MASTERS OF MIRTH
The comedy duo of Laurel and Hardy were making fans laugh as far back as the 1920s. Now, decades later, John C. Reilly and Steve Coogan take on these larger-than-life personalities in Stan & Ollie.
John C. Reilly and Steve Coogan play the ultimate double act as Laurel and Hardy.
It’s the day after the world premiere of Stan & Ollie. Last night, British actor/comedian Steve Coogan and Hollywood star John C. Reilly transformed the red carpet at the closing night gala of the London Film Festival. Both men sported green tartan kilts and – appropriately enough – bowler hats. Perfect if you’re playing Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, the Hollywood comedic icons of yesteryear.
Today, there’s less fanfare as the pair settle back in a suite at the Savoy Hotel – the very establishment where Laurel and Hardy regularly stayed. I ask them when they first encountered Laurel and Hardy, the black-and-white masters of mirth? “I was just a kid,” recalls Reilly. “It was, ‘Oh, it’s the fat guy and the skinny guy – they’re funny.’ Then when video came out, in the ’70s and ’80s, that’s when I started to study them in earnest.”
The same goes for Manchesterborn Coogan, who remembers how Laurel and Hardy became a staple part of summer holiday viewing in 1970s Britain. “It was the same [roster of shows] every morning. It started off the summer holidays perfectly. And Laurel and Hardy was part of that. It was just part of the landscape.”
Of course, Laurel and Hardy were making fans laugh long before Reilly and Coogan ever sat in front of a TV. “They were some of the only comedians who made it from the silent era into the sound era without missing a beat,” explains Reilly. The British-born Laurel and Americanraised Hardy were the double act of the day, demonstrating remarkable comic timing in films like Sons of the Desert and Babes In Toyland.
Scripted by Jeff Pope, Stan & Ollie is a fond nod to their on- and off- screen partnership. It follows Laurel and Hardy as they tour British theatres in 1953, hoping to reignite their fading Hollywood careers. “It was more interesting to focus on a period of their career when they had challenges,” says the film’s director, Jon Baird. “Whether it was financial, health, personal relationship worries. They had a lot going on … They had a lot of struggles to get over.”
The comedy is gentle, albeit with references to their particular brand of bumbling physical humour. One scene, at a railway station, sees the pair drop their trunk down the stairs – a sharp reminder of the classic short The Music Box, when Laurel and Hardy heave a piano up some stairs, only to have it repeatedly come crashing down again. But the film is more about friendship and betrayal, and the grudges simmering between the two. “You loved Laurel and Hardy,” mutters Hardy at one point, “but you never loved me.”
Coogan muses on their unique relationship, and how it plays out during this tour. “The one constant in their lives was each other, and that became apparent,” he says. “Their relationship was cemented on this tour. They were living in each other’s pockets, which they weren’t before. It’s that thing when you look around and everyone else has come and gone and the only person still in the room for Stan is Ollie and for Ollie is Stan. That counts for something.”
As nerve-racking as it was, playing Laurel and Hardy was simply too good an opportunity to pass up. As Baird recalls, “Reilly said something to me when I met him about the project: ‘The prospect of playing Oliver Hardy is terrifying, but it’s not as terrifying as the thought of letting someone else play him!’ I thought, ‘I love that! He’s not going to let this go. If he takes this on, he’s going to give this everything.’ And he did… the pair of them did.”
When it came to preparing, for Coogan, it went beyond mimicry and into something more profound. He really dug into Laurel, the workaholic of the pair. “I used the physical side of Stan as a starting point to try and claw backwards into who he was. The character he played on screen was a part of him – but only a part of him. That’s like a little window you can use to [find] the core of who he really was.”
Coogan was nominated for a BAFTA for his performance, and Reilly received a Golden Globe nomination. And it’s perhaps no wonder that both audiences and critics have fallen for the movie’s charms – Laurel and Hardy are ripe for revisiting. “These guys still make me laugh,” smiles Reilly.
• Stan & Ollie opens 21 February.
“The character he played on screen was a part of him – but only a part of him.”
STEVE COOGAN