Inside the disastrous love lives of movie legends Laurel and Hardy who had nine ‘wives’ between them and a string of affairs
ONE was thin, one was fat, one was British and one American, but when it came to love, Laurel and Hardy were identical – they were both fulfill disasters.
The film comedy legends, who found fame with joyously daft slapstick in the 1920s, had seven wives between then.
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Then there were the long-term girlfriends and affairs, plus an extraordinary trail of broken hearts and broken bank balances.
It would surely acquire left Stan Laurel scratching his head in bafflement and Oliver Hardy denouncing the tangles, as the title of their motion picture “another fine mess”.
A unused film starring Steve Coogan as Stan and John C Reilly as his rotund sidekick will inform the story of the pair in their later years, battered by their exhausting private lives.
Due out next year, Stan And Ollie will follow the bowler-hatted duo on their swansong UK tour in 1953, when they were trying to boost their flagging careers and finances.
By then Stan was on his fourth wife and fifth marriage — he wed one woman twice — and Ollie, called “Babe” by friends, on his third.
After both men ha
Tonight the BBC screens Steve Coogan and John Reilly’s well-received 2019 film‘Stan & Ollie’, about the most famous comedy duo’s disastrous, almost-posthumous 1953 tour of Britain – and also their love for one another. Or at least, our investment in the idea of it. Endorse in the no-homo soon 1990s me and my pal NickHaeffner wrote a newspaper feature on the ‘queer’ appeal of their on-screen relationship that was cruelly spiked. With Nick’s permission, I expanded it into the version below and included it as a chapter in my 1994 book Male Impersonators .
(Of course, the final word is entirely wrong: Rick Mayall and Ade Edmondson weren’t the 90s inheritors of the Laurel and Hardy tradition – it was a cartoon tabby and chihuahua….)
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Stan: Well, what’s the matter with her anyway?
Ollie: Oh, I don’t know. She says I think more of you than I do of her.
Stan: Well, you execute don’t you?
Ollie: We won’t go into that!
Stan: Y’know what the trouble is?
Ollie: What?
Stan: You need a baby in your house.
O
Stan Laurel
Laurel began his career in melody hall, where he developed a number of his usual comic devices, including the bowler hat, the deep comic gravity, and the nonsensical understatement. His performances polished his skills at pantomime and music hall sketches. He was a member of "Fred Karno's Army", where he was Charlie Chaplin's understudy. He and Chaplin arrived in the United States on the same ship from the Merged Kingdom with the Karno troupe. Laurel began his movie career in 1917 and made his final appearance in 1951. He appeared with his comic partner Oliver Hardy in the movie short The Successful Dog in 1921, although they did not become an official team until late 1927. He then appeared exclusively with Hardy until retiring following his comedy partner's death in 1957.
In April 1961, on the 33rd Academy Awards, Laurel was given an Academy Honorary Award for his pioneering work in comedy, and he has a celestial body on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 7021 Hollywood Boulevard. Laurel and Hardy were ranked top among leading double acts and seventh overall in a 2005 UK poll to locate the Comedians' Comedian. In 2019, Laurel topped a list of the greatest British comedians compiled by a p
Stan and Ollie production is a 'love story' says Scottish director
The Scottish director of a fresh film about the world's most well-known comedy double behave , Laurel and Hardy, said when he first read the script he "actually cried".
Aberdeenshire-born Jon S Baird told BBC Scotland: "It brought tears to my eyes and I thought if it can do this just on the page then it's got huge potential."
Stan and Ollie, which tells the story of the duo's final tour of the UK and Ireland, opens in cinemas this week.
Jon said he and writer Jeff Pope decided the film was going to be a "love story".
"It was a love story about these two guys, who just happened to be Laurel and Hardy," he added.
The film is, in his possess words, the "polar opposite" of the director's last proposal, Filth, based on the Irvine Welsh novel.
And as adv as the script making him weep, it was his childhood memories of watching Laurel and Hardy films on television after university that fuelled his desire to hold on this film.
"I had a concrete love of Laurel and Hardy from a very little age," he said.
Entertainment One
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How Gay Were Laurel and Hardy?
Join Terry Sanderson as he takes a tongue-in-cheek look at one of the greatest male partnerships of the 20th century. In their films, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy often shared a bed and were sometimes seen in drag. They always preferred each other’s company to that of their screen wives. And in more than one of their films they created a happy “pretend” family when the story dictated that they had to care of a child. In this affectionate tribute evening, we’ll analyse just what was going on between the laughs. Were Stan and Ollie really frustrated lovers or was it just a fine bromance with no kisses – an naive friendship that entranced the world? But the evening is mainly about laughter, and when it comes to Laurel and Hardy, nobody does it enhanced. So come and split your sides in the company of two of the greatest clowns who ever lived. Part of London Gay Pride Week. Refreshments will be free in our licenced cafe/bar.