Trivia / Laurel and Hardy

• Beam Me Up, Scotty!: Ollie's catchphrase was "Well, here's another nice mess you've gotten me into!", which is generally remembered as "Well, here's another fine mess you've gotten me into, Stanley!"
• California Doubling: For Love or Mummy is set in Florida, though it was actually filmed in Cape Town, South Africa.
• The Cast Showoff: Ollie had quite a set of pipes. (For those who don't know what that means, it means that he sings really well.) Plus, both the boys frequently got to show off their dancing, especially in Way Out West.
• Creator Backlash: Laurel and Hardy (particularly Laurel) later gave negative comments towards their 1940s films for 20th Century Fox and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. This was largely due to the duo being given little creative freedom on those movies.
  • Interestingly, more recent research reveals that Laurel partially directed at least one of the films. What's more, Hardy included one of the duo's Fox films, Jitterbugs (1943) on his 'Top 5 Favorite Films' list.
  • Stan Laurel later called the production of Robinson Crusoeland, the team's final film, "an abortion." Production was so chaotic that an entire book was recently written on it.
  • Producer Hal Roach disliked Babes in Toyland. Apparently, this stemmed from creative differences between Roach and Laurel.
• The Danza: Laurel and Hardy occasionally played other characters, particularly early in their partnership, but are best remembered for their many shorts and feature-length entries as the characters "Mr. Stanley Laurel" and "Mr. Oliver Hardy" or "Stan" and "Ollie".
  • The early short Putting Pants on Phillip is maybe the best known "alternate" interpretation of the duo, featuring Stan as a young Scotsman determined to keep his kilt on despite his uncle's (Hardy) attempts at... well, see the title.
  • A number of the minor characters are also named after their actors — Officer Kennedy in Night Owls is played by Edgar Kennedy, Mr Finlayson in One Good Turn by James Finlayson, and so on.
• Dyeing for Your Art: There was a real piano inside the packing case during the filming of The Music Box, as Stan Laurel felt it was necessary to convey the correct weight-however, this was only when it was sliding down the stairs. The packing case was empty when the duo had to carry it up the stairs, but it was still quite heavy, so Stan and Ollie are actually struggling with the case as they carry it up.
• Enforced Method Acting: Ollie's Aside Glances were often left for the last shot of the day. If he looks genuinely harried and frustrated, it's because he'd just been shooting for six straight hours and didn't want to miss his tee time at the golf course.
• Executive Meddling: When their (separate) contracts with Hal Roach expired, the boys decided to work at Fox Studios as a contractual team instead. Big mistake. The studio made many big changes that according to most fans, sent the duo's career into the decline and ended with the disastrous Robinson Crusoeland.
• Fake American: In real life, Stan Laurel was born in Lancashire, England.
• Franchise Zombie: Larry Harmon's attempts to make more Laurel and Hardy-related material after the duo's death. He succeeded somewhat with the 1960s Hanna-Barbera series, but flopped spectacularly with the 1999 film The All-New Adventures of Laurel and Hardy: For Love or Mummy.
• Harpo Does Something Funny: Stan and Ollie were masters of improvised comedy. They rarely rehearsed a scene because they wanted to capture the "magic" on film. Once when a guest star asked if they were going to rehearse, Stan Laurel shot back, "Do you want to spoil it?"
• Hostility on the Set: The animated series was plagued by a troubled relationship between Hanna-Barbera, Larry Harmon, and co-producer David L. Wolper, to the point where it was a major factor in there never being a second season. Tellingly, Jim MacGeorge, who was brought in as Ollie's voice actor at Harmon's insistence, would go on to be a reasonably regular voice actor for Hanna-Barbera over the next two decades, while Harmon himself only ever worked with them again for a Role Reprise of Stan in The New Scooby-Doo Movies.
• Missing Episode: Several of their silent films are partially or completely lost. Also, some of their sound shorts only survive in reissue prints that were altered from the originals in some way or another. One example is Hats Off, which was their most successful silent short and reportedly cemented them as an awesome comedy duo, but has been missing for many years.
  • Examples of the edited sound shorts missing footage is Blotto where a reel's worth of footage was cut in the 1937 re-release however the missing footage exists in the Spanish Version of the movie. Also some of the foreign language versions of their movies which the pair spoke their lines phonetically with foreign recasts have themselves been lost.
• Newbie Boom: This still continues today almost one century after the duo's debut, as more and more people discover their films and enjoy them. The forum frequently has people arriving every day!
• Orphaned Reference: The short Twice Two has one of the wives mention a "surprise" for Ollie. We never learn what this surprise was in the film. According to the notes on the Laurel & Hardy Essential Collection DVD set, the script states the surprise as being a 16mm home movies projector. Back in 1933, such a device would have cost a lot of money!
