Stan and Ollie: The Roots of Comedy: The Double Life of Laurel and Hardy

Stan and Ollie: The Roots of Comedy is an excellent biography of Laurel and Hardy. It deals with their private lives and their work. It details their lives before they met, their teamwork, their heyday at Roach Studios, and after.

Product description of Stan and Ollie: The Roots of Comedy

From 1927 to the present day Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy have remained the screen’s most famous and beloved comedy double act. Until now, there has never been a definitive biography of the duo, from birth to death. 

Simon Louvish traces their early lives, and the minstrel and variety theatre that influenced their later work. Their inspired casting in Duck Soupteamed them until their last days. Both often married, they found balancing their personal and professional lives nearly impossible. Their Hal Roach and MGM films were brilliant, but their move in 1941 to Twentieth Century Fox proved disastrous.

In spite of this, Laurel and Hardy survived as exemplars of lasting genius, and are significant to this day. Simon Louvish has seamlessly woven tireless and thorough research into an authoritative biography of these two important and influential Hollywood pioneers.

About the Author

Simon Louvish is the author of the acclaimed biography of W.C. Fields, The Man on the Flying Trapeze. He is also the author of novels including The Days of Miracles and Wonders. He teaches at the London International Film School.

Table of Contents

Prologue: ‘No thoughts of any kind …’

Part One – Twice Upon a Time

1. Once Upon a Clown
2. Fathers and Sons: Stanley
3. Sons and Fathers: The Road Diverges
4. Fathers and Sons: Ollie – War and Peace
5. Mother and Son: the Boarding House Boy
6. We are Fred Karno’s Army: What Bloody Use Are We?
7. In the Temple of the Magic Light Beams
8. Wow-Wows in Wonderland
9. Rum ‘Uns A-Roaming
10. Babe: ‘All Broken Out with the Movies’
11. Vim and Vigour – Or Straddling the Home Plates
12. The Laurel Wreath of Scipio Africanus – and Other Tall Hollywood Tales
13. Just Rolin Along – Commence the Hal Roach Story
14. Flips and Flops: The Larry Semon Story
15. Their First Kiss: ‘Put ’em both up, insect, before I comb your hair with lead …’
16. The Handy Man
17. Somewhere, Over the Rainbow
18. Into the Home Stretch: The Reluctant Suitors

Part Two – The Glory Days: ‘Tall Oaks From Little Acorns Grow’

19. The Fruits of Toil
20. From Babe to Ollie: The Metamorphosis
21. Running Frantically Through the Streets
22. Full Supporting Cast: The Lot of Fun
23. Multiple Whoopee, or Wives and Woes
24. Unaccustomed As We Aren’t
25. The Song of the Cuckoos
26. Chickens Come Home
27. A Very Good Boy
28. Busy Bodies and Devil’s Brothers
29. The Exhausted Rulers
30. Babes in Toil-Land

Part Three – ‘We Faw Down’ – On the trail of the lonesome mimes

31. ‘Nice weather we had tomorrow …’
32. Bohemian Girls
33. Believe It or Not – Stan and Hal Go Off the Rails
34. Hardy Without Laurel, Laurel Without Hardy
35. ‘Something Wholesome, Something Tender …’
36. The Fox and the Huns
37. Nothing But Trouble
38. Any Old Port
39. Utopias and Unpromised Lands
40. Twilight of the Vauds

Epilogue: Going Bye Bye