ANOTHER VINE MESS
Here's the top 20 Laurel and Hardy vines in order of popularity as voted by you, the fans.
20. Stans' Double-Take - Me And My Pal
19. Rope Slap - Way Out West
18. Cat - Night Owls
17. My Dear Daddy - Way Out West
16. Eddies' Baby - Pack Up Your Troubles
15. Rubbish Bin - Night Owls
14. Hardy's Reaction To Jose Mourinho Interview - Dirty Work
13. Septober, Octember... - The Laurel-Hardy Murder Case
12. Under Your Arm - Me And My Pal
11. Goodnight - The Laurel-Hardy Murder Case
10. Enough To Make A Man Burst Out Crying - Helpmates
9. Don't Call Me A You You - One Good Turn
8. One More Brick - Dirty Work
7. Chin Up - A Chump At Oxford
6. Saw Head - Busy Bodies
5. Spade - Dirty Work
4. Elbow - County Hospital
3. Stan's Lethal Punch - Block-Heads
2. Fight - Busy Bodies
1. Ball Down Stairs - Block-Heads
Laurel and Hardy Double Bill
Vue Cinema, Leicester Square, London
November 26 at 3.00pm and 6.30pm
Click here to book tickets
In 2014 I sent this tweet from my twitter account @stan_and_ollie
It wasn't until someone tweeted back "but where can we see them in a cinema?" that I realised no mainstream cinemas were showing the boys films and that something had to be done. I knew Stan Laurel's 125th birthday was coming up in June 2015, so I made some enquiries via twitter. I tweeted Showcase Cinemas and asked them if they would be interested in showing Laurel and Hardy in their cinemas which resulted in an email from their director of event cinema who quickly embraced the idea. It wasn't long before other cinemas such as Vue, Perth Playhouse, SGC and Movies@ jumped on board.
So... this June, kicking off in Liverpool on June 1st, there will be a Laurel and Hardy double bill screening of County Hospital and Sons Of The Desert in selected cinemas across the UK and Ireland. Some cinemas are even screening the films on 16th June, Stan Laurel's 125th birthday.
The demand for these screenings has been overwhelming not only here in the UK & Ireland, but also throughout Europe and the USA, so we're already planning on more screenings worldwide later in the year.
The last big revival of Laurel and Hardy was back in 1975 when they reached number 2 in the UK charts with ‘Trail Of The Lonesome Pine’, held off from the number one spot by Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’. Even into the 80’s the BBC regularly showed the Laurel & Hardy classic shorts on BBC2. Since those days, apart from loyal fans from ‘The Sons Of the Desert’, (the international L&H appreciation society) flying the flag, there has been virtually nothing in recent years to introduce younger generations to Laurel & Hardy. The aim of these national screenings is to invite families to come to the cinema… grandparents, mums, dads and the kids. We want to encourage people to put down their ipods, tablets, iphones and laptops for a couple of hours and come along and enjoy good family entertainment in the company of Laurel & Hardy... in a cinema... with a packed audience! The way they were made to be seen.
What started as a single tweet has turned into the beginning of the biggest Laurel and Hardy revival since 1975. What better way to introduce the boys to the next generation!
To everyone on Twitter, Facebook and to those of you out there who have bought tickets. Thank you for your support.
Ross Owen
Event Coordinator
www.LaurelAndHardyRoadshow.co.uk
The following article was written by Laurel and Hardy Forum member birdsofafeather
Following completion of a British tour of A SPOT OF TROUBLE (a stage sketch based on the 1929 two-reeler NIGHT OWLS) in October 1952, Stan began work on his latest play, BIRDS OF A FEATHER.
When preparations were underway for yet another UK tour, it was discovered that Ollie, as an American citizen, was unable due to immigration laws to work in Britain again until a year had elapsed from his previous engagement there. Luckily, a scrutiny of the small print suggested that, should they enter overland from the Republic of Eire, he would be able to work in Northern Ireland before the year was up.
So with that in mind, Stan and Ollie docked at a small port in Cobh, Southern Ireland on the 9th of September 1953 expecting a low key reception. Things couldn't be further from the truth. Despite minimal publicity, it had somehow gotten around town that the boys were coming, and they arrived dismayed to find the harbour crowded to capacity with men, women and children all cheering for their heroes, with the sound of the "Cuckoo Theme" ringing from the cathedral bells, barely audible amid the cheers and horns blasting from other vessels in the harbour. Stan and Ollie were barely able to keep their emotions under control.
The tour kicked off and had the boys starring as a couple of whisky tasters. With a motto like: "The more we drink - the more we earn", it's inevitable that Stan and Ollie are destined for calamity. And thus, they soon wind up in the mental ward of the local County Hospital!!
This was brought about when a severely drunken Ollie had declared that he was "as happy as a lark", and after claiming that he was so joyous that he felt "fit to fly with the birds", he went on to tumble through a window headlong into an imaginary river down below (with the obligatory "two-buckets-of-water" trick utilised to suggest this effect).
The rest of the play had a very familiar theme. Ollie in a hospital bed, icepack on his head and his arm in a sling!
While enjoying his comfortable rest from the turmoil of everyday life, all is going well - then Stan shows up at visiting time. It's not surprising
that he bears a gift of hard boiled eggs - although this time he passed on the nuts of earlier fame.
"What's that?" asks Ollie after spotting a brown paper bag under Stan's arm. "I brought you some hard boiled eggs and a nice onion and jam sandwich" Stan explains, to Ollie's horror. "Now why did you bring me an onion and jam sandwich?" Ollie deflatedly asks, "you KNOW I can't eat that!"
