#LIST OF LAUREL AND HARDY MOVIES MOVIE#
0&((window.dataLayer,eventsQueue),eventsQueue=),isCurrentlyReporting=!1)}function initializeEventsFromDom(t,e)=domify,=uri,=pageUri,=find,=findAll,=matches,=closest,=getFirstChildElement,=getPos,=prependChild,=insertBefore,=insertAfter,=replaceElement,=removeElement,=clearChildren, first official foray into features was a cameo appearance in “The Hollywood Revue of 1929” (1929), a musical variety meant to introduce MGM’s silent movie stars to sound. (The videos included are not indicative of the pristine Blu-ray restorations.) Unless noted, all are in the Blu-ray collection. We’ve chosen 25 essential shorts, presented alphabetically. Laurel and Hardy have aged remarkably well with their emphasis on physical humor and slapstick, the universal language of laughter. In an email, film historian Leonard Maltin, who wrote the book on Movie Comedy Teams, said, “They’ve never looked or sounded as good as they do, that’s for sure.” On The Definitive Restorations, the films themselves don’t look like they’re pushing a century.
#LIST OF LAUREL AND HARDY MOVIES PLUS#
The set contains 2K and 4K digital restorations of the team’s two best features, Sons of the Desert and Way Out West, plus 17 mostly essential shorts, along with over eight hours of commentaries, interviews, archival photos, posters and studio files, and rarities, such as “That’s That,” an outtakes reel compiled for Laurel’s birthday in 1937. The team is seen to its best advantage on Laurel & Hardy: The Definitive Restorations, a recently released four-disc Blu-ray collection distributed by Kit Parker Films. And the global appreciation society, the Sons of the Desert, formed in 1965 “to perpetuate the spirit and genius of Laurel and Hardy,” is still going strong. Reilly and Steve Coogan brilliantly portrayed them in the affectionate Stan & Ollie. Baby boomers discovered them on television. Hanna-Barbera created a short-loved animated series, The Laurel and Hardy Show, in 1966.
They are in Vladimir and Estragon’s DNA in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. They were caricatured in 1930s Warner Bros. “The relationship that Laurel and Hardy had was so delightful and such a hard thing to do,” he said in a 1959 radio broadcast included on the four-CD box set, Lenny Bruce: Let the Buyer Beware. Even “sick” comic Lenny Bruce was charmed by them. Fields, and Mae West, whose subversive, anti-authority personas resonated with rebellious college students. “The Boys,” as they were affectionately called, never had a Zeitgeist revival moment during the Vietnam War era as did the Marx Brothers, W.C.
They survived the transition from silent to sound films and made more than 100 shorts and features together. As contract players for producer Hal Roach, they were first teamed in 1927. They appeared for the first time together, but not as a team, in the 1917 Laurel comedy, Lucky Dog. Hardy, a native of Harlem, Georgia, was the mustachioed long-suffering big one, the deluded “strong” who grandiosely took it upon himself to help the “weak” Laurel. Laurel, a British-born music-hall performer in the same troupe as Charlie Chaplin, was the thin and perpetually befuddled one (offscreen, he took the upper hand in creating the team’s routines). Grande, himself a fan (“Who’s not?” he asked rhetorically), hung it in Joey and Chandler’s apartment, where it became a piece of iconic set design and, he proudly noted, introduced new generations to the comedy duo. studio prop house and found an unframed black-and-white Laurel and Hardy poster from their 1928 short Leave ’Em Laughing. And so it was kismet when he was poking around a Warner Bros. That visual Easter egg is a poster of Laurel and Hardy, perhaps the screen’s most beloved comedy team.įriends set decorator Greg Grande said in a phone interview he was reminded of Laurel and Hardy when he watched rehearsals for the fledgling series’ pilot episode and saw in roommates Joey and Chandler a similar comedy dynamic and close-knit bond. Newfound fans watching the 25 weekday hours of Friends reruns on TBS or who are streaming all ten seasons on HBO Max may have noticed a poster in Joey and Chandler’s apartment of a rotund guy and a skinny guy. Laurel and Hardy in Battle of the Century.