A funny old pair
LIVES OF LAUREL AND HARDY
CROWDS swarm a beach to ■
escape a terrifying earthquake — on this day four years ago in 2018.
The horrified locals were waiting to be evacuated from Indonesia’s Gili Trawangan island
LAUREL and Hardy are back — well, their statues anyway.
Two life-sized figures of the bowler hat-wearing pair have been found in a garage nearly a year after being stolen.
But how much do you know about the comedy legends?
Stan was born Arthur Stanley Jefferson in 1890 in Ulverston, in what was Lancashire, England.
There’s a museum and statue of the pair there today. He went on to work as an understudy for Charlie Chaplin before emigrating to America.
Oliver was born Norvell Hardy in Georgia, US, in 1892. His dad fought in the American Civil War.
He was nicknamed Babe thanks to an Italian barber who said to him:
“That’s nice a-baby” after shaving him.
The pair first appeared together in 1921 silent film to neighbouring Lombok island a day after a 6.9 magnitude earthquake struck the area.
More than 70,000 people ■
were left homeless by the quake and many slept in makeshift shelters amid the horror.
The Lucky Dog — but not as a comedy duo.
Internationally successful in both silent films and the new “talkies”, they were famed for their slapstick comedy with Laurel playing the clumsy, childlike friend to Hardy’s pompous bully.
Hardy’s catchphrase “here’s another nice mess you’ve gotten me into” is often misquoted.
Gold
Some of their best-loved films include 1932’s The Music Box, which features a famous piano-moving scene, and Way Out West in 1937 — where they have to deliver deeds to a gold mine to a prospector’s daughter.
1945’s The Bullfighters sees Stan mistaken for a famous matador. The duo’s theme was known as The Cuckoo Song while Trail Of The Lonesome Pine, went to No2 in the charts.