#stan laurel

detrixsta:

Thanksgiving  circa 1927. 

Publicity photo of the newly teamed Laurel & Hardy. 

(My guess is it was taken around the time “The Battle Of The Century” –if the ink on Ollie’s tie is any clue…)

His Time on Laurel and Hardy RUINED His Life (Forever)

Fuck off phone for wanting me to watch this and fuck off idiot me for doing it. Oh well. I found myself wondering who got his life ruined and seeing the first comment mention “Stan’s vision” made me roll my eyes thinking it was going to be about the 40s movies and how some actor didn’t find success after an appearance in those and said L&H movies getting the blame, accompanied with the usual “Stan didn’t get any say” sob story.

Well, I suppose I should feel pleasantly surprised because instead of that crap there’s different crap. Still, different same old same old, except for the part about Stan being blind (got to love the “I didn’t know that” comments) and the part about how it was Stan’s life that got ruined by L&H. That’s news too. Lol, it’s not that I couldn’t believe it, or how Babe’s life was ruined by the same thing, as someone comments, but where’s the actual theory?

Bold of this Tim Blane to put his face on this rubbish. And what even are those sources in the video?!

Things that particularly annoyed me:

Making it sound like Stan and Babe were some useless fuckwits until brilliant Hal Roach brought them together and guided them to success. Nothing against Hal but that’s not how it went. It actually took a long time before L&H officially became a comedy duo. And Hal didn’t invent the characters they played either. You might as well say he wiped they asses after poo-poos. Maybe he did. Fuck if those two could do anything without some guidance from Hal. Just surprised Leo McCarey doesn’t get a mention. Might actually prove that whoever wrote the thing isn’t a real fan.

Stan being so upset when Babe died he never wanted to work again. Shut the fuck up with this sentimental crap and read about Stan’s own health problems (not including blindness), which actually put an end to their career together before Babe became unable to work. I get the idea that Babe’s death was the thing that, according to the video, ruined Stan’s life, left him “in despair”, and okay, if Babe had died around 1930, and Stan had disappeared, maybe began drinking or whatever, you might see a connection there, but why pretend that Stan was still a young man in the 1950s with more success waiting if only his partner had been there? Is it a way to elevate Babe somehow? I don’t get it and I don’t get why that would be needed. But I’d love some explanation instead of repeating the same things over and over.

Nobody ever played as much golf as Oliver Hardy if you believe this and, admittedly, many other “sources”. I bet he once or twice wanted to leave for an agreed round of golf when still needed on set, and through the usual exaggerations, a fun story about his conflict of interests became a mad daily obsession.

Both Stan and Babe being so busy playing Stan and Ollie that they didn’t get to know each other. How does that even work? Would require some heavy-duty method acting, I suppose. Like, sod off. Of course they spent more time together on those later tours since, well, touring together, but enough with the “not friends until later” bull. Or maybe it depends on what’s considered friends. One thing is for sure, if they weren’t friends during the years of success, it wasn’t because Babe was always golfing and Stan working. Besides, I think Stan enjoyed the work, often together with collaborators, so “toiling away” is not the expression for it.

During this time they realised they actually had much more in common than they initially thought and developed a true friendship.

So that’s how TRUE friendships work. I wonder what those common things were and how they were detected after two decades of ignorance?

It was less than a decade after his retirement that he reunited with his former partner in death.

Getting close to the tackiness in these.

Okay, the part about Stan’s family being, for whatever reason, little knowing about how he enjoyed doing comedy and the part about Stan being the understudy of a whole vaudeville troupe, instead of the usual mention of Chaplin, are hilarious. As is the idea of him hooking up with Hal. Must have made Harold jealous. No wonder they parted ways.

[Hal Roach] began using him as a performer in some of his films. This is how Stan was eventually paired up with Oliver Hardy.

How demeaning is it to say someone “began using him as a performer”? Why not just tell that Stan got the job for the first time because Toto quit/was let go and later he got a whole series of his own and even laterer (heh) Roach hired him for the third time. And that is how Stan was eventually paired up with Babe if I’m a Disney Princess.

Never before have I heard that Babe was a gigantic lover of the cinema. Lol, is that supposed to be a joke about his size? Enough with the nonsense about his intentions to become a lawyer and how he owned a movie theater. I wonder how all the “experts” who choose to believe these publicity tales think he could afford one…

What part of this story surprised you the most?

Umm…

Anyways, I also read the comments and there was a hilarious one by someone trying to escape racism in America objecting to Babe in blackface in the clip from Pardon Us. I wonder how long it will take before womanface becomes forbidden? Not because of actual women of course, but because it causes hurty feelings to trans people… Personally, I think all the faces are about how you do them. And it wouldn’t be about L&H if there wasn’t someone insisting on calling Stan and Ollie overgrown children. I think it sounds even more disgusting than childlike innocents. Could be that I’ve grown somewhat immune to that thanks to overexposure. But childface in general is so gross.

Should Married Men Go Home?(1928)

Stan Laurel, 1927

Moving Picture World, 10 December 1927

The Battle of the Century(1927)

One Good Turn(1931)

The Rogue Song(1930)

Me and My Pal(1933)

This was in my local paper the other day. The writer argues that Big Business perfectly demonstrates what will happen if conflicts are left to escalate: Stan & Ollie are having an ever-worsening fight with Fin, a cop appears but doesn’t at first do anything except take notes, eventually some sort of agreement is reached but the damages are extensive for both sides.

Great to see someone use Laurel & Hardy as an example in their article. What of course happens in Big Business after accusations, crying and handshakes is this:

Big Business(1929)

Stan Laurel

Oliver Hardy et Stan Laurel, 1930