Stan Laurel

Born into a British theatric family who were based in Ulverston, England, Arthur Stanley Jefferson became Stan Laurel after becoming part of the Keystone trio when he needed a shorter and catchier stage name. His stage partner Mae Dahlberg came up with Laurel from seeing a crown of laurel leaves. Laurel got his start by being part of a travelling performance group where he would stand in for Charlie Chaplin. He became part of the Keystone Trio after Charlie’s departure from the Fred Karno Troupe. From the stage he went into silent films (so called as they were made before the possibility of synchronising sound with visual footage with saw organ players cuing an appropriate soundtrack when played in early cinemas and movie theatres) but not without his pale blue eyes appearing to be ghostly white on the blue blind black and white cameras of that time but thankfully that technical issue was swiftly fixed.
By that point, Stan had written the scripts for a couple of silent films. Stan Laurel’s life changed forever when he was paired with US State of Georgia born actor Oliver Hardy. The pair would spend the majority of their lives from the 1920s up until 1951 making 106 movies together and up until the mid 1950s appearing on stage together. The duo had a little and large, fat and skinny contrast between them with Oliver Hardy being tall and overweight while Laurel was skinny and shorter than Hardy. In fact, they are considered the trope maker (first fully fledged usage) of the Fat and Skinny pairing trope.

The Laurel and Hardy films would feature a variety of gags including one where after a disastrous venture or plan, Hardy would remark “well here’s another nice mess you got me into” which would result in Laurel would whine “Well I couldn’t help it” or another line that would be uttered by a blubbering Laurel. A modern reference to the comedy duo can be found in the SpongeBob SquarePants episode the Krusty Bucket. In fact, another episode of the cartoon featured the Cuckoo Bird Song which opened and closed each Laurel and Hardy film being played at the start of the episode The Nitwitting. Another gag that was exhibited by Laurel was the removal of his bowler hat to show off his spiky hair that seemingly floated as if someone had rubbed a latex balloon on top of his head.
The pair even became best friends in real life with Laurel’s daughter Lois even calling Oliver Hardy, Uncle Ollie or Uncle Babe. In fact, the vengeful finale of one of their Great Depression era films, One Good Turn only came about after Lois expressed her concern to her famous dad about him not being able to stand up for himself.

The double act continued until their health (especially Oliver’s) began to decline in the early 1950s. When Oliver died after a series of strokes, Stan Laurel was so upset that he vowed to never act in anything again! In fact, he was also too sick to attend his friend’s funeral but knew that Ollie would understand. Stan Laurel would later join his friend on the great comedy soundstage in the sky on 23rd February 1965, eight months before the actor who would play him in the 2018 Stan and Ollie biopic, Steve Coogan was born.