Ok, so Sam is in another film, playing piano in a bar in Casablanca, while Honolulu Baby is being crooned to a group of assembled conventioneers in Chicago for a national meeting of the fictional Sons of the Desert. Along with conjuring up visions of grass skirts swaying in the breeze and a lovely bunch of coconut bras, it also is the signature song of slapstick comedy kings, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy.
It was this song and key phrases such as an exasperated Ollie lamenting to Stanley, "Here's another fine mess you've gotten me into" that launched this double dose of comic genius into an orbit of influence that has impacted and influenced, the entertainment industry for over 70 years, and there is no telling where it will end, if ever. It led to the creation of other comedy duo's, Abbott and Costello, and Martin and Lewis for example, but, if imitation is the highest form of flattery then they set off a nuclear comedy chain reaction with the development on television of The Honeymooners featuring Jackie Gleason as rotund Ralph Kramden and Art Carney as bungling cohort, Ed Norton. If that ain't Laurel and Hardy, I'll kiss my own ass! The world of animation has also paid homage to these slapstick heavy weights by drawing up Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble. Dick Van Dyke, comic genius in his own right, borrowed heavily from the mannerisms of his personal idol, Stan Laurel and has portrayed him many times on television as tribute to this giant of facial comedy expression and delayed reaction.
More similarities exist besides size and mannerisms in the slapstick spawn of Stan and Ollie. The boys were members of the Sons of the Desert, Ralph and Ed belonged to the Raccoon Lodge and Fred and Barney were members of the Royal Order of Buffalo!
According to The Book of Slapstick Genesis, in the beginning....Stan Laurel was born Arthur Stanley Jefferson in England in 1890. He made his stage debut at the age of 16 in the music halls of England, the breeding ground of some of the best English comics. Stan perfected his craft and ended up specializing in pantomime, which is apparent in his body movements seen in the classic comedies we enjoy today. He was also the understudy for a young Charlie Chaplin in one of the halls, and they became friends. Eventually both ended up in America, defined slapstick as an art form, and the rest is comedy history.
Together they emigrated to the United States in 1912. Luckily they didn't travel on the ill fated Titanic! Stan made his screen debut in 1917 and by 1925 Hal Roach Studios signed him on as a writer and director. During the Laurel and Hardy heydays, Stan would also change the scripts if they weren't working or to his satisfaction, would call direction over the assigned director (Roach told the directors to leave him alone, he knows what he is doing!) and he would have the last say on the final edits of the films. He was eventually placed in charge as head writer.
Ollie was born in 1892 in the deep plantation south of the United States. Georgia, to be exact. His family, unlike most families of the day who viewed "show people" as undesirables, encouraged young Hardy to pursue his dreams and by his late teens was an accomplished singer/crooner at local venues. He had a fascination with the "moving picture" industry and with his mothers financial held opened a small movie house featuring the silent comedies of the day. Slapstick became a big screen narcotic and Ollie was hooked! His first film was in 1914 called "Outwitting Dad" produced by a small studio in Florida. In 1917 after being rejected for military service he headed west to make a name for himself on the silver screen. He got work, mainly playing villains, and even female characters, which was not that unusual in for the times. Many actors did, and don't forget Japanese kabuki theater and the Greek theater either, the pioneers of the switcheroo, not to be confused with female impersonators with implants in San Francisco belting out Liza tunes!
Prior to the historic pairing of the famed duo, Stan had already appeared in 50 films as a solo, and Hardy had been in over 200 films as solo, and sometimes teamed with other silent comedians, but none of these combinations had the spark to fuel the comedy fires Stan and Ollie created together. In some films, Hardy was cast as a villain and in one of the first Wizard of Oz films, as an evil Tin Man. Go figure, the man of tin without a heart, but plenty of attitude! I'm surprised the Wizard gave him a heart!
The pairing of Stan and Ollie was an accident, but a profitable accident nonetheless. Their first film together, although not billed as Laurel and Hardy, (each had separate studio contracts) was Luck Dog in 1921. The official date of the splitting of the slapstick atom was in 1927 in a film entitled, "Putting Pants on Phillip" where Stan was a Scottish nobleman who wore kilts, and Ollie was his uncle who wanted him to loose the kilts, get westernized and wear pants! The film was successful and for the next 30 years it was the era of Laurel and Hardy, a combination hard to beat by any standards.
