

According to Nesteroff, peers of Laurel and Hardy, like Buster Keaton, suffered during the industry’s transition from silent films. The arrival of feature-length talkies in 1927 could have meant doom for the duo. The dynamic between Laurel and Hardy is lovable, and they have a certain charm that no other comics of the era had, I’d say even more so than Charlie Chaplin.” “Hardy was the stern one but only long enough to give the camera a really funny look, then he goes back to being sweet. Abbott was mean to Costello Bert is serious while Ernie gets to goof off,” says Kliph Nesteroff, author of The Comedians: Drunks, Thieves, Scoundrels and the History of American Comedy. “By virtue of comedy team alchemy, the straight man is usually a jerk, or at least always stern. Laurel was the manchild who drove Hardy up the wall, but in their films, the two swapped roles and didn’t stick to expectations rotten-tooth-and-nail. Typically, comedy duos have a designated straight man and a funny foil. Roach recognized how well they paired on-screen-starting with the basic Big Guy-Little Guy visual-and tapped into a style uniquely their own.
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(In it, Oliver robs Stan at gunpoint.) Both men had successful individual movie careers going, but they wouldn’t become “Laurel and Hardy” until pioneering film producer and director Hal Roach cast them in the 1927 silent short The Second Hundred Years. Laurel and Hardy first appeared on-screen together in the 1921 film The Lucky Dog, but not as the comedy team still popular today. Nicknamed “Babe” for his resemblance to a rotund infant, he too lit out for Los Angeles and quickly found work for several studios. He then went to Jacksonville as a vaudeville performer and ended up appearing in 1914 short made in Florida, Outwitting Dad. Oliver Hardy, meanwhile, was born in the small town of Harlem, Georgia, and grew up in the rural south until he went to Atlanta as a teenager to study music and sing. They toured the United States, but Laurel decided to stay, so he headed to Hollywood and made his film debut in the 1917 silent short Nuts in May.

Born in Lancashire, England, the son of a theater manager and an actress, Laurel began his career on stage as a teenager in Scotland, eventually joining a troupe of British music hall actors that included a young Charlie Chaplin. Laurel and Hardy, however, didn’t start out their careers as a unit. The bulk of their output came in the years 1927 to 1938 as they moved from silent shorts to “talkie” shorts to sound features. When all was said and done, Laurel and Hardy would appear together in an astonishing 106 films of varying length between 19. (As any member of the diehard Sons of the Desert fan club will tell you, Another Fine Mess is the 1930 film the actual catchphrase is often misquoted.) The legendary comedy duo was on top of the world, in the middle of a slew of hit movies, including 1932’s The Music Box, which won the first ever Academy Award for a live action short film. The lithe Stan Laurel had yet again gotten his portly partner Oliver Hardy involved in “another nice mess,” this time in 1937’s Way Out West. Reilly stars as Oliver Hardy, and Steve Coogan stars as Stan Laurel in the new release.