• The Other Darrin:
  • In the Hanna-Barbera animated series, Stan Laurel is voiced by Larry Harmon, while Oliver Hardy is voiced by Jim MacGeorge.
  • The attempted 1999 reboot of Laurel & Hardy stars Bronson Pinchot as Stan Laurel and Gailard Sartain as Oliver Hardy.
• Recycled Script: Occasionally. The Music Box, for instance, was a remake of their most successful silent short, Hats Off, only with the original's washing machine replaced by a player piano to take better advantage of the switch to sound.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Pack Up Your Troubles was originally going to star Lois Laurel (Stan's daughter) as Eddie Smith's baby
  • Babes in Toyland was initially conceived as a Roach "all-star" comedy, featuring the likes of Charley Chase, Patsy Kelly, and Spanky McFarland. Stan would have played "Simple Simon," while Ollie would have played "the pie man."
  • In 1938, Stan and the L&H staff writers began working on a story which had the team in a swashbuckling adventure on Devil's Island. Stan's then wife Illiana would have played one of the lead characters. The idea was nixed after the writers had too much difficulty in completing the story.
  • During the 1940s, Laurel and Hardy wanted to star in a film adaptation of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza.
  • In 1942, Boston Blackie writer Paul Yawitz was hired by 20th Century Fox to submit a story for a Laurel and Hardy film. Me and My Shadow would have found the duo running around an amusement park, trying to save a baby from a couple of Nazi spies.
  • Around the same time Me and My Shadow was written, Chuck Roberts and Eugene Ling proposed another story for a Laurel and Hardy Fox film. It too would have found the team against Nazis, this time in a sanitarium in Switzerland.
  • Yet another L&H story proposed to Fox was a film adaptation of stage play By Jupiter. The film would have taken place in ancient Greece, where the population is entirely dominated by Hippolyta (a role intended for Martha Raye) and her warriors. Stan and Ollie would have played the easily bullied Theseus and Hercules, who unsuccessfully attempt to steal Hippolyta's power.
  • Congratulations, another proposed L&H-Martha Raye vehicle would have found Stan running for governor.
  • Two proposed radio series: The Laurel and Hardy Show (which did result in a pilot episode being recorded) and Laurel & Hardy Go to the Moon.
  • An autobiography on the team, partially written by Laurel and partially written by Hardy.
  • Following the death of comedian Edgar Kennedy, RKO Pictures considered starring Oliver Hardy in The Average Man series of short comedies.
  • After The Bullfighters Fox ended B-picture production cancelling Laurel and Hardy's next movie, however the finished film was a success and Fox offered to reopen the entire B department just for the pair, but due to the way the duo were treated at Fox they declined hoping to find more sympathy overseas.
  • While on a trip in England, there was talk of starring the duo in a film adaptation of Robin Hood.
  • RKO Pictures wanted the duo to appear as the comic relief in the 1951 Technicolor musical Two Tickets to Broadway. However, the team was stuck in Paris filming Atoll K, which ultimately continued production months over schedule. RKO hired vaudevillians Joe Smith and Charley Dale as replacements.
  • In 1956, the team was in negotiations with Hal Roach to star in a series of technicolor television specials collectively titled Laurel and Hardy's Fabulous Fables. Each episode would have featured the duo in a retelling of a popular fairy tale, the first of which was to be Babes in the Woods. Stan Laurel suffered a stroke shortly before production was to begin, putting the series on hold. Oliver Hardy's death a year later prevented the series from being made.
  • Billy Wilder planned on making a film with the duo that saw them sleeping in the two Os in the Hollywood sign. This was scrapped when Oliver Hardy died.
  • Stan Laurel turned down a cameo in It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, having sworn to never work again without Hardy. The role was instead played by Jack Benny, who wears Laurel's iconic bowler hat. But Benny's use of the hat wasn't just a tribute — it was a necessary production decision for continuity. A long shot of the character, played by a stuntman wearing a bowler, had already been filmed in anticipation of Laurel's participation. When Laurel turned the role down, whoever got the role would have needed to wear the hat!
  • Larry Harmon's first attempt at creating an Animated Adaptation of the duo came in 1963, when he produced a pilot episode with the same animation team responsible for Bozo: The World's Most Famous Clown. NBC rejected the pilot, and Stan Laurel himself derided it as "lousy", resulting in Harmon trying again with Hanna-Barbera a few years later. The 1963 pilot apparently also featured Chuck McCann as Hardy's voice; the finished series instead had Jim MacGeorge voicing him.
  • Had the 1999 reboot The All-New Adventures of Laurel & Hardy in: For Love or Mummy been a success, there would have sequels for as long as it was a box office draw, hence the pluralized use of "Adventures".
  • The 1999 reboot was originally intended to have Jim Varney in the part of Stan Laurel◊ but his failing health at the time prevented him from taking the role, so Bronson Pinchot was cast instead.

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