Updated!
Laurel and Hardy filming Perfect Day (1928) on Vera Avenue in Culver City, California
A pop culture historian and Laurel and Hardy fan in excelsis by the name of Piet Schreuders has undertaken to design and create a digital version of 1920s-era Culver City as it appeared in countless Laurel and Hardy classics and other films made by the Hal Roach Studios at the time. The video documents the project, an off-shoot of Schreuder’s exhaustive book The Shortest Main Street in the World, which is dedicated to those themselves dedicated to the history and cinematic antics of Mssrs. Stan and Ollie. Take a look.
(And thanks for the tip to Scott Hewitt, who passes along this link to further reading on the subject of what Los Angeles and Hollywood looked like during the era of Chaplin and Keaton, and Laurel and Hardy, of course.)
And this by way of friend and reader Sal Gomez, a tour of the Culver City locations for Laurel and Hardy's Big Business 75 years later:
I thought I sent you this story several months ago.
ReplyDeleteAfter I discovered it I went on my own little tour since one of my little passions is finding old photos of the long gone 40 acre backlot near the Culver lot.
I've got a picture up you might enjoy.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the heads up on this. I love Laurel and Hardy, though not nearly as much as the Brothers Marx, and find their brand of physical hijinks easier to take than the Three Stooges, especially when Dolores Del Rio is involved.
ReplyDeleteJonathan, I was always fascinated by Laurel and Hardy as a kid (I had a big load of their stuff on Super 8 from Castle Films). Clearly, though, the Marx Brothers are in another class. As for Larry, Moe, Curly and Shemp, the great Stooges experiment commences next weekend when I take my crazy, slapstick-loving daughters to the annual Thanksgiving Three Stooges Fest at the luxurious Alex Theater here in Glendale. I am dying to see how they react.
ReplyDeleteOh, and I owe you an e-mail-- I promise I will respond.
DID: You may have sent it and if you did it slipped through the cracks. Sorry, Ollie!
Larry: You were right!
Fascinating. There's a great story about how they started to film Big Business, and after starting to destroy it found they'd gone to the wrong house.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the great clips.