Stan and Ollie: the Roots of Comedy: The Roots of Comedy: The Double Life of Laurel and Hardy - Softcover

Louvish, Simon

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0312325983 ISBN 13: 9780312325985

Verlag: SMP Paperback, 2005

Inhaltsangabe

Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy have remained, from 1927 to the present day, the screen's most famous and popular comedy double act, celebrated by legions of fans. But despite many books about their films and individual lives, there has never been a fully researched, definitive narrative biography of the duo, from birth to death.

Louvish traces the early lives of Stanley Jefferson and Norvell Hardy and the surrounding minstrel and variety theatre, which influenced all of their later work. Louvish examines the rarely seen solo films of both our heroes, prior to their serendipitous pairing in 1927, in the long-lost short "Duck Soup." The inspired casting teamed them until their last days. Both often married, they found balancing their personal and professional lives a nearly impossible feat.

Between 1927 and 1938, they were able to successfully bridge the gap between silent and sound films, which tripped up most of their prominent colleagues. Their Hal Roach and MGM films were brilliant, but their move in 1941, to Twentieth Century Fox proved disastrous, with the nine films made there ranking as some of the most embarrassing moments of cinematic history.

In spite of this, Laurel and Hardy survived as exemplars of lasting genius, and their influence is seen to this day. The clowns were elusive behind their masks, but now Simon Louvish can finally reveal their full and complex humanity, and their passionate devotion to their art. In Stan and Ollie: The Roots of Comedy: The Double Life of Laurel and Hardy, Louvish has seamlessly woven tireless and thorough research into an authoritative biography of these two important and influential Hollywood pioneers.

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Simon Louvish

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"Thanks to a lively, affectionate writer, we can glimpse the great clowns at work."
-The Dallas Morning News

Praise for Stan and Ollie: The Roots of Comedy: The Double Life of Laurel and Hardy

"[Louvish] has researched his subjects thoroughly. . . . A useful reference book and a solid overview of their careers." ---The New York Times

"A fan's gleeful . . . double take on the beloved bumblers of silent and talking picture fame, seeing their prodigious pile of slapstick misadventures as high art . . . Louvish's wide-eyed love for his subjects' simple, forthright, and hardworking desire to please will bring down the house." ---Kirkus Reviews (starred)

"Lovingly researched." ---New York Daily News

From 1927 to the present day Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy have remained the screen's most famous and beloved comedy double act. Until now, there has never been a definitive biography of the duo, from birth to death.

Simon Louvish traces their early lives, and the minstrel and variety theatre that influenced their later work. Their inspired casting in Duck Soup teamed them until their last days. Both often married, they found balancing their personal and professional lives nearly impossible. Their Hal Roach and MGM films were brilliant, but their move in 1941 to Twentieth Century Fox proved disastrous.

In spite of this, Laurel and Hardy survived as exemplars of lasting genius, and are significant to this day. Simon Louvish has seamlessly woven tireless and thorough research into an authoritative biography of these two important and influential Hollywood pioneers.

Aus dem Klappentext

"Thanks to a lively, affectionate writer, we can glimpse the great clowns at work."
-The Dallas Morning News

Praise for Stan and Ollie: The Roots of Comedy: The Double Life of Laurel and Hardy

"[Louvish] has researched his subjects thoroughly. . . . A useful reference book and a solid overview of their careers." ---The New York Times

"A fan's gleeful . . . double take on the beloved bumblers of silent and talking picture fame, seeing their prodigious pile of slapstick misadventures as high art . . . Louvish's wide-eyed love for his subjects' simple, forthright, and hardworking desire to please will bring down the house." ---Kirkus Reviews (starred)

"Lovingly researched." ---New York Daily News

From 1927 to the present day Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy have remained the screen's most famous and beloved comedy double act. Until now, there has never been a definitive biography of the duo, from birth to death.

Simon Louvish traces their early lives, and the minstrel and variety theatre that influenced their later work. Their inspired casting in Duck Soup teamed them until their last days. Both often married, they found balancing their personal and professional lives nearly impossible. Their Hal Roach and MGM films were brilliant, but their move in 1941 to Twentieth Century Fox proved disastrous.

In spite of this, Laurel and Hardy survived as exemplars of lasting genius, and are significant to this day. Simon Louvish has seamlessly woven tireless and thorough research into an authoritative biography of these two important and influential Hollywood pioneers.

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Stan and Ollie: The Roots of Comedy

The Double Life of Laurel and HardyBy Simon Louvish

St. Martin's Griffin

Copyright © 2005 Simon Louvish
All right reserved.
ISBN: 9780312325985

Stan and Ollie: The Roots of Comedy

PART ONE

Twice Upon a Time ...

CHAPTER ONE

Once Upon a Clown

The clown was always disreputable, once his ties with religion were severed. Although the old song tells us 'the things that we're liable to hear in the Bible, they ain't necessarily so', merry-making, as far back as we care to go, was associated with drunkenness and wine. The biblical archetype, Jubal-Cain, was said to have been 'the father of all such as handle the harp and organ', which places him perhaps dubiously as the ancestor of Harpo and Chico Marx. Nevertheless, by the time we got to Bacchus, the ties to divinity were getting a little shaky. The Greeks were supposed to have initiated, or defined, the art of the Pantomime, the development in dance of a language of gestures, in which emotions and ideas can be presented. The old Hellenes were said to have given us Tragedy and Comedy, although Chico Marx once quipped that 'You can't take anything from the Greeks; you can't even get your change back.' Tragedy was for the upper classes, the kings and queens and gods and princes. Comedy was for the common people.

