Laurel and Hardy
The first and, arguably, the best of filmdom's famous two-man comedy teams, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy were also, along with Charlie Chaplin, the only great silent-era clowns to survive and thrive well into the talkie era. The two thrilled audiences with their carefully crafted style of comedy. Their short films, ranging from the pie-throwing apotheosis, The Battle of the Century to the Oscar-winning The Music Box, in which the boys strain to lug a piano up a steep hill, established their endearing characterizations as loyal friends—often hen-pecked husbands—who keep going from one "swell predicament" to "another fine mess."
Stan Laurel (real name: Stan Jefferson) was born in 1890 in Ulverston, England; Oliver Norvell Hardy in 1892 in Harlem, Georgia. The fates and their respective theatrical abilities brought them to Hal Roach's comedy factory in Hollywood during the Roaring Twenties. There, ace comedy director Leo McCarey had the inspiration to pair them as a team. Unlike such latter-day comedy partners as Abbott and Costello or Martin and Lewis, who would hone their comedy personae onstage before live audiences before making it big in the movies, Laurel and Hardy grew into a team from film to film.
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