【完】Laurel and Hardy（ 译者：不许出走 也不逛街）

劳莱与哈台是美国的双人喜剧组合，他们在20世纪上半叶由他喜剧电影而成名。英国出生的瘦子劳莱（Stan Laurel）和美国佐治亚的胖子哈台（Oliver Hardy）组成了这个喜剧二人组。他们被认为是电影史上最著名和最出色的双人表演组合，他们分别给这个组合贡献了自己的独特天赋。 这两位喜剧演员大约在1921年开始合作。在1920年代，两人短暂的在一些Hal Roach制片厂的短片中分别出演之后，他们开始于1926年共同出演电影，并于1927年正式结成搭档组合。在1927到1940年间，他们共同出演了62部短片和13部长片（并在无数其他影片中客串演出），他们成为Hal Roach最著名和最有利可图的明星。他们最受欢迎和最成功的电影包括长片Sons of the Desert (1933年)、 Way Out West (1937年)和 Block-Heads (1938年); 短片 Hog Wild (1930年)、 Helpmates (1932年) 和奥斯卡短片获奖作品The Music Box (1932年)。 他们在1940年离开Roach制片厂，到1944年间，一共出演了20世纪福克斯和米高梅公司的8部低成本喜剧，1944年后他们就离开电影业而专心于舞台表演。他们于1950年到1951年间，在法国拍摄了最后一部电影Atoll K，此后从电影银幕中销声匿迹。 组合前 Stan Laurel Stan Laurel (June 16, 1890 – February 23, 1965) was born Arthur Stanley Jefferson in Ulverston, Lancashire (now Ulverston, Cumbria), England. His father, Arthur J. "A.J." Jefferson, was a showman and had served as actor, director, playwright, manager, and all-around theatrical entrepreneur in many northern English cities. Laurel began his career in Glasgow Britannia Theatre of Varieties and Panopticon music hall, colloquially know as as the Panopticon, at the age of 16, where he crafted a comedy act largely derivative of famous music hall comedians of the day, including George Roby and Dan Leno. Over the next several years, he gradually worked his way up the ladder of supporting roles until he became the featured comedian, as well as an understudy to Charlie Chaplin, in Fred Karno's comedy company. He emigrated to America in 1912 where he decided to change his name; being the more publicity minded of the pair, he worried that "Arthur Jefferson" was too long to fit onto posters. He took his middle name "Stanley," shortened it to "Stan" and added "Laurel," perhaps because of his girlfriend, Mae Laurel. He made his first film appearance in 1917 (Nuts in May) and continued to make more than 50 other silent films and two-reelers for a variety of producers, including Gilbert M. 'Broncho Billy' Anderson, Hal Roach Studios, and Universal. While he experienced modest success as a solo comedian, wide-spread fame eluded him. Producer Hal Roach later speculated that this was due in part to the difficulty in photographing Laurel's pale blue eyes on early pre-panchromatic film stock, perhaps giving the appearance of blindness, which audiences may have found disturbing. But it seems more likely to have been attributable to a lack of an identifiable or easily marketable screen character, like that of Chaplin, Harold Lloyd or Buster Keaton or to personal problems. Oliver Hardy Oliver Hardy (January 18, 1892 – August 7, 1957) was born Norvell Hardy in Harlem, Georgia near Augusta, Georgia, in the United States of America. Then as he turned 18, he changed his first name to that of his father who had died some years previously, thenceforth calling himself 'Oliver Norvell Hardy'. He was nicknamed 'Babe'. Before Hardy started his film career as a "heavy" actor in 1914 (Outwitting Dad), he had been a movie house projectionist/manager at the Palace Theater in Milledgeville, GA. Before his partnership with Stan, Oliver appeared solo in more than 250 silent one- and two-reelers, only about 100 of which are extant. Hardy was a trained singer, and often enjoyed performing for those on the set as well as singing in his own movies. "Stan" and "Ollie": Hal Roach years The first film encounter of the two comedians (as separate performers) took place in The Lucky Dog, produced in 1919 by Sun-Lite Pictures and released in 1921. Several years later, both comedians appeared in the Hal Roach production 45 Minutes from Hollywood (1926). Their first "official" film together was The Second Hundred Years (June 1927), directed by Fred Guiol and supervised by Leo McCarey, who suggested that the performers be teamed permanently. From 1927 onwards, the pair starred in Hal Roach comedies, including silent shorts, talkie shorts and feature films. While most silent-film actors saw their careers decline with