The Romans stole all the Greeks' ideas, though their sense of humour was somewhat coarser. A good day out at the Colosseum might start with the jugglers and magicians but end with blood and guts on the sand. One of Stan Laurel's early stage acts, formed in a break from his stint with Fred Karno's road show, was entitled Rum 'Uns from Rome, but there were none so rum as the Romans themselves. The author of the Satyricon, Petronius, was said to be 'a man who spends his days sleeping and his nights working or enjoying himself. Industry is the usual foundation of success, but with him it was idleness.' One of the little ditties enclosed in his famous work goes like this:

The Censor frowns and knits his brows, The Censor wants to stop us, The Censor hates my guileless prose, My simple modern opus.My cheerful unaffected style Is Everyman when in his humour, My candid pen narrates his joys, Refusing to philosophize.

An easy recognition. Out of the Roman Mimi, defined as 'an impudent race of buffoons who excelled in mimicry, and like our domestic fools, admitted into convivial parties to entertain the guests', emerged the gaudily costumed character of Harlequin - a clown of shaven head, sooty face, flat, unshod feet, and patched coat of many colours. Out of the same mould emerges the Italian Pulcinello, or the English Punch, with his long, hooked nose, his staring, goggle eyes and humped back. The generic name for this whole family of clowns has echoed down the centuries - in Latin sannio, in Italian zanni, in English zany. With the fall of Rome, and the rise of sombre-minded Christianity, these mimes were excluded from the rites of the Church, and their entertainments were frowned on. According to the Theodosian Creed, it was forbidden to administer the sacraments to actors except when death was imminent, and then only so that, if they recovered, they could renounce their calling. Rogues and Vagabonds, they wandered the earth, stubbornly laughing at tragedy. They were a worldwide phenomenon, in the Islamic and Oriental realms as well as the Christian. No culture was complete without its clowns. The elite among them became the court jesters, the fools with cap and bells who could laugh at the king when anyone else doing so would be doomed. But the truth, told behind the mask of the jester, could be only a joke: the proper 'truth' was still reserved by Church and State.

The old zannis continued to mutate, begetting a new family in the Italian theatre of the fifteenth century and on: Pantaloon, a merchant; Dottore, a comic physician; Spavento, a braggart; Pulcinello, the joker; and the blundering servant, Arlecchino. A description of Arlecchino - Harlequin, in R. J. Broadbent's 1901 A History of Pantomime, echoes, once again, with a close familiarity:

 

He is a mixture of wit, simplicity, ignorance, and grace, he is a half-made-up man, a great child with gleams of reason and intelligence, and all his mistakes and blunders have something arch about them. The true mode of representing him is to give him suppleness, agility, the playfulness of a kitten with a certain coarseness of exterior, which renders his actions moreabsurd. His part is that of a faithful valet; greedy; always in love; always in trouble, either on his own or his master's account; afflicted and consoled as easily as a child, and whose grief is as amusing as his joy.

 

Sometimes Harlequin was just a simple booby or dolt, or a kind of Sancho Panza, travelling with a companion who was sharp-witted and smart, who played the part of his foil. These clowns developed in various ways, with different masks and costumes. One French observer of the eighteenth-century English clown type wrote:

 

[He] is an odd and fantastical being ... His strange dress seems to have been taken from the American Indians. It consists of a white, red, yellow and green net work, ornamented with diamond-shaped pieces of stuff of various colours. His face is floured, and streaked with paint a deep carmine; the forehead is prolonged to the top of the head, which is covered with a red wig, from the centre of which a little stiff tail points to the sky. His manners are no less singular than his costume. He is not dumb, like our Pierrot, but, on the contrary, he sustains an animated and witty conversation; he is also an acrobat, and very expert in feats of strength.

 

The early nineteenth century saw a great inheritor of this old tradition: Joseph 'Joey' Grimaldi. Until his death in 1837 Grimaldi dominated the comedy scene in London. Before the days of the cinema, before the days of photography, it is difficult to gauge the particular qualities that made him so unforgettable to the audiences of his day. Whether in the simple way in which he stole a pie from a pieman, or in his many masks as a chimney sweep, a dandy, a tragic actor, a wet-nurse, he was a master of mimicry, who, in the words of a contemporary, 'uses his folly as a stalking horse, under cover of which he shoots his wit'. He also sang comic songs, 'infused with biting satire ... poking fun at the vices of the age, getting laughs out of transforming everyday objects and gilding every situation with his inimitable and immortal comic gift'. Grimaldi was noted as well for his comic duelling, and the astute student of comedy might flash forward to Stan Laurel's solo two-reel short of 1923, Frozen Hearts, in which our hero, as a Russian swain, Ivan Kektumoff, duels with his rival, the equally well-named Lieutenant Tumankikine, for seven non-stop months until both are buried deep in snow. Clowns, if not their audiences, always know their history.

Grimaldi became a prototype for the clowns of the Circus, the Big Show sired by the eighteenth century's penchant for extravagance and spectacle. But as a stage performer, in the London theatres of Covent Garden and Sadler's Wells, he also set the mode for a generation of music-hall performers who were to follow, adopting his mélange of comic songs, patter, physical agility and multiple personalities expressed...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: SMP Paperback
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2005
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0312325983
• ISBN 13: 9780312325985
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 546
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: GPSR Kontakt; gpsr@libri.de; ; Europaallee 1; Bad Hersfeld; 36244; Deutschland