Stan Laurel: One Half of Film’s Comedy Duo

You have to wonder what Margaret and Arthur Jefferson imagined on this day, June 16, 1890 during the birth of their son, Arthur Stanley (later Stan Laurel). At the time, The Lumiere Brothers’ first film was still five years away. Over the next decade, film would be a fledgling, niche medium, the preserve of Vaudeville programmes and exhibitions. The idea that their son would one day be one of the most recognisable faces of an art form that was still being invented would have been mind-boggling.

It’s undeniable though that Stan Jefferson was probably always destined to be an entertainer of some sort. Both his parents worked in the theatre and Laurel’s first gig was at the Glasgow Panopticon, which his father managed. He later joined Fred Karno’s travelling theatre troupe where he understudied for a young actor by the name of Charlie Chaplin. Through the troupe the two travelled to the US on the same boat and began working in films around the same period. Laurel made his big-screen debut in 1917 with Nuts in May, however it would be in 1921 that he worked alongside the man who would be his long-time collaborator, Oliver Hardy. Despite this coincidence, it took another six years before the two worked together on a regular basis and even then, through the intervention of fate.

In 1927, Laurel was working for the Hal Roach studio and was not seriously pursuing a career as an actor. Up until then he had only experienced modest success and was turning his hand to writing and directing. At the time Hardy was also working for Roach, having fared better as an actor but often regarded at a Chaplin imitator. When Hardy injured himself in a kitchen accident, Laurel was asked to fill in as a last-minute replacement. As members of Roach’s ‘All Stars’ the two quickly developed a comic chemistry that caught on with the group. The two were cast side-by-side in a series of comedy hits such as Putting Pants on Phillip (1927), Big Business (1929) and The Music Box (1932).

As the first cinematic double act, the rapport between the two was your typical scheming smart guy/hapless dumb guy dynamic, the kind that has since been channelled by the likes of Blackadder, Pinky and the Brain and most recently, Community. In this scenario Laurel played the idiotic foil to Hardy’s incompetent schemer, making good use of Laurel’s gormless expression and wide-eyed optimism. That last part is probably what made the pairing so enduring. While Chaplin’s Tramp was a comically tragic creation, often the victim of society’s inequality, Laurel and Hardy acted more like innocent children. Most of all Laurel with his youthful curiosity, which often provoked Hardy’s exasperated glances towards the camera.

Laurel made over one hundred films with Hardy, including such classics as Duck Soup (1927) (not to be confused with The Marx Brothers film), Sons of the Desert (1933) and Way Out West (1937). After amassing this huge body of work the pair began to theatrically tour the UK and Europe. Laurel had recently been diagnosed with diabetes and was encouraging Hardy to continue his film work separately. During this time they made their final film appearance together in Atoll K (1951), the making of which was so disastrous it could warrant a feature of its own. Needless to say Laurel’s health problems were greatly exacerbated by the production and required significant time to recover.

After Hardy’s death, Laurel refused to perform onscreen or onstage again, so devastated was he by the loss. By this time though, Stan Laurel had already made one of the greatest contributions to cinema and comedy in history. One has to imagine how different the face of comedy might be without them. With so many of their contemporaries – Chaplin, Lloyd, Keaton – working as lone performers, would the double act have become such a staple of comedy? Well, probably once Abbott and Costello hit their stride, but still. Over a century on from his birth, Stan Laurel still endures as one of the faces of physical comedy and should serve as an influence to all that follow him.

by Liam Macloed