December 29, 1933: Laurel & Hardy Star In "Sons of the Desert"

December 29, 1933: Sons of the Desert premieres, starring Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. The film's title became the name of the comedy duo's international appreciation society.

Arthur Stanley Jefferson was born on June 16, 1890 in Ulverston, Cumbria, in the North-West of England. Taking on the name Stan Laurel, he starred in English music halls (their version of vaudeville), developing the persona of a well-meaning bumbler in a bowler hat. In 1910, he came to America on the same sea voyage as Charlie Chaplin, and made his 1st film appearance in 1917.

Norvell Hardy was born on January 18, 1892 in Harlem, Georgia. Taking his father's name of Oliver, he developed an early interest in music, and played football at the University of Georgia. He made his 1st film appearance in 1914, in what was then the filmmaking capital of the South, Jacksonville, Florida. He moved to Los Angeles in 1917, and in 1921, he appeared in The Lucky Dog, as did Laurel: Hardy's character was a robber who tried to hold Laurel's character up. But they would not appear together again until 1927, as Hardy developed a persona of a fat man who became the film's "fall guy."

That year, they both appeared in Slipping Wives and Duck Soup (not to be confused with the later Marx Brothers film of the same title), both for Hal Roach Studios. Roach director Leo McCarey noticed that they worked well together, and teamed them up. Together, they would appear in 107 films, many of them comedy shorts, with 23 full-length features. Hardy also began wearing a bowler hat, which became identified with the duo long after going out of fashion.

My grandmother was a huge fan of theirs. Their theme song was "The Cuckoo Song," with a similarity to "The Worm Crawls In." Their slapstick humor carried through films like The Music Box, Way Out West, and Babes in Toyland, which became a Christmas-season classic.

But Laurel & Hardy is another entertainment institution with a famous catchphrase that was never actually used. Stan's bumbling would inevitably lead to "Ollie" saying, "This is another fine mess you've gotten us into, Stanley." Instead, it was, "Well, here's another nice mess you've gotten me into!" Stan's reply was usually to start crying and say, "Well, I couldn't help it!" Nevertheless, one of their films was titled Another Fine Mess.

When their contract ran out in 1944, they switched to a stage show, sometimes entertaining the troops in World War II. After the war, both men, only in their early 50s, had serious health issues, and they made only 1 more film together, a French film titled Atoll K., in 1951. On December 1, 1954, they appeared on This Is Your Life, and it was their only television appearance.

Hardy died from the last of a series of strokes on August 7, 1957, at the age of 65. Laurel refused to perform without him, and turned down a role in the 1963 cast-of-thousands comedy It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. He died on February 23, 1965, at 75.

That same year, John McCabe, who'd written a book about them, founded The Sons of the Desert, not a "fan club," but an "appreciation society." Among the original members were actors Orson Bean and Chuck McCann, who occasionally appeared in character as the duo.

Larry Harmon, the most famous portrayer of Bozo the Clown, bought the legal rights to the Laurel & Hardy franchise, and produced new cartoons based on them, including a 1972 pairing with Scooby-Doo and Mystery, Inc.

In 1999, he produced a live-action film, The All New Adventures of Laurel & Hardy in For Love or Mummy. Bronson Pinchot, best known as Balki on the sitcom Perfect Strangers -- with Mark Linn-Baker's Larry being something of a Hardy to Pinchot's Laurel -- played Stan; while Gailard Sartain, known for playing fat Southerners like Hardy, played Hardy. It went direct to video, and was not a hit.

Maybe Matthew Broderick and Nathan Lane could do it better.

*

December 29, 1933 was a Friday. This was also the day the film Flying Down to Rio premiered, marking the 1st film pairing of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. I have a separate entry for that event.

Baseball and football were in the off-season. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. And while the NHL season was in progress, no games were scheduled. So there were no scores on this historic day. 

January 9, 1927: The Laurier Palace Theatre Fire

January 9, 1927: A fire breaks out at the Laurier Palace Theatre in Montreal. There are 78 people killed, nearly all of them children.

The theater was located on the east side of Montreal, at 3215 Saint Catherine Street East. About 250 children, most of them not accompanied by an adult, were attending a performance of the silent film comedy Get 'Em Young. In a tremendous oddity, the film was originally slated to star Oliver Hardy, but he had to drop out, and was replaced by Stan Laurel. Later in 1927, Laurel and Hardy would begin starring together as a comedy team.

The fire was supposedly started by a discarded cigarette. Ushers, not realizing the danger, at first blocked the east balcony exit, and urged the children to return to their seats. And the exit doors opened inward, a fire hazard.

The projectionist, Émile Massicotte, was a hero: He got 30 children away from the locked exit into the projection booth, then passed them out a window onto the marquee above the sidewalk, enabling them to climb down fireman's ladders. Another hero was an usher, Paul Champagne: He helped direct evacuation at the other stairway that was not blocked. Together, Champagne and Massicotte may have prevented over 100 more deaths. It was also lucky that a fire station was just across the street. Of those who were killed, all but 1 were under the age of 16.

With mostly-Francophone Quebec still under the sway, if not the outright control, of the Roman Catholic Church, Father Georges Gauthier, the Archbishop of Montreal, insisted that entertainment should not be allowed on Sundays, and that children should be barred from movie theaters.

A few months later, Judge Louis Boyer (of French descent) recommended that everyone under 16 be forbidden access to cinema screenings. The following year, to appease extremists who wanted the cinema closed to all, such a law was passed, and remained in effect for 33 years, until 1961, early in Quebec's "Quiet Revolution," when things began to be more liberated and sensible.

But before that could happen, in 1954, a church was built on the site of the theater.

*

January 9, 1927 was a Sunday. Baseball and football were out of season. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. There was 1 game played in the NHL: The New York Rangers beat the Detroit Cougars, 4-1 at Madison Square Garden. This was the building eventually known as "The Old Garden," although it was only a little over a year old at this point. The Cougars would be renamed the Detroit Falcons in 1930, and the Detroit Red Wings in 1932.