LAUREL & HARDY, a two-week festival featuring more than 50 comedy classics starring the comedy team of Stan Laurel (1890-1965) and Oliver Hardy (1892-1957) will run at Film Forum from Friday, July 10, through Thursday, July 23. The festival marks the 100th anniversary of their first film for producer Hal Roach. 

This first major retrospective of the duo in decades includes new restorations of many of their greatest features and short subjects, including SONS OF THE DESERT, WAY OUT WEST, BABES IN TOYLAND, BRATS, BLOTTO, THE MUSIC BOX (Oscar winner for Best Live Action Short Comedy of 1932), and many, many more.  

Says Bruce Goldstein, producer and programmer of the festival, “No comedians have had more enduring appeal than Laurel & Hardy, who, 100 years after their first teaming, are still beloved in every corner of the globe. In Italy, they’re known as “Stanlio e Ollio,” in Germany “Dick und Dorf,” in Spanish speaking countries “El Gordo y el Flaco,” in Poland, “Flip i Flap,” with affectionate nicknames in Asia and Africa. When they made the transition from silent to sound films, producer Hal Roach worried about the loss of their international fans. So to serve their multi-lingual audiences in the days before subtitling and dubbing, some of their shorts, and first feature, were made in multiple languages, with Stan and Ollie speaking Spanish, French, Italian or German phonetically. The festival includes some of these fascinating international versions.”

The Laurel & Hardy festival is being presented in association with The Sons of the Desert, the Laurel & Hardy Appreciation Society founded in New York in 1965. There are now “tents” all over the world. Special thanks to Jack Roth, Grand Sheik and Keeper of the Celluloid of the New York City Founding Tent of the Sons of the Desert. And to Jeff Joseph (SabuCat Productions), Serge Bromberg (Blackhawk Film Collection), Todd Weiner and Steven K. Hill (UCLA Film & Television Archive), Kit Parker, and The Film Foundation.

Festival special events include… 

SILENT TWO-REELERS   

Although they were inadvertently paired in a 1921 two-reel comedy, Laurel & Hardy officially became a team with the 1927 short PUTTING PANTS ON PHILIP. The festival includes five programs of rarely-seen silent two-reelers including the prison comedy THE SECOND HUNDRED YEARS, the thrill comedy LIBERTY, DOUBLE WHOOPEE, featuring a very young Jean Harlow, THE BATTLE OF THE CENTURY, with the biggest pie fight in movie history, and their silent masterpiece BIG BUSINESS (directed by Leo McCarey, who made many of their earliest films), as well as the unseen silent versions of two of their best sound films, BLOTTO and BRATS (created for theaters that were not yet wired for sound). Silent programs feature live piano accompaniment by Steve Sterner. 

“BEFORE LAUREL & HARDY”

Before they were teamed, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy both had thriving film careers. Stan, who had toured with Charlie Chaplin in Fred Karno’s English music hall troupe, headlined in his own series of comedy two-reelers beginning in the teens. Oliver “Babe” Hardy, whose movie career began in 1914, was a “heavy” (movie parlance for “bad guy”) to early comedians like Larry Semon and Chaplin imitator Billy West. This program includes a solo Stan in PIE EYED (1925) and DR. PYCKLE AND MR. PRYDE (1925, one of his many movie parodies) and solo Babe in THE SHOW (1922), with Larry Semon, and ISN’T LIFE TERRIBLE? (1925), with Charley Chase. Live piano accompaniment by Steve Sterner. 

LAUREL & HARDY RARITIES

Jeff Joseph, whose SabuCat Productions has restored many of the shorts and features in the festival, presents this program of Stan and Ollie ephemera, including newsreel interviews, movie and television guest appearances, and other rarities for Laurel and Hardy aficionados. 

LAUREL Y HARDY EN ESPAÑOL

Spanish language versions of three of the team’s films: DE BOTE EN BOTE (which translates as “From Cell to Cell”), the Spanish version of their prison picture and first feature PARDON US (1931) and expanded versions (with additional material, including some bizarre vaudeville acts) of their two-reelers BLOTTO (LA VIDA NOCTURNA) and CHICKENS COME HOME (POLTIQUIERAS). These films are not dubbed; instead, Laurel & Hardy speak Spanish phonetically, while their supporting casts have been replaced with Spanish speaking actors. 

Program text by Bruce Goldstein. 

https://filmforum.org/series/laurel-hardy