laurel and Hardy

had been cast together several times

and were beginning to pair up purely by accident.

In films like Sugar Daddies can be seen

the gradual evolution

of one of the greatest of comedy teams.

But four years in the names Laurel

and Hardy blazed from the screen.

Costars at last in Putting Pants on Philip.

The first film billed to the talents of Stanley and Oliver.

The plot was supremely simple.

Uncle Ollie had just met nephew Stan at the boat.

Stan is visiting from Scotland

and the attention attracted by his kilts

mightily embarrasses natty Hardy,

one of the 10 best dressed men in upper Sandusky.

"Walk behind me," says Oliver, "far behind."

Uncle Ollie pleads

with the rapidly growing crowd to disperse.

With Hardy in the role of a sport

and Laurel as of all unthinkable things a lady chaser,

Putting Pants on Philip differs

from the later Laurel and Hardy films

for Stan and Oliver had yet to invent

the fumbling derby hatted characters

that were to make them world famous.

Years later when his career had ended

Stan Laurel was to name this his favorite comedy.

Laurel and Hardy were old pros

who in hundreds of pictures

had thoroughly learned the exacting job

of being silent screen comedians.

Laurel was in addition a comedy innovator

and many of Stan and Oliver's best gags

were to originate with him.

They worked without pretension and for the moment.

Little dreaming that their comedy would continue

to delight audiences more than 20 years after

the camera stopped grinding

and the glee lights flickered out.

Oliver dashed toward a building

which residents of the Los Angeles area

have doubtless already recognized as the Culver City Hotel.

Like so many Hal Roach comedies

Philip was shot with an eye to economy

just a block or two from the studio itself.

What's all the excitement about, wonders Hardy.

The director of this first Laurel and Hardy starring comedy

was Clyde Bruckman, a master of the sight gag

who was also to direct Harold Lloyd.

The cameraman was George Stevens,

famous today as the producer director of Shane, Giant

and The Greatest Story Ever Told.

"Hold it," says Uncle Oli, "let me show you how."

"Just an old Scottish custom," says Stanley.

"Just an old American custom," says Oliver.

A swank dinner party is afoot at the J. Medberry Frumps',

a newly rich couple just learning

to dog paddle in the social swim.

At the door a new butler and waiter

fresh from their triumphs assistant deck swabs

at Dougan's Bean Wagon.

In the few months between Putting Pants on Philip

and this comedy, called From Soup to Nuts,

Laurel and Hardy had found their derbies

and the characters they were to play

for the rest of their movie lives.

"I have fallen down," admits Oliver.

The harassed hostess is Anita Garvin,

one of the Hal Roach studio's harem of girls

who could remain appealing

through every slapstick indignity.

"I have fallen down again," Oliver confesses.

This tribute to the cake bakers' art

was directed by E. Livingston Kennedy,

better known as comedian Edgar Kennedy,

master of the slow burn.

Host Frump, played by Tiny Sandford grabs for a towel,

only it's not a towel, it's Stanley's shirt.

In this moment of crises Stanley takes command.

"Over here, double quick," says Anita.

"Did you gong Madame?" asks the efficient Oliver.

Anita orders, "please have the salad served, undressed."

Fastidious Hardy dishes up the soup

while greens man Laurel's in the kitchen

preparing the salad.

Chip and Dale you made the chairs too high.

Alert to every order Stan serves the salad undressed.

Says Stanley to the host, "they wanted it served undressed

"and that's the way they're gonna get it."

In 1927 Jimmy Finlayson, Laurel and Hardy,

and Charley Chase, Hal Roach's top stars

in their only appearance together

improvised comedy on the spot

as carefree inmates of the happy asylum.