Celebrating Laurel & Hardy

March 18, 2017 - 3:00 pm

In-person:

Archive director Jan-Christopher Horak, head of preservation Scott MacQueen. Author Randy Skretvedt will sign copies of "Laurel and Hardy: The Magic Behind the Movies" beginning at 2 p.m.

UCLA Film & Television Archive continues its long-term initiative to restore the legacy of Laurel & Hardy, working with negatives that have survived (sometimes only barely) decades of abuse and neglect. This major restoration effort is supported by the Archive's Laurel & Hardy Preservation Fund. Launched with a lead gift from Mr. Jeff Joseph, the fund has received gifts from numerous concerned members of the public, enabling this important work to proceed, reconnecting the entertainers to their audience in a meaningful way. In this program, we showcase the latest projects restored via this ongoing effort.

Watch a video of Scott MacQueen inspecting a working print of Sons of the Desert (1933).

Restored by UCLA Film & Television Archive with funding provided by The Packard Humanities Institute

The Chimp (1932)

When Colonel Finn's Big Top Show goes bust, Stanley inherits the flea circus and Ollie gets “Ethel, the Human Chimpanzee.” Zoophilia is writ large as the boys smuggle the love-sick gorilla into Billy Gilbert's rooming house, unaware that Billy, listening through the walls, is pining for his errant wife, also named Ethel. —Scott MacQueen

35mm, b/w, 25 min. Director: James Parrott. Production: Hal Roach. Distribution: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Dialogue: H.M. Walker. Cinematography: Len Powers. Cast: Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, Charles Gemora, Billy Gilbert, James Finlayson, Tiny Sanford.

Restored from a 35mm nitrate lavender picture master and a 35mm nitrate composite fine grain master. Laboratory services by The Stanford Theatre Film Laboratory, Audio Mechanics, DJ Audio, Inc. Special thanks to: Sonar Entertainment, the Library of Congress.

Restored by UCLA Film & Television Archive with funding provided by The Packard Humanities Institute

Berth Marks (1929)

In Berth Marks, Stan and Ollie share an upper berth in a sleeping car. That's all, and that's plenty funny. As the team adjusts to long sound takes in this, only their second sound short, there's obvious extempore interplay that gives their banter a spontaneous vitality. Berth Marks has been known forever in a severely cropped edition marred by an ersatz, sweetened sound mix done in 1936. For the first time in decades we can now see and hear everything in front of the camera in 1929. —Scott MacQueen

35mm, b/w, 19 min. Director: Lewis R. Foster. Production: Hal Roach. Distribution: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Cinematography: Len Powers. Cast: Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, Pat Harmon, Charlie Hall.

Restored from a 35mm nitrate dupe negative and 1929 RCA sound discs. Laboratory services by The Stanford Theatre Film Laboratory, Audio Mechanics, DJ Audio, Inc., Simon Daniel Sound. Special thanks to: Sonar Entertainment, Michael J. Sheridan, Lou Sabini, Ralph Celentano, Les Perkins.

Restored by UCLA Film & Television Archive with funding provided by Jeff Joseph/Sabucat

That's That (1937)

The rarest of Laurel and Hardy films this side of The Rogue Song (1930), That's That is a gag reel made up of alternate takes and bloopers said to have been compiled by film editor Bert Jordan as a present for Stan Laurel's birthday in 1937. —Scott MacQueen

DCP, b/w, 7 min. Production: Hal Roach. Montage by Bert Jordan. Music: Leroy Shield, Harry Jackson, Marvin Hatley. Cast: Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, James Finlayson, Edgar Kennedy, George Francis Austin.

Preserved from a 35mm nitrate work print, picture master and a 35mm nitrate composite fine grain master. Laboratory services by YCM Labs, Audio Mechanics, Simon Daniel Sound, DJ Audio, Inc. Special thanks to Robert Dickson.

Restored by UCLA Film & Television Archive and The Film Foundation, with funding provided by the George Lucas Family Foundation.

Sons of the Desert (1933)

Drawing on story elements from their earlier shorts We Faw Down and Be Big, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy's fourth feature-length comedy, Sons of the Desert, begins at a secret meeting of the boys' eponymously titled fraternal lodge. Amid secret handshakes and tarbooshes, the “exhausted ruler” swears attendance at the lodge's 87th annual convention in Chicago. When the wives forbid them to go, Hardy comes up with a ruse to fool the missus (the magnificent Mae Busch): Stan bribes a veterinarian who diagnoses Ollie with a double case of Canis Delirious. Mrs. Hardy's seafaring phobia ensures that the fictive “mad dog” malady can only be cured by an equally fabricated stag ocean voyage to Honolulu.

Stan and Ollie sneak off to Chicago to eat, drink and make merry with their lodge brothers (including the brilliantly obnoxious Charley Chase) and hear Ty Parvis croon Marvin Hatley's endearing “Honolulu Baby.” A maritime disaster and an incriminating newsreel expose the charade, culminating in a last act that is perhaps the funniest of Laurel and Hardy's career.

Shot in 21 days at a cost of $165,000, Sons of the Desert was one of the top 10 films of the year, grossing over $1 million worldwide upon its original release. Though more than eight decades have passed since its original release, its impeccable comic timing makes Sons of the Desert one of the crowning achievements in Laurel and Hardy's long career. In 2012 it was named to the National Film Registry, joining Laurel and Hardy's shorts Big Business (1929) and The Music Box (1932). —Jayson Wall

35mm, b/w, 65 min. Director: William A. Seiter. Production: Hal Roach Studios. Distribution: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Cinematography: Kenneth Peach. Editor: Bert Jordan. Cast: Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, Charley Chase, Mae Busch, Dorothy Christy.

Restored from the 35mm nitrate camera negative, a 35mm nitrate lavender picture master and the 35mm nitrate Canadian track negative. Laboratory services by The Stanford Theatre Film Laboratory, Audio Mechanics, DJ Audio, Inc., Simon Daniel Sound. Special thanks to Sonar Entertainment.

Part of:

2017 UCLA Festival of Preservation

Search form