Background

Stan Laurel was born Arthur Stanley Jefferson on June 16, 1890 in Ulverston, Lancashire, England, the son of Arthur J. Jefferson, an actor-producer, and Madge Metcalfe, an actress in her husband's companies.

Education

Jefferson, an ingenious truant, attended various grammar schools in the north of England, and after 1905, when the family settled in Glasgow, Scotland, he attended the Ruther Glen School and Queen's Park Academy.

Career

Arthur Jefferson, realizing that his son had little interest in schooling, soon brought him into the family business as a box-office manager. Young Jefferson spent much of his free time backstage with the performers, especially the comedians. He idolized music hall clown Dan Leno, but his early models were the "boy comedians" of the day--Laddie Cliff, Boy Glen, and Nipper Lane--who sang, danced, and told jokes.

In 1906 he persuaded Albert E. Pickard, a local showman, to let him do a comedy routine at Pickard's Museum Music Hall in Glasgow. Appearing in baggy pants and comic wig, he told borrowed jokes used by other performers--and a few of his own--and did a song written for him by a musician friend. In 1907, Jefferson joined Levy and Cardwell's Juvenile Pantomimes, a touring company, in Sleeping Beauty. The next season he did a music hall routine and understudied in one of his father's productions. Later he appeared briefly in a play, Alone in the World, before joining the famous Fred Karno vaudeville troupe in 1910.

He performed in Karno's classic "Mumming Birds" sketch, considered the greatest ensemble act in British vaudeville. He played various other roles and understudied Charlie Chaplin, the troupe's leading comedian. Working for Karno was the best possible training for an ambitious young music hall performer like Jefferson. He came to America with Karno in September 1910 but, dissatisfied with his salary, left the show in 1911.

During the return trip to England, he worked up an original comedy routine for himself and Arthur Dandoe, another refugee from Karno. Entitled "The Rum 'Uns from Rome, " the fast-paced, brilliantly timed slapstick number was a great success in London music halls. The act established Jefferson's reputation as a gag writer. In an era when a single classic routine could sustain a career for years, he seemed assured of his place in the theater. Unfortunately, the act broke up. Unable to find a suitable partner for "Rum 'Uns, " Jefferson dropped the routine. He took engagements where he could find them, in England and on the Continent, until rejoining Karno for another American tour in 1912-1913. This time the show folded when Charlie Chaplin, the headliner, accepted an offer to star in American films. Jefferson decided to remain in the United States, too.

He teamed briefly with Edgar Hurley and his wife as The Three Comiques. They began in small midwestern theaters. Rechristened Hurley, Stan, and Wren, the team played the Keith circuit and, as The Keystone Trio, toured the prestigious Orpheum circuit. The highlight of their routine was Stan's imitation of Chaplin. The act eventually disbanded because Hurley resented Jefferson's success. Jefferson quickly formed The Stan Jefferson Trio, which soon gave way to a new act and a new identity. His partner was Mae Charlotte Dahlberg, a young singer-dancer from Australia.

Laurel's film career began inauspiciously. His first movie, Nuts in May (1917), showed promise, but was not widely distributed. Another early film, Lucky Dog (1917), was notable only because Oliver Hardy, Laurel's future partner, was in the cast. In 1918 he signed with Universal Studios to play a rube, Hickory Hiram, in a series of forgettable comedies. He was in several Hal Roach productions for Pathé; appeared in support of Larry Semon, Vitagraph's popular but limited comedian; and made a series of movie parodies for G. M. ("Broncho Billy") Anderson's company. During this period Laurel combined occasional film work with steady bookings in vaudeville. But with his pantomime experience and a talent for creating gags, he was a natural for silent-screen comedy.

