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Title: Stan and Ollie: The Roots of Comedy: The Double Life of Laurel and Hardy by Simon Louvish ISBN: 0-312-26651-0 Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books Pub. Date: 01 December, 2002 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $27.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.14 (7 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Big Business & Big Fun
Comment: I enjoyed this book very much. I also enjoyed Louvish's books on W. C. Fields and the Marx Brothers.
What I liked about this book was that it placed Laurel and Hardy in a working context. The impression I got was that they were not totally responsible for their success. They needed a team of other performers (Edgar Kennedy, James Finlayson) and behind the camera people (Hal Roach, Leo McCary, the Parrott brothers) to create the comedy gems that we enjoy. (I found that Louvish's judgments on what the best L & H films pretty much tallied up with mine.) When the equation began to change, such as Roach getting mad at the duo after "Babes in Toyland" and gradually losing interest in their careers, the films ceased being as interesting.
I found this a refreshing approach to the material, which too often is "Comedian X was a true genius and everyone else messed with his vision." Louvish's book presents a picture of the lives of the two comedians, but also shows how their films were a collaborative process.
Rating: 3
Summary: As much as mystery as the the subjects themselves
Comment: One-third of the way through this book, I believed I was reading the most well-written book I had ever read. The style of Mr. Louvish did not seem to be prose as much as an extended conversation with the author. A conversation about two people about whom the overwhelming majority of us know only what we've seen in the movies.
My view of this book changed rarher abruply just as success came to two men who had worked in the film industry for the better part of a decade as solo performers. At this point, the success of the team and the success of this book intersected while going in opposite directions.
Stan and Ollie is another in what appears to be an ongoing historical series on the early comedians of film. In addtion to his published works on Fields and the Marx Brothers - and his soon-to-be-published book on Sennett - Louvish also provides a great deal of information on those with whom Laurel and Hardy worked.
But, this ominbus volume has its flaws. I'm not speaking about the various minor to the story-at-hand-inaccuracies (Lindbergh flring the Atlantic in 1928, for example), but rather the seeming breakdown of the narrative at the key points.
Although there is a massive amount of data here, Louvish seems unable to reach conclusions about why things happened. The most specific examp[le of this is related to the two men getting together. Louvish swamps us with detail of their solo films. He acts like the notional Greek Choir in commenting on their brushes with each other on a few films; these he seems to relegate to the "oops...almost but not quite" conclusion. He even manages to belabor the point of "what was the first Laurel and Hardy film?" to extinction in quibble over whether the full and correct Stan and Ollie personsas were in place.And, if this isn't enough, there is page after page of what is nothing more than descriptions of the plots of their films.
You never really learn wht they could work together so well. Louvish seems to imply that their characters worked that out while their true selves just sort of watched from the wings.
There is still a lot of information here about the team and the period. It seves to confirm the fact that Hollywood has more in common with the mutually assured destruction theory of the Cold War than the place where dreams come true.
Rating: 3
Summary: Once again, bad writing defeats good research.
Comment: Just as he did with Monkey Business, his biography of the Marx Bros, Simon Louvish once again defeats his excellent research skills with his horribly corny and dated writing style.
Louvish's efforts to be as clever and funny as his subjects are embarrassing; good writing doesn't need to call attention to itself. Every page bristles with old medicine bottle sentences like, " To Stan, of course, art was not the issue so much as work and the remuneration therof," or, "This fact alone should provide a vital clue for the constant conundrum - the disentangling of the claims of authorship to Laurel and Hardy, the characters, the lines, the movies, the plots."
Editor!
Of course, any book with TWO subtitles is suspect. Louvish should stick to his terrific detective skills (and they are truly impressive) and get some talented grad student to do the writng.
To see what a good showbiz bio is like - well researched AND well written - check out "W.C. Fields: A Biography, " by James Curtis.
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Title: W. C. Fields : A Biography by James Curtis ISBN: 0375402179 Publisher: Knopf Pub. Date: 04 March, 2003 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
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Title:Laurel & Hardy ASIN: B00009YXEW Publisher: Artisan Pub. Date: 17 February, 2004 List Price(USD): $14.98 Comparison N/A, buy it from Amazon for $12.73 |
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Title: The Complete Films of Laurel and Hardy by William K. Everson ISBN: 0806501464 Publisher: Citadel Trade Pub. Date: June, 1989 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Laurel & Hardy: From the Forties Forward by Scott Macgillivary, Scott Macgillivray ISBN: 187951141X Publisher: Vestal Press Ltd Pub. Date: September, 1998 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: The Boys: The Cinematic World of Laurel and Hardy by Scott Allen Nollen, John McCabe ISBN: 0786411155 Publisher: McFarland & Company Pub. Date: March, 2001 List Price(USD): $20.00 |
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