LAUREL AND HARDY BIOGRAPHY & FILMOGRAPHY:

Laurel and Hardy were a comedy team known by many as the greatest comedy team in film history.  Stan Laurel was born Arthur Stanley Jefferson on June 16th, 1980 in Lancashire, England and Oliver Hardy born with the birth name Norvell Hardy on January 18th, 1892 in Harlem, Georgia, USA made more then one hundred comedies together. 

Stan Jefferson was the son of a theater manager and performer and became interested in theater and working as a comedian in his teen years.  In 1910, he was the understudy for Charlie Chaplin in a traveling comedy troupe.

By 1913, Laurel was working in American films and vaudeville for a couple years and it was at this time he made his stage name as Laurel.  He began working in comedy shorts solo in his own series in the 1920's. After a couple years of working as an actor, he decided he enjoyed directing and working as a gag writer.  Hal Roach Studio's approached him and signed him to contract, not as an actor, but instead as the man with the creative mind behind the camera.

Hardy was working in 1913 as a manager of a movie theater.  He enjoyed watching the films, but felt in his heart that if these men could act, so could he.  Therefore, he moved to Jacksonville, Florida in the United States and got a job at Lubin Studio's.  For the next ten years he worked on over 200 films for various studio's and then in 1926, he was approached by Hal Roach Studio's and signed to a contract with them.

While Oliver Hardy was working with Hal Roach Studio's, he injured himself in a cooking accident, and Stan Laurel was called in last minute to return to the acting scene to fill in for Hardy for a Mabel Normand Comedy.  Soon after the pair was put together and performed in several short comedies together.  They were not yet a team, instead just co stars working together.  By 1927, they officially were made a team by Hal Roach Studio's.   

Their acts mostly consisted of taking everyday situations and turning them into a disastrous mess.  They were very popular during the silent era with films such as, "Putting Pants on Philip" (1927), "Two Tars" (1928), "Liberty" (1928) and "Big Business" (1929).  Once sound pictures came in effect, the team was even more well received due to Laurel's British accent and Hardy's Southern accent.  Each man had their own specific characteristics that portrayed their character.  Hardy was considered the really funny guy with a different type of mannerism and explosive double takes, were as Laurel was always doing the same head scratch, whimpering cry and blank stare.

The pair appeared in more then forty shorts while contracted with Roach Studio's such as, "Classics Hog Wild" (1930), "Helpmates" (1931), "Towed in a Hole" (1932) and "The Music Box" (19320 for which an Academy Award was won.  Soon the team was working on feature films for Roach Studio's.  They debuted in their first feature, "Pardon Us" (1931) and followed with thirteen more until 1940.  Some of the more well known features were, "Fra Diavolo" (1933),  "Babes in Toyland" (1934),  "Our Relations" (1936), "Block-Heads" (1938), "A Chump at Oxford" (1940), and two of their finest works was on, "Sons of the Desert" (1933) and "Way Out West" (1937).

The team had the opportunity to work with other studio's such a MGM and 20th Century Fox, however, these studio's did not allow them to have the same type of creative input that they were accustomed to when working with Roach Studio's.  The work they did in the 40's was not as well respected as their former work, however, they continued to stay together as a team and their final film was, "Atoll K" also known as "Utopia" (1950), following the release of this film, the team toured English music halls and continued to work together until Hardy passed away in 1957.

In the mid 1950's Ralph Edwards celebrated their careers in an episode of "This Is Your Life".

In 1960 Laurel was awarded an honorary Oscar for his contributions to film comedy.  Laurel passed away February 23, 1965 in Santa Monica, California and Hardy passed away August 7th, 1957 in North Hollywood, California, USA.  They will always be known as the best Fat/Skinny comedy team of early cinema. 

Filmography
 
1921  The Lucky Dog
1927  Duck Soup
1927  Slipping Wives
1927  Love 'em and Weep
1927  Why Girls Love Sailors
1927  With Love and Hisses
1927  Sugar Daddies
1927  Sailors, Beware!
1927  Now I'll Tell One (lost film)
1927  The Second Hundred Years
1927  Hats Off (lost film)
1927  Do Detectives Think?
1927  Putting Pants on Philip
1927  The Battle of the Century
1928  Leave 'Em Laughing
1928  Flying Elephants
1928  The Finishing Touch
1928  From Soup to Nuts
1928  You're Darn Tootin'
1928  Their Purple Moment
1928  Should Married Men Go Home?
1928  Early to Bed
1928  Two Tars
1928  Habeas Corpus
1928  We Faw Down
1929  Liberty
1929  Wrong Again
1929  That's My Wife
1929  Big Business
1929  Double Whoopee
1929  Bacon Grabbers
1929  Angora Love
1929  Unaccustomed As We Are
1929  Berth Marks
1929  Men O' War
1929  Perfect Day
1929  They Go Boom
1929  The Hoose-Gow
1929  The Hollywood Revue of 1929
1930  The Rogue Song
1930  Night Owls
1930  Blotto
1930  Brats
1930  Below Zero
1930  Hog Wild
1930  The Laurel & Hardy Murder Case
1930  Another Fine Mess
1931  Be Big!
1931  Chickens Come Home
1931  Laughing Gravy
1931  Our Wife
1931  Come Clean
1931  One Good Turn
1931  Beau Hunks
1931  Pardon Us
1932  Pack Up Your Troubles
1932  Helpmates
1932  Any Old Port!
1932  The Music Box
1932  The Chimp
1932  County Hospital
1932  Scram!
1932  Their First Mistake
1932  Towed in a Hole
1933  Twice Two
1933  Fra Diavolo / The Devil's Brother / Bogus Bandits
1933  Sons of the Desert
1933  Me and My Pal
1933  The Midnight Patrol
1933  Busy Bodies
1933  Dirty Work
1934  Oliver the Eighth
1934  Babes in Toyland
1934  Going Bye-Bye!
1934  Them Thar Hills
1934  The Live Ghost
1934  Hollywood Party
1935  Tit for Tat
1935  The Fixer Uppers
1935  Thicker than Water
1935  45 Minutes from Hollywood
1935  Call of the Cuckoo
1935  The Stolen Jools
1935  On the Loose
1935  Wild Poses
1935  On the Wrong Trek
1935  The Tree in a Test Tube
1935  Bonnie Scotland
1936  The Bohemian Girl
1936  Our Relations
1937  Way Out West
1937  Pick a Star
1938  Swiss Miss
1938  Block-Heads
1939  The Flying Deuces
1940  A Chump at Oxford
1940  Saps at Sea
1941  Great Guns
1942  A-Haunting We Will Go
1943  Air Raid Wardens
1943  Jitterbugs
1943  The Dancing Masters
1944  The Big Noise
1944  Nothing But Trouble
1945  The Bullfighters
1951  Atoll K / Utopia