Hardy Oliver - Stan and Ollie: the roots of comedy: the double life of Laurel and Hardy
Here you can read online Hardy Oliver - Stan and Ollie: the roots of comedy: the double life of Laurel and Hardy full text of the book (entire story) in english for free. Download pdf and epub, get meaning, cover and reviews about this ebook. City: United States, year: 2005;2012, publisher: St. Martins Press;T. Dunne Books, genre: Non-fiction. Description of the work, (preface) as well as reviews are available. Best literature library LitArk.com created for fans of good reading and offers a wide selection of genres:
Romance novel
Science fiction
Adventure
Detective
Science
History
Home and family
Prose
Art
Politics
Computer
Non-fiction
Religion
Business
Children
Humor
Choose a favorite category and find really read worthwhile books. Enjoy immersion in the world of imagination, feel the emotions of the characters or learn something new for yourself, make an fascinating discovery.
- Book:Stan and Ollie: the roots of comedy: the double life of Laurel and Hardy
- Author:
- Publisher:St. Martins Press;T. Dunne Books
- Genre:
- Year:2005;2012
- City:United States
- Rating:4 / 5
- Favourites:Add to favourites
- Your mark:
Stan and Ollie: the roots of comedy: the double life of Laurel and Hardy: summary, description and annotation
We offer to read an annotation, description, summary or preface (depends on what the author of the book "Stan and Ollie: the roots of comedy: the double life of Laurel and Hardy" wrote himself). If you haven't found the necessary information about the book — write in the comments, we will try to find it.
Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy have remained, from 1927 to the present day, the screens 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.;Twice upon a time -- The glory days-tall oaks from little acorns grow -- We faw down: on the trail of the lonesome mimes.
Hardy Oliver: author's other books
Who wrote Stan and Ollie: the roots of comedy: the double life of Laurel and Hardy? Find out the surname, the name of the author of the book and a list of all author's works by series.
Franklin Dixon
Paul Merton
James Roots
Brian J. Robb
Carolyn Hardy
R H N Hardy
Tomalin
Don Ed Hardy Designs.
James Roots
Hardy Thomas
Thomas Hardy
Stan and Ollie: the roots of comedy: the double life of Laurel and Hardy — read online for free the complete book (whole text) full work
Below is the text of the book, divided by pages. System saving the place of the last page read, allows you to conveniently read the book "Stan and Ollie: the roots of comedy: the double life of Laurel and Hardy" online for free, without having to search again every time where you left off. Put a bookmark, and you can go to the page where you finished reading at any time.
Light
Font size:
↓
↑
Reset
Interval:
↓
↑
Bookmark:
Make
Table of Contents
Plaudits and thanks to all those who have helped to make this book happen: first and foremost the gurus of Stan and Ollie studies: Randy Skretvedt in sunny California; Leo Brooks in Texas; Rob (Solo) Stone in Los Angeles and his London counterpart, David Wyatt; A. J. Marriot in wildest England, master of the early life of Stan Laurel. All have given of their time and energy and enabled access to their archives. Thanks also as ever to Glenn Mitchell, master of the A-to-Zs of classic film comedy, who has been kind enough to fact-check this tome. Any remaining errors are, of course, my own responsibility, as are my speculations, interpretations and analyses of Stan and Ollies art and lives, in particular my comments on marital matters, concerning which Glenn wishes to demur from my excessive fondness for old news cuttings. Genuflections to the usual suspects in archival nirvanas: Rod Bladel and staff at New York Public Library of the Performing Arts; staff of the Special Collections of the Margaret Herrick Library at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Los Angeles; Ned Comstock of the University of Southern California; Geraldine Duclow and staff of the Theater Collection of the Free Library of Philadelphia; staff at the British Film Institute Library and Westminster Reference Library; staff at the British Librarys Manuscript Division. David Rothman, Genealogist First Class of California, once again dug and delved for nuggets. Thanks also to Marion Grave and staff at the Laurel and Hardy Museum in Ulverston, and to the good people of Harlem, Georgia: Dave Carlsen and family for their hospitality, and the organizers of the annual Oliver Hardy Day. Special thanks to Charles Lord of Grovetown and Marshall Williams of Madison, Georgia, graceful guardians of the local lore. Thanks too to Anthony Slide, Armond Fields, John Cooper, Rick Mitz, Walter Donohue, Richard Kelly and staff at Faber and Faber, who have endured my Why dont you do something to help me? for far longer than should be humanly necessary. And yet again luv to Mairi, whose tolerance for the Cuckoo song and other comical clangs and clamours has been tested far beyond the bounds of duty.
Also by Simon Louvish
BIOGRAPHY
Man on the Flying Trapeze: The Life and Times of W. C. Fields
Monkey Business: The Lives and Legends of the Marx Brothers
FICTION
A Moment of Silence
The Therapy of Avram Blok
City of Blok
The Last Trump of Avram Blok
The Death of Moishe-Ganef
The Silencer
Your Monkeys Shmuck
Resurrections from the Dustbin of History
Whats Up, God?
The Days of Miracles and Wonders
Going Bye Bye
The Church of the Hills in Glendale, on 27 February 1965, must have looked like a house full of live ghosts. Buster Keaton was there, and Andy Clyde and Clyde Cook, and the studioless Hal Roach, and Roach stalwarts Patsy Kelly and Babe London. Joe Rock and Leo McCarey stood by as the second half of the grand act was eulogized. The halls of Heaven must be ringing with divine laughter, said Dick Van Dyke.
