Mayo memories: Sunday matinees with comedy kings Laurel and Hardy
By Tom Gillespie
THE Sunday afternoon matinee in the old County Cinema on Castlebar’s Spencer Street was the highlight of the week for us youngsters in the late 1950s.
We queued up for the three o’clock showing, regardless of what was being screened.
The cinema manager, Willie Ainsworth, from McHale Road, would open the side door, next to Mitchell’s public house.
Inside the door was a small table with a cardboard box on top into which we placed the four old pennies admission. Then there would be a stampede to secure the best seats in the pit, which was located just below the large screen.
We had mainly black-and-white films then, but with no television the cinema was our only entertainment.
There were many regular features - Durango Kid, Three Stooges, Charlie Chaplin, Roy Rodgers and the Lone Ranger.
I was never a fan of the Three Stooges - Curly, Larry and Moe - as even as a youngster I felt their slapstick antics were over the top.
On the other hand the Laurel and Hardy movies were a comic breath of fresh air.
Laurel and Hardy were a comedy duo act during the early Classical Hollywood era of American cinema, consisting of Englishman Stan Laurel (1890 to 1965) and American Oliver Hardy (1892 to 1957).
Starting their career as a duo in the silent film era, they later successfully transitioned to ‘talkies'.
From the late 1920s to the mid-1950s, they were internationally famous for their slapstick comedy, with Laurel playing the clumsy, childlike friend to Hardy's pompous bully.
Their signature theme song, known as 'The Cuckoo Song’, ‘Ku-Ku’, or ‘The Dance of the Cuckoos’, was heard over their films' opening credits, and became as emblematic of them as their bowler hats.
Prior to emerging as a team, both had well-established film careers. Laurel had acted in over 50 films, and worked as a writer and director, while Hardy was in more than 250 productions.
Both had appeared in The Lucky Dog (1921), but were not teamed at the time. They first appeared together in a short film in 1926, when they signed separate contracts with the Hal Roach film studio.
They officially became a team in 1927 when they appeared in the silent short ‘Putting Pants on Philip’. They remained with Roach until 1940, and then appeared in eight B movie comedies for 20th Century Fox and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer from 1941 to 1945.
After finishing their film commitments at the end of 1944, they concentrated on performing stage shows, and embarked on a music hall tour of England, Ireland and Scotland.
They appeared as a team in 107 films, starring in 32 short silent films, 40 short sound films, and 23 full-length feature films.
They also made 12 guest or cameo appearances, including in the Galaxy of Stars promotional film of 1936.
On Wednesday, December 1, 1954, they made their sole American television appearance, when they were surprised and interviewed by Ralph Edwards on his live NBC-TV programme ‘This is Your Life’.
Since the 1930s, their works have been released in numerous theatrical reissues, television revivals, 8-mm and 16-mm home movies, feature-film compilations, and home videos.
In 2005, they were voted the seventh-greatest comedy act of all time by a UK poll of professional comedians. The official Laurel and Hardy appreciation society is The Sons of the Desert, after a fictitious fraternal society in the film of the same name.
According to Wikipedia, Stan Laurel was born Arthur Stanley Jefferson in Ulverston, Lancashire, England, into a theatrical family. His father, Arthur Joseph Jefferson, was a theatrical entrepreneur and theatre owner in northern England and Scotland who, with his wife, was a major force in the industry.
In 1905, the Jefferson family moved to Glasgow to be closer to their business mainstay of the Metropole Theatre, and Laurel made his stage debut in a Glasgow hall called the Britannia Panopticon one month short of his 16th birthday.
Arthur Jefferson secured Laurel his first acting job with the juvenile theatrical company of Levy and Cardwell, which specialised in Christmas pantomimes.
In 1909, Laurel was employed by Britain's leading comedy impresario Fred Karno as a supporting actor, and as an understudy for Charlie Chaplin.
In 1912, Laurel left England with the Fred Karno Troupe to tour the United States. Laurel had expected the tour to be merely a pleasant interval before returning to London. However, he decided to remain in the US.
In 1917, Laurel was teamed with Mae Dahlberg as a double act for stage and film. They were living as common-law husband and wife. The same year, Laurel made his film debut with Dahlberg in Nuts in May.
While working with Mae, he began using the name ‘Stan Laurel’ and changed his name legally in 1931. Dahlberg demanded roles in his films, and her tempestuous nature made her difficult to work with. Dressing room arguments were common between the two.
It was reported that producer Joe Rock paid her to leave Laurel and to return to her native Australia.
In 1925, Laurel joined the Hal Roach film studio as a director and writer. From May 1925 until September 1926, he received credit in at least 22 films.
Oliver Hardy was born Norvell Hardy in Harlem, Georgia. By his late teens, Hardy was a popular stage singer and he operated a movie house in Milledgeville, Georgia, the Palace Theatre, financed in part by his mother.
For his stage name he took his father's first name, calling himself ‘Oliver Norvell Hardy’, while offscreen his nicknames were ‘Ollie' and 'Babe'. The nickname ‘Babe' originated from an Italian barber near the Lubin Studios in Jacksonville, Florida, who would rub Hardy's face with talcum powder and say: ‘That's nice-a baby!’
Seeing film comedies inspired him to take up comedy himself and, in 1913, he began working with Lubin Motion Pictures in Jacksonville. He started by helping around the studio with lights, props, and other duties, gradually learning the craft as a script-clerk for the company.
It was around this time that Hardy married his first wife, Madelyn Saloshin. In 1914, Hardy was billed as ‘Babe Hardy’ in his first film, Outwitting Dad.
Between 1914 and 1916 Hardy made 177 shorts as Babe with the Vim Comedy Company, which were released up to the end of 1917.
Exhibiting a versatility in playing heroes, villains and even female characters, Hardy was in demand for roles as a supporting actor, comic villain or second banana.
For 10 years he memorably assisted star comic and Charlie Chaplin imitator Billy West, and appeared in the comedies of Jimmy Aubrey, Larry Semon and Charley Chase.
In total, Hardy starred or co-starred in more than 250 silent shorts, of which roughly 150 have been lost.
He was rejected for enlistment by the Army during World War I due to his large size.
In 1917, after the collapse of the Florida film industry, Hardy and his wife Madelyn moved to California to seek new opportunities.