60th anniversary of the death of Stan Laurel: The clever brain of “Dick und stupid”

Together with his partner Oliver Hardy (1892-1957), Stan Laurel (1890-1965) revolutionized the genre of film comedy in the 1920s and 1930s. To this day, the humorous masterpieces of the comedian duo “Laurel and Hardy” are enjoying a global fan base. The fact that Laurel is known in Germany as the stupid of “Dick and stupid” is disguised by the fact that the spindle door Brit with the crumple face represented the actual creative brain of this inseparable team.

Not only for life, but also for the death of the cult comedian, countless – and mostly funny – anecdotes. Laurel died on February 23, 1965 in his apartment in Santa Monica, California at the age of 74. In terms of health, he had to guard the bed and was looked after by a nurse who, after his death, transmitted his last words for posterity.

According to legend, the comedian is said to have allowed himself a final gag in his last minutes by suddenly expressing: “I would like to ski now”. When the nurse replied in astonishment that she did not even know that he was a skier, the answer was: “I’m not either. But I would rather go skiing than to do what I am doing.” Just a few moments afterwards, a heart attack took the opportunity forever to go on a ski slope.

During his lifetime, Stan Laurel had given clear instructions for the funeral service after his death: “Whoever dares to make a long face at my funeral, I no longer talk to that.” At the actual funeral service on February 26, 1965, not all guests managed to meet this last will. Especially the silent film icon Buster Keaton (1895-1966), with which Laurel was closely friends, could not help but a few tears. In his funeral speech, he proclaimed: “Chaplin wasn’t the funniest, I wasn’t the funniest – this man was the funniest!”

Around eight years before Stan Laurel’s death, he had to say goodbye to his longtime film partner Oliver Hardy, who blessed the time after several strokes in 1957. After this serious loss, Laurel immediately got out of the Hollywood hype and should never make a film again. Together between 1921 and 1957, the two had stood in front of the camera for over a hundred longer and shorter comedies. They were also privately an inseparable duo that went through thick and thin.

The lanky Brit and the corpulent Americans first met in 1921 on the film set for the silent film comedy “Laurel and Hardy: The Happy Dog”, where not only themselves, but also the film producers noticed the special chemistry between the two actors. The externally unequal couple Laurel and Hardy complemented itself perfectly in every respect. The slapstick routines, which often developed Stan Laurel as a script author, were full of absurd situations and perfectly timed gags. With his narrow stature and gentle confusion, Laurel formed the perfect counterpart to Hardy’s upset and desperate comedy personality.

Just like his British compatriot Charlie Chaplin (1889-1977), Laurel moved to the United States in 1914 to find his luck in the emerging film industry in Hollywood. At the time, he was still called Arthur Stanley Jefferson, whom he exchanged with his arrival in the United States for the more promising name Stan Laurel. Before he was a duo with Hardy from 1927, he had already stood in front of the camera in over 80 silent films as a solo artist.

Together with Oliver Hardy, he made the leap from the silent film era into the end of the sound film without any problems. With her first sound film “The Burning Neighbor”, her already existing fame should reach new heights again. Other full-length cinema hits such as “Die desüstensons” (1933), “Die Klotz heads” (1938) or “Dick and stupid, horror of the company” (1941) reliably ensured huge success until the mid-1940s.

Only after the end of the Second World War began to slowly sink to sink. Meanwhile under contract with the very big Hollywood studios, their artistic freedom and impulsiveness were increasingly limited. The film fabrics became more banal and degraded the two slapstick virtuosos more and more to clumsy.

In 1951, the sad conclusion of her career was to form a dodgy French-Italian film comedy entitled “Laurel and Hardy: Atoll K”. The work on the Klamauk film was not only characterized by unprofessional working conditions, but also by the poor health constitution of the two film veterans. The shooting under the glowing sun south of France had to be interrupted for more than two months due to a Stan Laurel hospital stay.

The fact that the two comedians did not have a lot of fun in their work in their last joint production, one sees the canvas clearly torn by criticism. Stan Laurel is said to have never looked at the finished film until his death.