Others had already departed. Jimmy Finlayson died on 9 October 1953, also of a heart attack. He lived alone, but breakfasted every morning with an old friend, actress Stephanie Insall, at her home. When he didnt arrive one morning she called, to find him dead. A fellow Mason, his funeral rites were held at the same Masonic Chapel as Oliver Hardys. Old stalwarts Mack Sennett, Billy Bevan, Hank Mann and Snub Pollard were on hand to say farewell to Fin. Of them, only veteran Keystone Kopper Hank Mann was alive at Stan Laurels death. Hank outlived Stan by six years.
Jimmy Aubrey, the oldest of all the old-timers, born in 1887, lived on till 1984. Billy Bletcher, another great survivor, of Vim vintage, died, aged eighty-five, in 1979. Of the ladies, Dorothy Coburn, who made Babe fall in the mud hole in Putting Pants on Philip, and Anita Garvin, peerless at chasing a cherry round a plate, were long lived, the former checking out aged seventy-two, the latter handing in her plate at the ripe age of eighty-eight in 1994. Billy Gilbert died of a stroke aged seventy-eight in 1971. Charlie Hall had preceded Stan, departing in 1959. Edgar Kennedy had bowed out even earlier, aged fifty-eight, in 1948. Tiny Sandford, the cop with the triple takes and the useless notebook in Big Business, checked out in 1961. Charlie Rogers succumbed to a traffic accident in Los Angeles in 1960. Leo McCarey survived Stan by four years. Joe Rock died in 1984.
Of all the survivors, Hal Roach was the most stubborn. Like Adolph Zukor, the Hollywood pioneer who clung to the vital forceuntil 1976, aged a hundred and three, Roach battled on, to have many a last word. When the press announced that Roach had died, aged one century, in 1992, it might equally have proclaimed, Hal Roach Resumes Production, or Hal Roach Set to Break New Flight Record. The man who had started out driving trucks in Alaska in the kind of environment Charlie Chaplin was to lampoon in The Gold Rush had survived almost to the threshold of the twenty-first century, to the brink of the Internet age. He was single-minded, ambitious, politically naive, but in tune with the mass audiences hunger for comedy. His was, indeed, a fabulous life, in the course of which he had created a consistent world, a comic legacy that has not been surpassed.
As for the personal partners:
Lucille Hardy remarried, to a retired business man, Ben Price, and lived on until 1986. Myrtle Hardy, despite her continued alcoholic condition, survived to the age of eighty-six, and gave up the ghost in 1983. Of Madelyn Hardys date of death we have no verifiable record, as she faded out of the tale with her plaintive telegrams of the late 1930s.
Virginia Ruth Laurel appears to have remarried three times since her marriages to Stan Laurel, hitching up with Messrs Block, Gates and White (consecutively); the last named signed on in 1960. She died in 1976, Stans daughter Lois remaining close to her to the end. According to John McCabe, Mae Dahlberg, still calling herself Laurel, died at the Sayville Nursing Home in New York State in 1969. A year earlier, he had interviewed her and received the tale of the laurel leaves of Scipio Africanus. Thats how he got his name, she insisted. It was that simple.
Sic transit gloria mundi.
Ida Kitaeva Laurel died in 1980, aged eighty-two. She had continued living in the Oceana apartment in Santa Monica, standing guard over Stans memory.
Stans first wife, Lois, was the last to depart, at the age of ninety-four, in 1990. She was resident with her daughter at the time.
The merry-making Illianas fate is less certain. Where she went, whom she married, divorced, remarried, drove crazy, remains outside our tale. A San Francisco death certificate records the decease of a Vera I. Ivanova on 7 February 1994. Her birth is noted as 6 November 1897, which would make her just over ninety-six yearsof age, another strange affirmation (which might have delighted W. C. Fields) of the preservative powers of alcohol.
And so they have all departed, both stars and supporting cast, leaving behind the usual jigsaw puzzle of memories, oral and inscribed. But beyond the memories there are the works, the living art of the movies, which the actors, technicians and producers churned out for fun and profit. Just two-reelers, Stan Laurel insisted, and a dash of feature films, made in the exigencies of ongoing business. At most, he would concede, a craft.
Light
Font size:
↓
↑
Reset
Interval:
↓
↑
Bookmark:
Make
Similar books «Stan and Ollie: the roots of comedy: the double life of Laurel and Hardy»
Look at similar books to Stan and Ollie: the roots of comedy: the double life of Laurel and Hardy. We have selected literature similar in name and meaning in the hope of providing readers with more options to find new, interesting, not yet read works.
Franklin Dixon
Paul Merton
James Roots
Brian J. Robb
Carolyn Hardy
R H N Hardy
Tomalin
Don Ed Hardy Designs.
James Roots
Hardy Thomas
Thomas Hardy
Reviews about «Stan and Ollie: the roots of comedy: the double life of Laurel and Hardy»
Discussion, reviews of the book Stan and Ollie: the roots of comedy: the double life of Laurel and Hardy and just readers' own opinions. Leave your comments, write what you think about the work, its meaning or the main characters. Specify what exactly you liked and what you didn't like, and why you think so.