"Why not?" asks a frowning, puzzled Stan, "you always said you liked jam, and you like onions too. I remember you said...", being cut off mid sentence by an irate Ollie "Oooooh!"
"I do, but not together!!" Ollie retorts, throwing up his arms in despair. This time, it was the adoring audience who Ollie turned to, rather than the camera, to slow burn his sarcastic, "Onion and jam sandwich... Mmmmmph!!"
After some shenanigans
with the eggs, bed pans and water jugs, a nurse enters the ward to check Ollie's chart which reads: "for the attention of Doctor Beserk. Patient think's he's a bird. Advise immediate frontal lobotomy
and dissection of the cerebellum."
Ollie gulps in fear of something going tragically wrong in the operating theatre, but the scatty nurse reassures
him, "Oh don't worry Mr. hardy, Doctor Beserk's operations are always successful
..." Ollie gives a relieved sigh before she adds, "even if the patient dies!"
Ollie's fear turns to terror as Stan nonchalantly
gazes on as an undertaker enters the ward with a tape measure to measure Ollie, "Just in case!".
"That does it!!!" exclaims a more than frustrated Ollie, who's clearly heard enough. "We're getting out of here!".
"I think you're right Ollie," Stan nods in a semi nervous tone before helping Ollie out of bed and through the wards open window. Behind him, the nurse has re-entered and is silently
looking on with a scowl. Stan sees her, tips his hat, then continues climbing out to join his pal on the ledge before doing a double take and motioning Ollie back in.
Ollie, all coy and twiddling his thumbs climbs back into bed just before Doctor Beserk comes into the room. Stan is also in bed, having mistaken the nurses instructions to "get in bed" as being aimed at him too.
"And who is the patient?" asks a puzzled Doctor Beserk, Stan smiling his famous tight lipped grin and pointing at Ollie ... who then realises that he's sharing his bed. Ollie angrily pushes Stan out of bed. The doctor and nurse help Stan to his feet, and he tells them, "I'm not the patient! He's the one who's insanitary!"
An enraged Ollie goes into denial, in order to escape his inevitable fate at the hands of the seemingly incompetent
Doctor. "How DARE you make such a statement?" he retorts to Stan in an upper class
accent. "Why, I've never seen you before in my life!! My name is Ticklebottom!" he hastily adds.
"Then what are you doing here?" asks the doctor. "I came here to visit a relative and got into this room by mistake, " Ollie's lie continues as he gulps at the laughing audience
.
The doctor, believing Ollie begins laughing, only to be joined by Ollie and then Stan. They all laugh uncontrollably
for a while with Ollie managing to blurt out among his chuckles, "Who ever heard of anyone thinking he's a bird?". The doctor agrees and tells him he's free to go. But as the nurse pulls back the sheets for Ollie to get out, she notices two hard boiled eggs, accidentally dropped in the bed earlier by Stan, and along with the doctor she reverts back to believing the story. Ollie lets out an "ooooh!" as the two staff lumber him back into bed and Stan throws his arms up in bewilderment.
Ollie's cries of "I didn't lay them eggs - he brought them" go ignored and the audience cheer loudly to his timeless retort: "Well, here's another nice mess you've gotten me into!" followed by Stan's famous sob, "Well i couldn't help it!"
The sketch comes to a surreal end as the doctor gives Ollie a potionto determin "What kind of bird you think you are - a canary or a buzzard!" The potion has a strange effect on poor Ollie who jumps out of bed chirping just as two pigeons covered in egg shells emerge from the bedside cabinet.
Ollie flaps his imaginary wings, Stan frowns as if still trying to figure out why Ollie doesn't like his sandwich and the doctor and nurse double take in disbelief. The orchestra strike up a closing fanfare as the curtain falls and rises to the bowing stars - to a standing ovation
.
(below) The boys perform their 'BirdsOf A Feather' sketch on stage in 1954
Eventually the tour hit England, opening night being in Northampton before moving to Liverpool, Manchester, London, Newcastle and Birmingham, where John McCabe was in the audience. He met the boys backstage that night and the result was a long friendship culminating in his 1961 autobiography "MR LAUREL AND MR HARDY" and the formation of the still active "SONS OF THE DESERT" fraternity for Laurel and hardy fans worldwide.
The show closed in May 1954 at the Palace in Plymouth, prompting a review in the local EVENING HERALD the following day:
"Laurel and Hardy look a little older and are not as boisterous as they used to be - perhaps because Oliver Hardy was suffering from a chill and had to have penicillin treatment before the act last night - but all their old cleverness and that delightful craziness is still there."
It should have been in Swansea on the 24th May that the tour concluded, but the 17th in Plymouth turned out to be the boys final performance. The following day Ollie was told to cancel by real doctors, most unlike Doctor Beserk of the sketch, as he had suffered a minor heart attack. Worlds away from the fantasy world of laying eggs and chirping...
Stan declined offers from the remaining venues to continue alone. "I am completely lost without Ollie," he told them, "We do comedy sketches - situations. I'm not a gag man".
Ollie recuperated enough to return home a few days later and the tour was terminated. The duo took a leisurely twenty day cruise to L.A. on the 30th May, embarking from Hull aboard the merchant vessel SS MANCHURIA, on a tropical journey over the Atlantic via the Panama Canal.
The boys would never tour again. Stan would never visit his homeland again. It was the fade-out of the performing career of the boys.
One can still see Ollie, bed ridden, most annoyed and muttering, "Onion and jam sandwich ... Mmmmph!!!"
