Here's a goodie…footage of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy you've never seen before. Okay, so it's just a few seconds but we'll take what we can get.
In the forties, Stan and Ollie occasionally went on tour, playing to packed audiences in theaters and arenas across the country and in England. Usually, they were part of a musical revue and would perform a few routines, especially one called "The Driver's License Sketch." In this short film, you see a few seconds of that. The gent who plays the person interviewing Laurel for his driver's license is James C. Morton, who was in a lot of Laurel and Hardy films, usually playing a policeman.
This was shot at the Riverside Theater in Milwaukee where they performed between October 11, 1940 and October 16. They did four shows a day and the theater management later announced that every seat was sold for every performance. Can't do much better than that.
The dance troupe you'll see was called The Danny Dare Girls. The show also included a classical dance team, the Fredricos, and the girl singer at the end is Maxine Conrad.
A gentleman named Robert Wilson, who lives in Milwaukee, has the film which was shot by his father. I think it's great that he shared it with the world. It runs less than two minutes but it's a treasure…