Independent producer Joe Rock recognized Laurel's potential and launched him in a series of comedies in the early 1920's. By the mid-1920's Laurel was well established, with scores of pictures to his credit. But he had not achieved great popularity, perhaps because he had not developed a recognizable screen persona, as Chaplin, Harry Langdon, and Harold Lloyd had done. In 1926, Hal Roach hired Laurel again, this time as a writer, gagman, and director. Assuming his days as a performer were over, Laurel was eager to get on with his new assignment. But the studio prevailed on him to appear in Get 'Em Young (1926) as a substitute for an injured member of the cast (who, incidentally, was Oliver Hardy).

Thereafter, at the studio's insistence, Laurel remained in front of the camera, although he continued to create gags and supervise production for most of his films. He was, by all accounts, the creative force in his successful partnership with Oliver Hardy. Beginning with Slipping Wives (1927), Laurel regularly appeared on screen with Hardy, but the two were not yet a team--they were merely all-purpose clowns in Roach's large stable of comedians. In 1927, the producer decided to issue a series of Laurel and Hardy comedies. Putting Pants on Philip (1927), the team's first starring vehicle, although not the first to be released, was not typical of their work together. They were not pals, nor did they use their own names, as in their later films. Still missing were the bowler hats, Hardy's bangs and his "takes" for the camera, as well as such Laurel hallmarks as the unevenly cropped hair and his head-scratching, eye-blinking bewilderment. But the unique humor of Laurel and Hardy was not simply the comedy of makeup and mannerism. Nor did it depend entirely upon the amusing physical contrast between the scrawny Laurel and the rotund Hardy. It required the artful blending of style and characterization. To achieve this happy chemistry, Laurel progressively dropped the music-hall acrobatics, derivative clowning, and aggressiveness of his earlier performances. He became, as critic Walter Kerr noted, the childlike "stand-in-the-corner booby, " taking his lead from the officious, but equally dim-witted, Hardy.

Several classic Laurel and Hardy elements are visible in Battle of the Century (1927), including the first of Laurel's many brilliantly contrived incremental disasters. Novelist Henry Miller proclaimed Battle "the greatest comic film ever made. " It culminates in an unforgettable pie-throwing sequence involving scores of passersby and hundreds of pies. This episode typified the inept pair's disruptive, antisocial impact. Innocents with a childish instinct for instant retribution, they brought out the worst in everybody. Laurel and Hardy quickly gained favor with exhibitors and the public.

Their partnership lasted through approximately one hundred comedies, including twenty-seven feature films, over the next twenty-five years. Among their most popular films were Two Tars (1928), Big Business (1929), Brats (1930), The Music Box (1932), Babes in Toyland (1934), The Bohemian Girl (1936), and A Chump at Oxford (1940). Unlike other silent clowns, the team managed a successful transition to the sound era. But Laurel regretted Hal Roach's decision to cast them in feature-length pictures. In general, Laurel and Hardy were well served by their association with Roach. They broke with him in 1940, though, seeking greater artistic freedom.

They established their own production company, but made no pictures. Instead, they did a stage tour in 1940-1941. Later in the 1940's Laurel and Hardy returned to the screen in several films made at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Twentieth Century-Fox, where Laurel had little creative control over scripts or production. These pictures were uninventive and justifiably unpopular. In 1947, Laurel and Hardy toured British music halls and in 1951 they completed their last film together, Robinson Crusoe-Land, a disastrous low-budget European production. Thereafter they worked sporadically in vaudeville.

During the 1950's television resurrected their early comedies. Laurel and Hardy hoped to capitalize on their renewed popularity by making a new series of pictures, but Hardy suffered a stroke that forced cancellation of the project. Hardy died in 1957, and Laurel, unwilling to perform without his partner, retired to Santa Monica, California, where he spent many hours discussing comedy with younger comedians. He frequently expressed admiration for the work of Jack Benny, Jerry Lewis, Dick Van Dyke, and Jack Paar, but detested most "stand-up" comedians and untalented television masters of ceremonies. He died in Santa Monica.

Achievements

• Stan Laurel has been listed as a notable actor, comedian by Marquis Who's Who.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Babes in Toyland

    (Ollie Dee and Stanley Dum try to borrow money from their ...)

