Filmic Friday 208: Stan & Ollie

We have a nice local theater in my hometown. It's technically run by a nonprofit, plays a combination of "artsy" and old movies, and it hosts live events on occasion. It's a beautiful old building filled with great vintage details like its restored neon sign and its decor. Z & I went to this theater for Ben is Back, The Favourite, and (most recently) Stan & Ollie.

It's a marvelous film and you should watch it!

Now, I didn't really grow up watching Laurel & Hardy films or shorts. We weren't much of a black & white comedy household. My earliest memories are of Indiana Jones and Star Wars. We're an action/adventure/sci-fi family. Z had much more of a connection to this movie than I did, but from the moment we saw the trailer, we both wanted to watch it!

We saw Stan & Ollie on a frigid night with our Film & Editing Friendo, who works at the theater and is an awesome dude. After watching the movie, we walked around talking about it, and if it hadn't felt like -30℉ (it was only about 16℉, but it's really windy down near the waterfront along the Main Street...) I could've wandered around my home town and talked about how wonderful the movie was all night. As it was, I made it much further than I had believed I could before I had to beg off.

So what is Stan & Ollie about?

Well, this is a movie about the men behind Laurel & Hardy (Stan Laurel & Oliver Hardy) and their relationship and how time has treated them. This is the end of their careers. They've been broken up for a while by the time the meat of the story begins, as shown in the early scenes where Laurel is trying to get Hardy to perform a power play and get them a better deal. Fresh off the heels of yet another divorce, at the dawn of a new relationship, and up to his neck folds in gambling debts, Hardy refuses to stand up for the both of them and, as a result, basically torpedoes their relationship.

It doesn't help matters much that the guy in the middle, their producer, is a cartoonishly evil man.
I had thought they were overplaying Hal Roach as a character, but after doing a little research...
The man was 100% insane and a terrible businessman. They underplayed him.

Years and years later, 16 to be exact, Stan is trying to get Ollie to come to England with him for some promotional touring to get a movie made for the two of them. He is writing a Robin Hood script and the film is peppered with tantalizing hints of what the Laurel & Hardy take on Robin Hood would have been. Unfortunately for the two of them, everything is going wrong.

Except for their onstage chemistry, that is!

Their problems start with the poor pre-publicity from producer Bernard Delfont which gives them microscopic venues and pitiful crowds at first. Eventually, Delfont realizes that people do still want to see Laurel & Hardy and stops trying to pump up Norman Wisdom (who was one of his British comedians) to the duo and starts actually publicizing and pushing Laurel & Hardy.

The tour becomes successful just as things start to break down between Stan & Ollie. Part of this is because Stan is slowly coming to the realization that the producer he's been talking to about the Robin Hood movie has ditched him and is being too cowardly to just tell him the movie isn't happening. Part of this is that Ollie can't stop gambling and is far less well than he lets on.

Eventually, Stan & Ollie's wives arrive in England just as the tours are really picking up, and that's when the biggest fracture occurs.

To be fair, it's not either woman's fault.

Lucille, Ollie's wife, is constantly badgering him to be more careful with his health, and Ida (pronounced Ee-dah) is... well... she's very intimidatingly Russian. She's gorgeous, she's a dancer, she takes no crap. She's also kind of a bully to Lucille, but in that weird older-sister way that means she cares. It's when Ida brings up the movie that split up Stan & Ollie that things go very wrong.

You see, back when Stan was trying to get a better deal for him & Ollie, Ollie didn't back him up and even teamed with another comedian for a movie involving an elephant. This is the most literal and heavy use of an Elephant in a Room I've ever seen. And it's 100% true. Hardy did a movie with an elephant and another comedian and it broke the relationship he had with Laurel, who had written most of their scripts and comedy routines and who clearly loved working with him.

They have a very quiet, subdued fight during a big party with nobles and wealthy patrons surrounding them, none of whom realize that these two comedic giants are quite suddenly turning their own Cold War into a hot one. As suddenly as the fight starts, though, it ends. Hardy leaves the party with Lucille. Laurel is left behind.

The two try to continue their appearances, Stan trying to make up for some pretty darn rude and unkind things he'd said to Ollie during their fight (called him lazy, accused him of breaking up their friendship), but Ollie isn't having it.

Suddenly, during a beauty contest the two are meant to be judging, Ollie collapses. Stan immediately runs to his side and does everything he can to help him, even holding up the massive man and walking him to his room, since Ollie refuses to see a doctor until Lucille forces him to. He's had a heart attack and is likely in the early stages of heart failure. He cannot continue the tour.

The two make up, of course, but I don't know that I believe them when they say they didn't mean everything they hurled at each other during the party. There were a lot of hurt feelings. There were a lot of things they hadn't discussed until then.

Delfont tries to get Stan to work with a different comedian named something like Nubby or Knobby or something like that, but Stan cannot do it. He cannot bring himself to do a Laurel & Hardy routine without Hardy. After all, everyone is there to see Laurel & Hardy, not Laurel & Knobby.

In the end, Ollie breaks his wife's heart and disobeys his doctors because there's nowhere he'd rather be than on a stage with Stan. The two have their last shows in Europe before returning home, including a dizzying and spectacular finale with the two of them performing their dance from Way Out West, which Ollie springs on Stan. This is especially shocking for Stan because Ollie's knees (and apparently heart) have been unable to withstand the physical demands of such a taxing dance this whole time. With sweat flying (and really, it's one of the sweatiest movies I've seen without a single fight scene) and music playing, the movie ends with the two men doing what the love for the very last time.

Sorry Z, the song will never, ever leave your head...
Also, yes, this is from earlier in the movie, but I couldn't find a good shot of the final dance.

Within four years, Oliver Hardy would pass from his heart condition. Eight years after that, Stan Laurel followed suit, and it turned out that he'd spent their time apart after Ollie's death continuing to write scripts for the both of them. Reading that in the epilogue was like a bittersweet punch in the gut. A tragedy about comedy. Amazing.

It should be interesting to note that one of my favorite scenes in this movie is the two of them on the train discussing how they should beat each other up in a scene. It's exactly like when two professional wrestlers talk about what moves they'll use in the ring. "Can I poke you in the eye?" "No, I'd rather you strangle me, then I can do that thing with my tongue!" It's great!

I also absolutely adore the portrayal of Ida Kitaeva Laurel. She's fantastic. She is tough, she is strong, and she has the perfect high-society Russian drawl. Her interactions with Delfont are hilarious, since she trusts him about as far as she could throw Ollie, and her interactions with Lucille are just the right balance of catty vs comradely. It's just such a tight characterization. It kind of made me want an Ida & Lucille movie.

Everything about this movie was wonderful to look at. You don't see much yellow light in movies these days, but this movie was soaked in various amber glows from gas & silver halide and just... amazing lighting. And while I'll agree that maybe Steve Coogan's take on Stan Laurel is a little stiff, I kind of like that in an older character. The man was probably beginning to develop arthritis and as a recovering alcoholic, I'm pretty sure he had other physical issues to deal with, too. The prosthetics they used to make John C Reilly into Oliver Hardy are top notch. The seams are invisible. The makeup is fantastic. The sweat is disgusting and accurate. They even made sure that his jowls could move appropriately! It's a triumph in fat-suit tech, in my opinion.

It must've been misery to perform in.

That'll do it for me, I think.

Go Enjoy Something!
(And sorry that it's going to get stuck in your heads too :P)

FC