First Generation US TV: April 2012

Oliver Hardy and Stan Laurel formed a comedy film partnership that lasted some 30 years and enjoyed enormous success and popularity, particularly in the 1930s and during WWII.

I finally got around to ripping, converting, testing, researching and collating the box of discs that had been on a shelf and the end result is a very comprehensive collection.

They were both veteran film actors when they first appeared together in The Lucky Dog. A few of the earlier films in this set feature only one or the other and are designated as OH or SL. Wandering Papas (aka Enough To Do) features Hardy, but was directed by Laurel. The real name of that film is Wandering Papas, but this print was retitled Enough To Do for some reason and I must go with that or else receive endless e-mails informing me I put the "wrong" film on the disc.

They continued appearing in films solo throughout the 20's, but this collection is concerned with their appearances together.

One film they made in 1927, Hats Off, was a very popular film around the world but hasn't been seen since 1930 (in Germany) and has been a lost film for over 80 years.

They made their first "talkie" with Unaccustomed As We Are in 1929. It must have been quite a shock to many people to hear their voices for the first time.

With the advent of talkies a new problem arose in that Laurel & Hardy films were extremely popular thoughout Central and South America and Europe and the studio lost a big market. An attempt was made to compensate for this by making foreign language versions (particularly Spanish). Unfortunately, as hard as they tried, the end result was not understandable to the intended market and the project was dropped.

One of these films that is of particular interest to many Laurel & Hardy aficionados is Ladrones from 1930. It was the Spanish version of Night Owls but is a 3-reel version (Night Owls was 2-reels) and contains a third more footage than the original English version.

Their final short, Thicker Than Water, came in 1935 and with 1931's Pardon Us, they made the leap into feature-length films.

Laurel & Hardy made many guest appearances in other films and those are also found here. Sometimes it's just the L&H scenes, sometimes not. For example, the 1936 film On The Right Trek is 18 minutes long. L&H made a cameo in it that lasted 13 seconds.

Scanning the photo's above the most obvious thing you might notice is so many films being listed twice. The first one, designated M, is the original monochrome film. The second one, designated C, is a colorized version of the film. There seems to be a very divided camp on that subject. Some people just can't handle things in black and white. Those of us that grew up in the days of black & white TV probably don't give it a thought. BBC and ITV didn't go color until the very end of 1969 (could be worse, the Republic of Ireland didn't get TV at all until 1962). On the other side of the fence are those that find the colorized versions, with their flat pastels, are about as realistic as a comic book. So, is everybody happy?

Laurel & Hardy really bowed out with 1945's The Bullfighters, but were talked into coming back in 1951 for the film Atoll "K", which was re-titled Utopia in the US and Robinson Crusoeland in the UK. If the audio looks a little out of sync at times in that film, it's because Laurel and Hardy speak English, but the other actors are speaking French and the English was dubbed in. This is the 82-minute English language version. There were some prints that ran up to 98 minutes in length. Anyway, this film came about because during the war there was no cinema in most of Europe so in the post-war years as cinema was being revitalized they had a large inventory of late 30's to late 40's films to chose from and the Laurel & Hardy films from those years became big hits again and their popularity rose once more on the continent.
A wonderful big box set of L&H films was issued in the UK, but that is missing the first film they did and all of the feature-length films. I would say this collection is the most comprehensive L&H set you'll ever find.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurel_and_Hardy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurel and Hardy filmography