In response to reader emails, here’s another great comedian — or, rather, two of the best.
If you haven’t ever really seen Stan Laurel & Oliver Hardy, the most famous comedy team of the early to early-mid 20th century, you’re in for a treat.
In this short clip posted on You Tube, you find a comedy bit that combines excellent writing, excellent direction, excellent timing and excellent comedy acting. And once you see it, we know you’ll watch it over and over.
If you’ve never really watched Laurel & Hardy, you can buy their DVDs here. TMV suggests you only first buy and watch L&H flicks done during their Hal Roach Studios period (roughly, until 1939) FIRST. Then you can watch the films made for other studios after 1940 — films where they lost creative control and the quality of their flims suffered accordingly.
Also, a society still exists that honors L&H, a kind of fraternal organization patterned after one in one of their most popular films. Read THIS for the general organization and THIS to see one of the group’s most active chapters (TMV performed for the latter group several years ago in his other incarnation at one of their events).
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.