Bulletin June 2008
 

Bishop Auckland statue progress

Bob Olley, who designed the new Stan Laurel statue for Bishop Auckland, writes, "I returned from Chengdu, China. Because of the Chinese New Year celebrations (everything stops for two weeks) the head and the relief panel were sculpted here in order to meet the installation deadline and were taken with me when I went to China. The clay sculpture and panel are completed and are being prepared at the foundry to be cast in bronze. My friend Lu Huangang, the foundry director, will send me photographs of the finished work so I can check that the patina/colour is what I asked for. I have chosen the black granite base and the engraving is to read "Stan Laurel, 1890-1965. A master of comedy.' "

Fin tribute

The Sunday Post (18.05.08.) had an article on James Finlayson. Ross Owen spoke to a journalist who wrote of Ross's desire to contact any of Fin's relatives. Contacts did indeed come forward. The article has been posted on the Laurel and Hardy Forum.

Dougie Rimmer

Peter Rimmer, who is Dougie's dad, writes, "I am sorry to have to tell you that Dougie is very ill in the Wisdom Hospice in Rochester. All the chemo etc failed to eradicate the cancer and the medical team say he is deteriorating rapidly."

Sons worldwide will be saddened by this news.

Harlem Museum

During April the Laurel and Hardy Museum of Harlem had 454 visitors drop by to enjoy the museum and to watch Laurel and Hardy movies in Babe's Bijou. Besides visitors from many USA states, there were visitors from Germany, Switzerland, France, the Netherlands and 45 visitors from the Northumberland area of England, who were very excited about visiting Ollie's birthplace. The museum continues to do very well with sales of Laurel and Hardy memorabilia and this helps with building expenses, since the museum is operated as a non-profit operation, with the workers all being volunteers.

Gino Dercola

Ghosts meet

You are invited to another evening of fun and frolics when the Live Ghost Tent holds another fine meeting on Saturday June 7th, from 5.30 pm until 11.00 pm at The Calthorpe Arms, 252 Grays Inn Road, London WC1X 8JR.

Stan Laurel: Please Stand Up!

Thursday 26th June 7.30pm

£11 (£10 conc) £10 (£9 conc)

Norden Farm Centre for the Arts, Altwood Road, Maidenhead, SL6 4PF. Tel: 01628 682563. Fax: 01628 682525.

  • Publicity reads, "This funny, touching and new play offers the opportunity to discover the man who was formerly Stan Jefferson and how, and why, he became Stan Laurel - comedy genius. The play gets closer than ever before to discovering the real man who made the world laugh and his relationship with the world when the cameras stopped turning. A wonderful and affectionate portrait of a man who left England on the same boat as Charlie Chaplin, bound for America to make his fortune."

John Burton writes, "Myself, Heppy and Duncan Whysall went to see Bob Kingdom perform the above play on 23rd May at Rotherham Arts Centre. Without spoiling it in case you haven't seen it, by providing a review, instead I can say that we all found the play entertaining and interesting and all had a thoroughly enjoyable evening. Bob Kingdom even offers a passing resemblance of Stan in later years, which adds to the occasion. The poor reviews from the media can be taken with a pinch of salt and seem to have been written by authors who probably expected Stan and Ollie routines throughout and who would therefore have been disappointed. I would recommend seeing the show if you get the chance."

Village pub recalls

The BBC News website (03.05.08.) announced that a pub was to recreate the moment Laurel and Hardy pulled pints at the Bull Inn in Bottesford in the Midlands, during a break in a European tour at Christmas 1952. The pub was run by Stan Laurel's sister, Olga, and she invited them over while their show was in Nottingham.

The website said, "Now two amateur actors will appear as the screen legends as part of Bank Holiday events in the village. Teacher David McCormack will play Oliver Hardy and also wrote the sketches for the celebration. 'I looked at photographs of their time here to think about what they would have done and said. I suspect they would have used snippets from their old routines in pastiche form.' "

EastEnders quote

In the TV Times dated 19-25 April 2008 there was an interview with EastEnders actors Ricky Groves (Garry) and Cliff Parisi (Minty). The interviewer stated that they seemed to get all the laughs in the square. Ricky said that their characters are "such a good comedy double, both completely hapless. They're like Laurel and Hardy."

