Stan Laurel
Stan Laurel – The Last Laugh
Stan Laurel – The Last Laugh was commissioned by the prestigious arts strand The South Bank Show to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Stan’s birth. Made with the generous cooperation of Stan’s daughter Lois and her husband Tony Hawes, the show had privileged access to Stan’s scrap-books containing cuttings and photographs gathered throughout the whole of his fifty years in show business, along with home movies and rare copies of some of his solo films before teaming with Oliver Hardy.
The material on this page is a selection of images, audio and a transcribed part of my interview with producer Hal Roach.
Stan Laurel: The Early Years
This brief film includes images from Stan Laurel’s scrapbook with an archive interview in which he talks about his childhood and early stage career and his arrival in America.
Hal Roach Interview
In the course of making the show, I was fortunate to be one of the last to interview the then-98-year-old Hal Roach. He talked at length about his long career as a studio head and producer of Laurel and Hardy’s finest pictures. In this brief excerpt, Roach discusses his early career, working with Charlie Chaplin, and Laurel & Hardy.