Stan and Ollie still rule

IN RESEARCHING EVERY MAJOR screen comedian during Hollywood's golden age, stretching from the 1920s until the early 1950s, one uncovers an army of critics putting forth a case for the inherent superiority of their favorites. Yours truly would be a spokesman for Charlie Chaplin, but there likewise would be numerous scholarly advocates for the Marx Brothers, Buster Keaton, W.C. Fields, Mae West, Will Rogers, Bob Hope, and many others.

Having said that, however, a better case can be made for the most popular comedians from this bygone era with today's general public. Indeed, it is not even close; Laurel and Hardy win in a landslide. An old axiom about the team says it all: "Nobody likes Laurel and Hardy except for the people." Though they were not without their own tony supporters, too, Laurel and Hardy never were the toast of the critics like Chaplin or the Marx Brothers, but the public seems to have always connected with Start and Ollie. Even the team's international fan club, "The Sons of the Desert" (based on the name of their best feature film, 1933), puts comparable organizations honoring other comedians to shame, both in sheer membership numbers, and in the inspired labeling given each local "tent" (club). The chapters take the name of one of Laurel and Hardy's many film titles.

So, what are the comic components of their everyman universality? First, they are pivotal transition figures in American humor's move from the capable character (crackerbarrel philosopher as personified by Will Rogers), to the modern antihero. Yet, this entertaining slide into perpetual frustration is timeless. Laurel and Hardy's comic problems are as old as Greek mythology's Sisyphus: the doomed figure forever forced to roll uphill a large stone which always rolls down again. In fact, the duo's lone Academy Award-winning picture, a 1932 short subject, "The Music Box," is based loosely on Sisyphus. That is, the pair must deliver a crated piano to a house on a hill, necessitating that they carry said crate up an almost endless flight of outdoor steps. Each time they reach the top, something causes the seemingly possessed piano to roll back to the bottom of the hill.

Comedy teams invariably are built upon contrast, and Laurel and Hardy maximize this attribute. Beyond the age-old fat man-skinny man, there is the difference of demeanor. Ollie always is the authority figure, the quasi-parent or teacher. Stan is the child or student in need of correcting. Yet, the multi-layered joke here is that Hardy is just as comically incompetent as Laurel, only he does not know it. Still, when Ollie periodically shares his utter disgust over Stan's stupidity with the audience through direct address (his expression as he looks directly at the camera seems to say, "Can you believe this idiot?"), it is hard not to sympathize with his comic angst.

Consistent with these contrasts, as a child I always related more to the constantly scolded Stan. Today, however, in my now easily exasperated middle years, I increasingly identify with the comic cross Hardy always seems to be carrying. As a footnote to Ollie's patented close-up expressions of slow-burn anger, de facto director Laurel often scheduled these insert shots for late in the afternoon, when golf addict Hardy was dying to get on the course. One might describe this as an early example of "method comedy." Regardless, the beauty of Laurel and Hardy's dueling demeanors is that there was no straight man, which doubles the team's potential laugh factor.

Of the various sketches associated with Laurel and Hardy, their "tit-for-tat" routine arguably is the duo's signature bit. Sometimes also referred to as "reciprocal [comic] violence," the sketch always involves the team having strong differences with some usurper in Stan and Ollie land--but the unique twist comes from the manner in which these comic combatants go about their slapstick destruction. They patiently and politely take turns wreaking havoc on each other's possessions or each other--or both.

For all of Laurel and Hardy's comic exaggeration, the universality of their popular art is driven by having one foot in reality. This is why novelist Kurt Vonnegut dedicated his 1976 book, Slapstick to the memory of the team. For Vonnegut, this loosely autobiographical novel has Laurel and Hardy ties because their slapstick films are "what life feels like to me. There are all these tests of my limited agility and intelligence. They go on and on." For Vonnegut, the duo's "fundamental joke" is that they try their hardest that this time will be different. Even though this is why Vonnegut, or the viewer in general, finds Laurel and Hardy funny, there also is a certain "common decency" about their patient, methodical persistence in the face of life's constant frustrations.

Maybe the team's greatest tribute, after their still ongoing grass roots support, is how they have influenced other iconic comedians. This is best exemplified by the parallels between the duo and early television's classic "Honeymooners" team of Jackie Gleason and Art Carney as Ralph Kramden and Ed Norton. As with Stan and Ollie, Ralph and Ed are in the age-old comedy contrast tradition of fat man-skinny man. Like Ollie, Ralph thinks he has all the answers, only to suffer comic frustrations constantly. His companion on these misadventures is the dumb but amazingly loyal Stan-like Ed. While Ralph and Ed bring a more blue-collar backdrop to "The Honeymooners," it still is a program fundamentally wrapped around their leisure time, especially their bungled attempts to obtain permanent leisure time--via their ever-changing get-rich-quick schemes. Though Ralph is much more verbally combative with wife Alice (Audrey Meadows) than Ollie ever was with a screen spouse, the wife also controls things in "The Honeymooners." Finally, with Ralph and Ed, as with Stan and Ollie, there is no designated straight man. Both team members share the laughter. As the world becomes ever more antiheroic, Laurel and Hardy's contemporary status seems guaranteed for some time.