LAUREL & HARDY, 'PUTTING PANTS ON PHILIP' PREMIERE

Stan Laurel & Oliver Hardy

Today, The Grandma is resting at home. December has arrived with low temperatures and rain and she has preferred to stay at home watching TV.

She has chosen a funny film titled Putting Pants on Philip. It is a silent short film starring British/American comedy duo Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy.

She loves Laurel and Hardy and she has wanted to commemorate that Putting Pants on Philip, the first Laurel and Hardy film, was released on a day like today in 1927.

Before watching the film, The Grandma has read a new chapter of Mary Stewart's This Rough Magic.

Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy were a comedy duo act during the early Classical Hollywood era of American cinema.

The team was composed of Englishman Stan Laurel (1890–1965) and American Oliver Hardy (1892–1957). They became well known during the late 1920s to the mid-1940s for their slapstick comedy, with Laurel playing the clumsy and childlike friend of the pompous bully Hardy.

The duo's signature tune is known variously as The Cuckoo Song, Ku-Ku, or The Dance of the Cuckoos. It was played over the opening credits of their films and has become as emblematic of the duo as their bowler hats.

More information: Laurel & Hardy-The Official Website

Prior to emerging as a team, both actors had well-established film careers. Laurel had appeared in over 50 films as an actor, while also working as a writer and director, while Hardy had been in more than 250 productions. The two comedians had previously worked together as cast members on the film The Lucky Dog in 1921. However, they were not a comedy team at that time and it was not until 1926 that they appeared in a short movie together, when both separately signed contracts with the Hal Roach film studio.

Laurel and Hardy officially became a team in 1927 when they appeared together in the silent short film Putting Pants on Philip. They remained with the Roach studio until 1940 and then appeared in eight B movie comedies for 20th Century Fox and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer from 1941 to 1945.

Stan Laurel & Oliver Hardy

After finishing their movie commitments at the end of 1944, they concentrated on performing in stage shows and embarked on a music hall tour of England, Ireland, and Scotland. They made their last film in 1950, a French-Italian co-production called Atoll K.

Stan Laurel (June 16, 1890-February 23, 1965) was born Arthur Stanley Jefferson in Ulverston, Lancashire, England into a theatrical family. His father, Arthur Joseph Jefferson, was a theatrical entrepreneur and theatre owner in northern England and Scotland who, with his wife, was a major force in the industry.

In 1905, the Jefferson family moved to Glasgow to be closer to their business mainstay of the Metropole Theatre, and Laurel made his stage debut in a Glasgow hall called the Britannia Panopticon one month short of his 16th birthday. Arthur Jefferson secured Laurel his first acting job with the juvenile theatrical company of Levy and Cardwell, which specialized in Christmas pantomimes.

In 1909, Laurel was employed by Britain's leading comedy impresario Fred Karno as a supporting actor, and as an understudy for Charlie Chaplin. Laurel said of Karno, There was no one like him. He had no equal. His name was box-office.

More information: BFI

Oliver Hardy (January 18, 1892-August 7, 1957) was born Norvell Hardy in Harlem, Georgia. By his late teens, Hardy was a popular stage singer and he operated a movie house in Milledgeville, Georgia, the Palace Theater, financed in part by his mother. For his stage name he took his father's first name, calling himself Oliver Norvell Hardy, while offscreen his nicknames were Ollie and Babe. The nickname Babe originated from an Italian barber near the Lubin Studios in Jacksonville, Florida, who would rub Hardy's face with talcum powder and say That's nice-a baby! Other actors in the Lubin company mimicked this, and Hardy was billed as Babe Hardy in his early films.

They appeared as a team in 107 films, starring in 32 short silent films, 40 short sound films, and 23 full-length feature films. They also made 12 guest or cameo appearances, including the Galaxy of Stars promotional film of 1936.

On December 1, 1954, the pair made their one American television appearance, when they were surprised and interviewed by Ralph Edwards on his live NBC-TV program This Is Your Life. Since the 1930s, the works of Laurel and Hardy have been released in numerous theatrical reissues, television revivals, 8-mm and 16-mm home movies, feature-film compilations, and home videos.

Stan Laurel & Oliver Hardy

In 2005, they were voted the seventh-greatest comedy act of all time by a UK poll of fellow comedians.

The official Laurel and Hardy appreciation society is known as The Sons of the Desert, named after a fictitious fraternal society featured in the film of the same name.

Putting Pants On Philip is a silent short film starring British/American comedy duo Laurel and Hardy. Made in 1927, it is their first official film together as a team. The plot involves Laurel as Philip, a young Scot newly arrived in the United States, in full kilted splendor, suffering mishaps involving the kilt. His uncle, played by Hardy, is shown trying to put trousers on him.

The duo appeared in a total of 107 films between 1921 and 1950. The idea for the film was Stan Laurel's and was based on a story recounted by a friend while Laurel worked in music hall. The archivist William K. Everson described the film as one of the real gems of comedy from the late 1920s, and perhaps the most individual of all the Laurel and Hardy comedies, though not necessarily the funniest.

More information: BBC

Piedmont Mumblethunder (Hardy) is awaiting the arrival of his Scottish nephew Philip (Laurel) at a pier. Piedmont does not know what Philip looks like, but has a letter from his sister that says Philip is so shy around women that he breaks out in a rash at the mere sight of a female. Upon his first sight of Philip, Piedmont tells a bystander that he pities whomever has to collect this character only to be upset when the man turns out to be Philip.

Piedmont is embarrassed at the apparent effeminacy of the kilt-wearing Philip. The rumor of Philip being shy in the presence of women is completely inaccurate as Philip is an incorrigible skirt-chaser. At one point Philip loses his underwear and, pursuing a pretty girl, steps on a ventilator grate. This blows his kilt up which results in several women fainting.

Piedmont then takes Philip to a tailor to be fitted for trousers an action that Philip resists greatly. Philip leaves the tailor to continue pursuing the young woman he saw earlier. Catching up to the woman, Philip takes off his kilt to cover a mud puddle. Rejecting this act of chivalry, the woman simply leaps over the puddle and leaves. Piedmont subsequently steps on the kilt and falls into a deep, mud-covered hole. The film ends on a close up of Oliver Hardy's face showing a soon to be classic look of chagrin.

Although this was their first official film as a team, the iconic Stan and Ollie characters and costumes had yet to become a permanent fixture. Their first appearance as the now familiar Stan and Ollie characters was in The Second Hundred Years, directed by Fred Guiol and supervised by Leo McCarey, who suggested that the performers be teamed permanently.

The film was partially shot at the historic Culver Hotel.

More information: The Irish Times

When I was a kid, I used to watch 'Laurel and Hardy'

with my cousins all the time.

I still think they're extremely funny and so surreal.

David Chase