100 years young

How a nice mess defined comedy for a century

Amid all the chat this week about this year’s Golden Globes and 2026 Oscar nominations, I spent a delightful afternoon considering a cinematic art form which started 100 years ago, namely the comic brilliance of Laurel and Hardy.

Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy began being silly together in earnest on film in 1926, first in shorts and then in features. According to expert Neil Brand, who has crafted a show which he is touring around the UK in celebration of this anniversary, it represents “the starting point of a partnership which revolutionised global entertainment.” Really? Well, after 90 minutes of Brand’s messianic approach, maybe.

The Laurel and Hardy Centenary Tour, which runs from February to May in various halls and theatres across the UK this year, kicked off with a special preview at the BFI in London, where about 600 devotees of silent film gathered to hear their artistic hero perform. Not Laurel and Hardy, but Brand, who according to the BFI, “needs no introduction”. Indeed, this man has devoted his life to analysing Stan and Ollie, (or as he has it “The Boys”), whom he says introduced the world to not only the comedy partnership but also the sit-com.

Neil Brand in his element @GaryWilliamsPhotography

Brand is no slouch. Not only does he introduce each and every short with enthusiasm and profound knowledge, but he also plays the piano, without a score, rather brilliantly alongside each of the silent films screened. In a way, it is a classic ‘show and tell’ event; Brand introduces the film, gives a bit of insight and then invites us to watch and laugh, while he sits down at his Yamaha grand (Yamaha is sponsoring him), his eyes on the screen, and launches into immaculately timed moments of improvised Twenties jazz, a bit of Scott Joplin and a touch of Gershwin, while the silent laughs and pratfalls, also 100 years old, spin out.

Brand, who is also a composer, always wanted to be a musical accompanist, and auditioned at the BFI to be one about forty years ago, having learnt the part for one movie. Now he’s the go-to man to jazz up the silent celluloid world.

Stan Laurel in “The Lucky Dog”, 1921, with his heavy eye-makeup

He starts with possibly the earliest example of The Boys working together on film, showing a clip from a 1921 short called The Lucky Dog. The clip reveals Stan, whose eyes had to be heavily made up, (their light blue shade did not translate well until panchromatic film was brought in five years later), inadvertently pocketing a wad of cash from Ollie. There is bashing over the head, kicking up the bottom and running down the street. All very familiar, yet Brand insists that the formula was not yet perfected.

That too came five years later under the aegis of the legendary comedy producer Hal Roach, and his studio in Culver City, California, when it was realised that Laurel and Hardy had to be in the same predicament, each reacting in his trade mark way, in order for the laughs to come.

“Both Stan and Ollie have to share the situation. That’s where the real comedy starts. They have to share the situation and share the same status, wearing the same costumes. And doing the job badly.”

Hence, donning boiler suits and Derby hats, a long tie for Olly and a bow tie for Stan, and scrapes including building a house, which falls down, or trying to get a piano up a set of steps, the last featuring in the famous short The Music Box.

Laurel and Hardy in “The Music Box”

Those 131 steps are still in the Silver Lake district of East Hollywood, by the way, and of course they are called the Oliver Hardy Steps (as he is the one who goes flying down them).

Brand also shows a classic short, The Battle of the Century, which apparently represents the biggest custard pie fight of all time, involving over 3,000 actual pies, hurled in the space of one day on Hal Roach’s “Lot of Fun” at the MGM Studios in Hollywood.

Still from The Battle of the Century

Compared with the battery of technology available today to a person wishing to shoot a movie on (say) an iPhone, these pieces are remarkable. Locked off cameras, limited stock, very little editing, zero special effects but they still hold together. My 21 year old son, who came with me, was transfixed and also amused.

The production ends with the screening of two newly restored longer films, ‘The Finishing Touch’ and ‘You’re Darn Tooting,’ with a rather extraordinary improvised score by Brand. My son and I preferred the simplicity of the shorts, but people were hooting with laughter throughout.

Brand is taking The Centenary Show to 50 venues between February and May this year, to places ranging from County Durham to Inverness via Taunton and Worcester. Recommended.

Stan and Ollie providing the inspiration for Morecambe and Wise