Steve Coogan, left, and John C. Reilly.
Stan & Ollie, the film that was No. 1 at the box office in Great Britain, is being released in the U.S. gradually. As stated by critics elsewhere, Steve Coogan and John C. Reilly don’t just perform the iconic Laurel and Hardy roles; they uncannily inhabit them.
“We love the film,” says Cassidy Cook, Laurel’s great granddaughter, who Isthmus reached in Los Angeles, where she works in real estate investment and brokerage. “The new movie is a chance for people who never knew who Laurel and Hardy were to seek out their old films and learn how proprietary and revolutionary their comedy was, and how it has affected films and the industry to this day.”
The feature swings between Laurel and Hardy’s peak filmmaking years in the 1930s to the twilight of their careers, the last of several live tours of Great Britain. The 1953-54 visit would see their last-ever performances. In the film, illness and each partner’s resentments threaten to derail the tour, and perhaps even the team.
They had been partnered since the late 1920s, the final years of the silent era. But both worked professionally since 1910, Laurel primarily in British music halls, roughly equivalent to American vaudeville. He became the team’s writer/director brains. And Hardy? By the time Laurel made his first movie in 1917, Hardy, an American, had already made more than 140 short subjects and a feature film.
The influence of that mismatch has never been accounted for. If nothing else, Stan & Ollie will hopefully spark an overdue critical assessment. The last and best commentary came in 1975, by Walter Kerr in his book, Silent Clowns.
The film relies on A.J. Marriot’s 1993 Laurel and Hardy: The British Tours. For the record, the arguments in Stan & Ollie are fiction. For example, the film exaggerates Laurel’s anger toward Harry Langdon — too briefly a silent film superstar. In private correspondence in 1962, Laurel called Langdon, “a very funny comedian, a great talent, I had great admiration for him, knew him very very well.”
Despite this creative license, there is great emotional honesty in the film. The love shared by Laurel, Hardy and audiences in the dark comes across clearly.
Cook is delighted that great-grandfather Stan may be finding new audiences. “I think he would be very happy to see the younger generations bonding with the older to watch the films,” she says. “Without the younger generations around the world, their clean classic humor will sadly die. We need more love and kindness and family unity in this world.”
