Here's an entire movie you probably won't want to watch in full, not that it's a bad one. It's The Fighting Kentuckian, made in 1949 and starring John Wayne, Vera Ralston and — and this is what interests me about it — Oliver Hardy.
Once he'd formally teamed with Laurel, Hardy only appeared on-screen and sans Stan in four films: A 1928 Our Gang comedy called Barnum and Ringling, Inc, Zenobia (which we wrote about here), then this one followed by a brief cameo in Frank Capra's Riding High (1950). He also did a brief off-camera voiceover in one other Our Gang film.
And after this, Hardy would only appear in one more film with Laurel — Utopia, also known as Atoll K — a pretty sad last effort for the greatest comedy team of all. Laurel appeared in no films without Hardy after they teamed.
Ollie's pretty good in this film. One forgets that he was an actor, not the lovable dunce he usually played on the screen. If you want to fast forward and see a little of him, he makes his entrance around 4 minutes and 50 seconds into the proceedings. And here's a chance to see John Wayne in his best period, before he started sounding like a guy doing an impression of John Wayne…
