BBC got into a fine mess over Stan & Ollie, turning the film down four times!
BUNGLING BBC bosses almost missed out on producing this year’s must-see movie after rejecting the concept for the new Laurel and Hardy film four times.
Stan & Ollie has already picked up three Bafta nominations and knocked Mary Poppins Returns off the top spot to become No1 at the UK box office.
But we can reveal that it took five attempts before the story about the comedy duo’s tour of Britain in the early 1950s was finally commissioned by the BBC.
Starring Steve Coogan and John C Reilly, the script draws heavily on a book by AJ Marriot called Laurel & Hardy: The British Tours. Marriot pitched the story as a documentary to four different BBC departments under the title Laurel & Hardy On Stage – but he hit a brick wall every time.
It was eventually picked up by BBC Films which recognised the project had the potential to be a blockbuster.
Marriot said: “I started working on the book in 1987, and as 1990 was Stan Laurel’s centenary I sent the BBC a proposal for a documentary film.
“The head of documentaries turned it down first, saying I should try the Music & Arts department which also said no.”
He then tried BBC Radio which rejected the idea twice.
“I was sick to death of the BBC’s attitude. Stan Laurel was a lad from Ulverston in Lancashire who became a global comedy legend. I felt his life should be properly celebrated by the BBC,” Marriot said.
“There were a lot of celebrations for Laurel & Hardy that year, including street parades, festivals and a weekender in Blackpool with a banquet in the same baronial hall where the comics had a banquet in the 30s.”
Marriot’s book not only recorded the duo’s every performance but also gave details of where they stayed, their travel arrangements, the people they met and Laurel’s visits to relatives and places he used to live.
The former stand-up comedian and Butlin’s Redcoat ran up debts of £28,000 researching and writing the book, which was also turned down by publishers and literary agents.
Finally, in 1993, he published it himself. The rights to the book were picked up for a potential TV biopic three years ago but instead became a big screen movie.
“The film is fantastic,” said Marriot, who hails from Atherton in Wigan but now lives in Spain.
“I was invited to one day of shooting and John C Reilly came and had a chat, and then insisted I was asked along to other days so we could talk some more.
“He was brilliant. He inhabited the role so well that I felt I was talking to Oliver Hardy in person.
“He told me he had turned down the part three times and had only said yes the fourth time after asking himself, ‘Who else could do it?’ – and he was right.
“Everyone was so friendly to me, including writer Jeff Pope.
“One of the production team said, ‘If you hadn’t written this book, we wouldn’t be here. You’ve got 765 people employed’.”
Marriot has written two more Laurel and Hardy books, about their US and European tours. But he added “I haven’t got any left!”
Laurel and Hardy appeared together in 106 films between 1921 and 1951 but their lustre was fading and the UK tours effectively drew the curtain on their remarkable double act.