The New Movie Magazine (Jan-Sep 1935)

Laurels for Hardy By CHARLES DARNTON Small picture above: A touching scene, full of mother love, innocent childhood, and sobs, from "The Hoosegow." The two gentlemen in a thoughtful pose, just after winning a beauty contest. The sunset they are admiring is behind Hardy's hat IF YOU have an ear for music, surely you know that cuckoo Prelude in B Flat, Ta-ra-ta-rooto-loo-w-h-e-e-g-r-r-r-z-z-z-oof ! Right — introducing Laurel and Hardy. Only now these goofy comedians are set to Victor Herbert's music, having scored the hit of their lives in "Babes in Toyland." Oddly enough, Hardy — the blimpish gentleman — never is called anything but "Babe" in Hollywood, though he sports no less a name than Oliver Norvell Hardy. The other's known as "Stan," all that's left of Arthur Stanley Jefferson. Their latest and greatest success reminds me of what Ann Harding once said when I asked her what she would like to play most of all: "Fantasy, the legendary sort of thing. I've always wanted to The New Movie Magazine, May, 1935 do it. But Walt Disney, the greatest genius the screen has produced, beat me to it." And now Laurel and Hardy have stolen a march — anyway "The March of the Toy Soldiers"— on Miss Harding. In this fantastic relation another genius comes to mind. For just as Charlie Chaplin eternally typifies the under-dog, so Laurel and Hardy faithfully, if ludicrously, represent the under-man. Curiously, too, Chaplin and Laurel made their first American appearance together, for that matter stepped off the same cattleboat. Brought over from England in 1910 to join Fred Karno's Comedians, they opened at the Colonial in a vaudeville skit called "A Night in an English Secret Society" which, unhappily, got New York's goat instead of AND VICE VERSA its kind applause. Discouraged, they wanted to go right back home. But they were packed off to Fall River, where "A Night in an English Music Hall" was tried out. Then they sneaked back to New York with it, scared stiff, only to thaw out in the sun of success. It was at the American Music Hall that their luck changed. I recall seeing Chaplin, as the "drunk," fall out of a stage box, but I had no idea he would one day fall into a fortune. After their warming metropolitan experience they went on a winter's tour of the country and nearly froze to death. It was so cold they had to huddle around the stove in their car. They traveled "tourist" in one of those cars where you can do anything if you know how. They didn't. "We were a motley crew," Laurel solemnly assured me. "Tell him about the busted sardines," grimly suggested Hardy. "They weren't sardines," protested Laurel, "they were herring." "With tomato sauce," succulently added Hardy. "That was the trouble," explained Laurel. "I never saw sauce spread so fast and so far. You see, we were heating the can on the stove when it exploded." "Blew up all over everybody," amplified Hardy. "How did Chaplin take it?" I asked. "Just as it came," replied Laurel, matterof-factly. "We weren't fussy in those days. We had to get along on very little and pay our own expenses. Chaplin was getting fifty dollars a week, I got only twenty. But that first year I saved three hundred." Thrifty laddies, these English! OR has Hardy done so badly. He now is rolling in wealth as well as fat. And not long ago he had a comedy in his own name, "Oliver the Eighth," though I must say it seemed to be motivated by an acquisitive lady who rubbed out seven husbands and then had designs on him. Of course, there's still lots of room on Oliver for designs. Laurel having lolloped off somewhere, I turned to Hardy and inquired: "How did you boys happen to get together?" "I suppose," he murmured, "it was fate." I thought he had said "fat" until he gravely added: "You see, I'm a fatalist." Buried in that flesh, then, was a soul! Born in Harlem (you're wrong), Georgia, Hardy studied law, then, quite logically, joined a medicine show. Later he went into vaudeville and musical comedy. (He sings tenor, but doesn't speak it.) He came to California with the Vim Company— stimulating name — and played in pictures with the late Larry Semon. In 1927 Hal Roach hitched him up with Laurel, and today both members of the team agree it has been great fun. But it would seem that Hardy might likewise have found it great danger, what with furniture and pianos and houses and things falling on him, not to mention slopping around in more water than any man since Noah. "No," he placidly remarked, "nothing really serious has happened to me. Naturally, there have been a few little things. {Please turn to page 63) 25