Commencing yesterday, I'm going to post a photo of Stan Laurel and/or Oliver Hardy every day I post on this blog for as long as I can. I have the first 200 already selected and formatted but if you have one, by all means send it in. For the time being, I'm only doing horizontal compositions so some photographs may not be suitable.
I'm getting a lot of messages from folks suggesting other stars worthy of the honor…and most of them are. But I just like the way my blog looks when I can look at it and see Stan and Ollie so that's who it's going to be. There's nothing stopping you from posting pictures of your favorite star on your blog…or if necessary, starting a blog. And I'm amazed how many people didn't get that the Bud Collyer thing was a joke.
There are a lot of great comedians that I love but there's a special place in my heart — and whatever part of the body laughter comes from — for Laurel and Hardy. I'm not even that big a fan of slapstick and they're still my favorite performers. Even in their weakest films, I just like watching them. I am hardly alone in this feeling.
A ten-DVD set will be released next month in America of most (not all) of the talkies they made for the Hal Roach Studio between 1929 and 1940. In the past, we've told you about a 21-DVD set that was available and playable in Europe. This is not the same set. The European set contained all the Roach material. This one omits some films. It also contained the silent films as well as many "colorized" versions of later films. They're not in this one, either.
I'm not complaining. What is included is a ton of really, really wonderful comedy…and I'm told the prints have been fully restored and are outstanding. The U.S. set also contains several examples of the "foreign" versions Stan and Ollie made of their films where they spoke lines in Spanish or French. There's also a longer-than-you've-probably-seen-before version of the feature Pardon Us and two versions of A Chump at Oxford.
The latter was originally made as a four-reel comedy. Roach briefly experimented with that length (he called them "streamliners") but the marketplace didn't want films of that duration so Laurel and Hardy were called back to shoot two more reels for A Chump at Oxford, expanding the film to six. Both versions are included in this set. There's also a DVD of oddments and extra features, and I believe both Chuck McCann and Dick Van Dyke told me they'd been interviewed for this. Here is a link to order this set from Amazon. I have the European set (and an all-regions DVD player) and I'm buying this one, too.
Laurel and Hardy have not done well on DVD in this country, a fact I attribute to poor, half-assed marketing of their work. We're very happy someone finally seems to be doing it the right way.