Mark Russell

29th UK Convention

Well, it lived up to the plans Norman and I had for the convention. Both Dougie Brown and Roger Robinson commented they had spent more time talking with Sons than ever before. I think more people were wearing their fezzes than for a while and I think the Souza March on the Friday night and the breakout of mayhem on the Saturday night helped the overall silliness. I was pleasantly surprised by the numbers in the cinema and I was pleased for both of Jean's talks. I enjoyed the shock when Sons discovered many of the extended foreign versions of the films were on their Universal box set.

Chris Coffey

E-mail change

Peter Brodie, Grand Sheik of the Blotto Tent, has a new e-mail address: peterbrodie@gws.myzen.co.uk.

National Veteran's Week 

Blackpool has been selected to host National Veteran's Day on the 27th June and is hosting a week of activities to mark the occasion, from 21st June until 29th June. National Veteran's Day is an annual celebration of the contributions of our ex-servicemen and women who have served in our Armed Forces. In addition the event is also a way of raising public awareness of the issues facing our veterans today, and the contribution they continue to provide to society through the skills they developed in the Armed Forces.

 A special free wartime cinema experience featuring Laurel and Hardy will be screened at the Odeon Cinema Blackpool especially for primary-aged schoolchildren on the Fylde Coast as part of the event.

There will be special screenings of 1940s archive news footage of children living in the UK during the Second World War, including gas mask drill, giving young children a taste of what life in wartime Britain was like. This will be followed by a black and white Laurel and Hardy film, which would have been enjoyed by children and their families during the 1940s.

Please book your free seats from Aishling McGinty at Highfield Humanities College. Telephone: 01253 310 925.

Adam and Paul

In the International Herald Tribune (17.06.05.), Liam Muldowney found a review of the film Adam and Paul, part of which read:

Its success, though, is because of a delicate balance between grim and hilarious, often achieved by borrowing motifs from absurd and existentialist classics. The plays of Samuel Beckett, in which down-and-out types endlessly wait around or tackle Sisyphean tasks, are an obvious influence, as well as the slapstick aesthetic of early comic cinema. The cast watched Laurel and Hardy's Way Out West during rehearsals, and O'Halloran [writer and co-star Mark O'Halloran] acknowledged the debt by including a line from that film in his script.
 
With Chaplin, and Laurel and Hardy, it's always a sort of big world and small person. Junkies are essentially just that. They're kind of oppressed by, dwarfed by, at the mercy of the environment that they find themselves in," [director Lenny] Abramson said.

In the press

Dwain Smith sent us another newspaper reference to the New York baseball player Oliver Perez. This time Dwain says, "The recent performance was not so noteworthy."

Find a Grave

An Internet site called Find a Grave has information on the graves of Laurel and Hardy and many of their co-stars. It can be found at http://www.findagrave.com/php/famous.php?FSctf=102&page=pr.

Did you see?

The episode of The Simpsons (C4, 28.05.08.) had Homer inspecting some blueprints before starting work rebuilding Bart's tree house. In a scene reminiscent of Busy Bodies, Lisa points out that the blueprint is for a go-kart track. Doh!

Dean Carroll

The ITV current affairs programme Tonight recently reported on various errant utility companies. Their misdemeanours were accompanied by Laurel and Hardy's Cuckoo theme in the background.

Robert Downey Jnr impersonated Stan's head scratch very briefly while he was a guest on the Jonathan Ross talk show on the BBC.

Jonathan  Hayward

On Who Wants to be a  Millionaire? (ITV, 27.05.08.) A lady named  Cathy Baker from East Renfrewshire was asked, "Which Hollywood  comedian was nicknamed "Babe"? (a) Harold Lloyd (b) Buster Keaton (c) Stan Laurel (d) Oliver Hardy?

She had £20,000, going for £50,000 and  wrongly answered, "Buster Keaton," losing £19,000 and going home with just £1,000.

John Bogie, Dean Carroll and Janice Hawton