Oliver Hardy

This polished, fast-moving, complex story with solid production values was an artistic, box office and critical success. Though it was a meaningless concession to salve his bouts of temperament, this was the first of two films nominally credited as “A Stan Laurel Production. ” In fact, it was just business, and business as usual. During principal photography, Roach wrote his son, then away at military school, of making “a very funny Laurel & Hardy picture. Had the Laurels over for dinner…borrowed his fishing boat last weekend and went to Coronado for yellowtail. ” The lavish shooting required 48 days. The cast included Alan Hale and Sidney Toler, soon to become the next “Charlie Chan” at Fox, and effervescent Betty Healy, former wife of Ted Healy of Three Stooges fame. This was her only movie; she played Mrs. Laurel, and remained his lifelong friend, as so many surviving letters now attest. Also featuring an intricate and lively musical score by Roy Shield, which the studio used as “stock tunes” to score concurrent Charley Chase and Our Gang comedies, as well as the reissues of five Laurel & Hardy shorts. Directed by Harry Lachman, a visual stylist and neighbor of Roach who was brought in to help the studio graduate from the custard pie era. With Daphne Pollard, James Finlayson, Iris Adrian, and Lona Andre, who said in 1990 she had never seen the film! Looking at a still photo, she remembered, “This one (Hardy) was always doing something that made the other one (Laurel) laugh; and I mean he would roar!”

It was all a dream... But imagine, Laurel and Hardy, The Three Stooges, Latin spitfire Lupe Velez, Mickey Mouse, Jimmy Durante and Arthur Treacher all together for one big Hollywood Party. He-man jungle movie star Schnarzen the Conqueror's (Durante) movies are starting to slip at the box office because his tigers look anemic. To woo Baron Munchausen (Jack Pearl) into selling him some more aggressive tigers, Schnarzen throws a star-studded bash. But when Liondora (George Givot), Schnarzen's archrival learns of the plan, he crashes the party disguised as a Greek baron. So sit back, the fun's about to begin because the party's just getting started in this wacky celebrity free for all!

Carpenters drive to and “work” at a planing mill. Relying heavily on pantomime (Stan speaks only 24 words!), as well as violent but unhurried slapstick, this rates as one of the team’s finest shorts. When fans wrote to Laurel late in life and asked for recommendations, he would often say BUSY BODIES and TOWED IN A HOLE. Curiously they were made within a year of one another, and have the same tructure — Laurel & Hardy, dressed in overalls, start out in an open car, driving to work, where their construction labors are unsupervised nonsense, and they wreck everything, including their even-then antique flivver for the finish. Directed by Lloyd French. With Charlie Hall.

After too much high living, the fellows rent a trailer and take to the mountains for gout-ridden Hardy’s health. There they unwittingly drink from well water laced with homemade liquor. According to Billy Gilbert, who plays the doctor prescribing a mountain-rest cure, “the fellows” is how everyone at the studio referred to the Laurel & Hardy characters. Aficionados today are still acting out the memorable, musical “pom-pom” business. The “outdoors” set was built on Stage 2 in only 16 hours after a planned scenic exterior location at the mouth of the Santa Ynez Canyon presented unfavorable weather conditions. Directed by Charley Rogers. With Charlie Hall and Mae Busch as the sullen motorist and his stranded wife.

Mousetrap salesmen visit Switzerland where they run into difficulties with a disagreeable gorilla and a tyrannical chef at a Tyrolean hotel. The film features a romantic subplot with opera singers Walter Woolf King from Broadway (and the Marx Brothers’ A NIGHT AT THE OPERA) and Della Lind from Vienna (later a neighbor of Laurel’s at his Oceana Hotel residence in Santa Monica during the 1960s). Eric Blore from the Astaire-Rogers pictures adds just the right note. Many individual scenes are notable, including where Stan feigns illness and creates a “snowstorm” to trick a St. Bernard dog into giving up his keg of brandy. Expensive production values (as demanded by Laurel in his new contract) befitting a picturesque spectacle, including location shooting at Stone Canyon and Lake Arrowhead, contributed to a huge financial loss, the worst in the studio’s history to date. Laurel’s private life was in shambles at the time, and in a key disagreement with Roach, he failed to see the wisdom in some editing The Boss ordered. It was during a swaying trestle bridge scene involving a piano and that certain gorilla, a sequence made famous by noted critic James Agee’s celebration of it. Directed by John G. Blystone. With Anita Garvin, persuaded by Laurel to return to the company.

Traveling fish peddlers — crabs a specialty — devise a big business idea: buy a dilapidated old boat to fix up and “eliminate the middle-man. ” A superb blend of relaxed slapstick and sophisticated visual humor, this short offers a concise assessment of the team’s comedic relationship when Ollie pauses during a breach of friendly relations to ask Stan, “Isn’t this silly? Here we are, two grown-up men, acting like a couple of children. ” Directed by George Marshall. With Billy Gilbert.

A pair of wannabe bandits join the service of a dashing nobleman secretly masquerading as Fra Diavolo, a notorious outlaw planning a jewel heist.

The Laurel and Hardy Show is a syndicated version of The Boys, which showcased collections of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy's genius work.

A Laurel and Hardy World War II propaganda film aimed at comically demonstrating the uses of various wood-based products in the American economy.

Three compilations of enduring comedy shorts from legendary silent film duo Laurel and Hardy plus selections from Max Davidson and Charley Chase.

See the classic comedy duo get into “another fine mess” in three hilarious shorts filled with baby hijinks, home disrepair, and ghostly mayhem!

Leading a regiment of Kentucky riflemen during the War of 1812, John Wayne is the frontiersman who battles to save his love, a French general's daughter, and his homeland from speculators, after the Battle of New Orleans. A colorized version of this film was released on home video in 1990.

An affectionate and appreciative look back at silent film comedies and thrillers from early the 20th century up through the 1920s.

A miner's beautiful daughter comes between two ruthless thugs who are plotting to kill her father and steal his claim.

This 1925 loose adaptation of L. Frank Baum's classic tale stars forgotten silent screen comic Larry Semon, and is notable for an early appearance by Oliver Hardy as the Tin Man.

An Iowa girl comes to Hollywood and achieves stardom with the help of a publicity man. Laurel and Hardy play themselves as actors on the set.