The stock market crash was on the horizon and so were the fortunes of many unfortunate Hollywood actors who excelled in the silents but the age of sound burst forth like nuclear explosion and many could not make the transition to talkies. Although Laurel and Hardy were "visual" artists, they managed to blend sound and visuals in a copulation of cinematic genius. Stan, ever the perfectionist developed the ongoing style and formatics of their comedies and held a steady comedy course through the decades.
Their "talkie" debut came in 1929 in a film called "As Accustomed as We Are" and their first full length feature film was in 1931 in the classic "Pardon Us", still one of my favorites of the duo. The boys are sent to prison for making beer during prohibition but get out and are on the lam. They end up in cotton fields and disguise themselves in black face to blend in with the field hands. Not very politically correct today, but for that day, blackface and minstrel shows had a long history. It also allowed a lot of black actors and extras to break into films (although stereotyping was typical) when many films would not have them on camera, so Stan and Ollie and Hal Roach Studios took an advanced small step towards civil rights long before it was fashionable, and in those days, quite dangerous! The film also say the debut of Ollie's wonderful singing voice, that when I first saw it thought it was dubbed in..wrong! It was pure Ollie! Stan does a little pantomime dance in the film as well, now, that is entertainment!
The Music Box was released in 1932 with the classic scene of trying to get a large piano up a huge flight of stairs. Of course, it keeps coming back down in true slapstick fashion. It was innovative for the time an garnered Stan and Ollie's first Oscar for the film in the category of Best Live Action Short! Then there is Sons of the Desert, that broke the rules where it came to women's liberation. The boys were not kings of their castle, the wives were the rulers, and Stan's "wife" not only wore pants (unheard of in those days!) but also wields a shotgun and hunts!!
The boys promise their fellow lodge members that they will attend the convention in Chicago, however the wives have a different plan and tell them "No!" So, they devise a plan to have Ollie fake an illness and a doctor to back them up and the only cure for Ollie is a vacation in the tropics, to Hawaii, and of course, Stan will go along to make sure that Ollie is alright. The best part is that Stan elicits the help of a veterinarian instead of a medical doctor, but what the hell. The girls don't know that. So Stan and Ollie with the wives blessings head to "Honolulu" but instead attend the convention in Chicago where they are filmed attending the parade in downtown that is shown in movie houses. The wives who attend a movie for an outing see the film and are pissed to say the least.
After the convention Stan and Ollie return home and will pretend they were in Honolulu, but unbeknownst to them, the ship sailing for California from Hawaii is caught in a storm! They arrive home and have some heavy explaining to do as they are caught in the lie. Not a good thing to be caught at when your wife wields a shotgun! They say they ship hiked home from the icy waters, but the wives aren't buying into that story. In the end, all's well that ends well, and this time it was another fine mess they both got themselves into! They eventually left Roach Studio's and made films for MGM and Twentieth Century Fox. Their last film was a joint French/Italian production in 1950 called Atoll K. It lacked the slapstick pizzazz of their earlier films, and the duo hung up their derby's for good. They made only one television appearance together on Ralph Edwards "This is your Life"
Retirement was a time for nostalgia for the boys, and Stan had not had his phone number unlisted. People would call him, he would invite them up and you had the chance to spend time with an iconic legend. One of the persons who sought him out was a young fan of pantomime, Dick Van Dyke who spent many hours visiting with Stan, and has spent his own career paying tribute to this legendary genius. Hardy died in 1957, and Stan followed in 1965. Laurel wrote his own obit and it said simply, "If you cry, I'll never speak to you again!"
Today the legendary duo is kept alive in spirit with the formation of various Sons of the Desert "tents" as the lodges are referred to and there are over 100 worldwide in North America, Europe and Asia. It will be long time until their movies stop selling to generation after generation, and the strains of Honolulu Baby and The Sons of the Desert are silenced. Somehow, those songs will live forever..as they should in tribute to the art and comedy of Laurel and Hardy. We are all Sons of the Desert....