Writer Kurt Vonnegut once said that his favourite comedians were LAUREL AND HARDY. “I used to laugh my head off at Laurel and Hardy,” said the author of Slaughterhouse-Five. “There is terrible tragedy there somehow. These men are too sweet to survive in this world and are in terrible danger all the time. They could so easily be killed.” What survives of the comedians – American Hardy died in 1957 and English-born Laurel died in 1965 – is 107 films released between 1921 and 1951. Their catchphrase was: “Well, here’s another nice mess you’ve gotten me into!” and their mixture of slapstick, wordplay and utterly charming comedy makes them the greatest comedy duo of all time. The Music Box, which depicts the pair’s hapless attempts to move a piano up a large flight of steps, won the first Academy Award for Live Action Short Film (Comedy) in 1932. “Those two fellows we played,” Oliver Hardy told an interviewer, “they were nice, very nice people. They never got anywhere because they were so very dumb, only they didn’t know they were dumb.” Their influence lives on in The Simpsons. Homer’s repeated use of the word “D’oh” was inspired by Jimmy Finlayson, the mustachioed Scottish actor who appeared in 33 Laurel and Hardy films. Above all, Laurel and Hardy (above, in Saps at Sea) are wonderfully, upliftingly, silly:
Ollie: “Call me a cab.”
Stan: “You’re a cab.”
(Another Fine Mess, 1930)
See: why Laurel and Hardy is still comedy genius
• Incidentally, the famous catch phrase of Laurel and Hardy is often misquoted as “Well, here’s another fine mess you’ve gotten us into” , the actual quote is “Well, here’s another nice mess you’ve gotten me into” (Laurel and Hardy website). The film was called Another Fine Mess
GALLERY COMPILED BY MARTIN CHILTON
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Ronald Grant Archive