  • Laurel & Hardy: Putting Pants on Philip VHS

    (Stan Laurel is a kilt-wearing Scot, fresh off the boat, c...)

  • Laurel & Hardy: Slipping Wives VHS

    (Priscilla Dean is feeling unwanted by her husband and hir...)

  • Laurel & Hardy: Battle of Century VHS

    (Brand New!!! VHS TAPE Sealed (as shown) "Laurel & Hardy: ...)

  • Laurel & Hardy: Two Tars VHS
  • The Laurel & Hardy Collection DVD
  • Laurel and Hardy"Big Business"
  • Laurel and Hardy: Chump At Oxford
  • Laurel and Hardy: Brats
  • Laurel and Hardy: Bohemian Girl

Views

Quotations: "We should have stayed in the short-film category. You've got to settle for a single basic story . .. and then work out all the comedy that's there--and then let it alone. But you can't take a whole, long series of things we do and stick them all together in eight reels and expect to get a well-balanced picture out of it. "

“I had a dream I was awake and I woke up to find myself asleep. "

“If any of you cry at my funeral I'll never speak to you again. ”

“I feel like dying when I'm helpless. ”

“You can lead a horse to water, but a pencil must be lead. ”

“You can lead a horse to water, but a pencil must be lead. ”

Personality

Quotes from others about the person

• "Stan and Ollie can convert a group of normal people into a mass of pie-slingers, shin-kickers, and pants-pullers. " - film historian Gerald Mast.

Connections

During his long career, private life had held few attractions for Laurel. He was a compulsive worker who always gave priority to his craft. Indeed, the long, painstaking rehearsals and the extra hours on the set may have provided a necessary distraction from a string of ill-advised marriages. A mild-mannered, courteous man, Laurel had "a marrying complex" (in the words of one of his wives) and a penchant for domineering women. The strain of misogyny that feminist critics find in his comedy may be attributable to his unhappy domestic circumstances. In their pictures Stan and Ollie are forever in league against their shrewish wives. It is perhaps significant that Laurel's partnership with Hardy lasted longer than many of his marriages.

Laurel and his vaudeville partner Mae Dahlberg were never married. They lived together from 1919 to 1925, long enough for Mae to claim common-law wife status. He ended the relationship when she obstructed his early movie career. To keep her away from the studio, Stan's producer paid her to return to Australia. (In 1937 Dahlberg sued Laurel for alimony and property rights on the basis of her claimed status as common-law wife. The case was settled out of court. )

On August 23, 1926, shortly after Mae's departure, Laurel married Vitagraph ingenue Lois Neilson; they had two children. They were divorced in 1935, after a separation. In April 1934, before his divorce decree was issued, Laurel married Virginia Ruth Rogers in Mexico. (A legal ceremony in Arizona was performed in September 1935. ) They were divorced in 1937 but remarried in 1941. In the interim Laurel had married (January 1, 1938) and divorced (1940) Vera Ivanova Shuvalova, a Russian singer-dancer, known professionally as Illeana. His second marriage to Virginia Rogers ended in divorce in 1946. On April 14, 1946, he married Ida Kataeva Raphael, a concert singer and movie actress.

Father:

Arthur J. Jefferson

actor, producer

Mother:

Madge Metcalfe

actress

Spouse:

Ida Kitaeva Raphael

singer, actress

Spouse:

Lois Neilson

Spouse:

Vera Ivanova Shuvalova

singer, dancer

Spouse:

Virginia Ruth Rogers

Partner:

Oliver Hardy

actor, comedian

References

• Stan and Ollie: The Roots of Comedy: The Double Life of Laurel and Hardy
• The comedy world of Stan Laurel
• Stan: The Life of Stan Laurel
• Laurel and Hardy : The Magic Behind the Movies
• The Making of Stan Laurel: Echoes of a British Boyhood