the advent of sound, Laurel and Hardy made a successful transition in 1929 with the short Unaccustomed As We Are. Laurel's English accent and Hardy's Southern American accent and singing brought new dimensions to their characters. The team also proved skillful in their melding of visual and verbal humor, adding dialogue that served to enhance rather than replace their popular sight gags. Laurel and Hardy's shorts, produced by Hal Roach and released through Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, were among the most successful in the business. Most of the shorts ran two-reels (twenty minutes), although several ran three-reels long, and one, Beau Hunks, was four-reels long. In 1929, they appeared for the first time in a feature in one of the revue sequences of Hollywood Revue of 1929 and the following year they appeared as the comic relief in a lavish all-color (in Technicolor) musical feature entitled: The Rogue Song. This film marked their first appearance in color. Considered a "lost film," only portions of this production have survived, along with the complete soundtrack. In 1931, Laurel and Hardy made their first feature film (in which they were the stars) Pardon Us. Following the success of this film, the duo reduced the number of shorts they made to concentrate on feature films. Future Laurel and Hardy features included Pack Up Your Troubles (1932), Fra Diavolo (or The Devil's Brother, 1933), Sons of the Desert (1933), and Babes in Toyland (1934). Laurel and Hardy made the classic short The Music Box in 1932, which won the first Academy Award for Best Short Subject, Comedy. Because of the competition from the double feature and block booking, Hal Roach cancelled all of his short subject series, save for Our Gang. The final short in the Laurel and Hardy series was 1935's Thicker than Water. The duo's subsequent feature films included Bonnie Scotland (1935), The Bohemian Girl (1936), Our Relations (1936), Way Out West (1937) (which includes the famous song "On the Trail of the Lonesome Pine"), Swiss Miss (1938), and Block-Heads (1938). [编辑] 喜剧风格 The humour of Laurel and Hardy was generally slapstick in nature. A typical sequence would be their collaboration on the construction of a house: Hardy holds a number of nails in his mouth, Laurel warmly claps him on the back, Hardy swallows the nails. Much of their comedy involves a process they referred to as "milking", where a simple idea is used as the basis from which to build several gags. Many of their films have extended sequences constructed around simply featuring the types of problems the pair can cause for themselves in a given situation, without following a strict or set narrative. In some cases, the comedy bordered on surreal "white magic." For example, Laurel might light his pipe by flicking his thumb upwards from his clenched fist as if he held a cigarette lighter. His thumb would ignite, and he would light his pipe. Hardy, seeing this, would attempt to duplicate it. When, after many attempts he actually would achieve the same effect, he would be surprised to discover that his thumb was actually burning, and would cry in pain and hastily blow it out. A famous routine the team often performed was a bizarre kind of "tit-for-tat" fight with an opponent. In the basic scenario, the pair would begin the fight by damaging something that the opponent valued, while that opponent did not defend himself. However, when the pair were finished, the opponent would then calmly retaliate by damaging something that Laurel and Hardy valued, while the pair strangely refrained from defending themselves. The pair then dispassionately retaliated with an escalating act of vandalism and so on, until both sides were simultaneously destroying property in front of each other. An early example is L & H's silent classic, Big Business, a film short that was placed with the Library of Congress in 1992. [编辑] 塑造人物 The Laurel and Hardy on-screen characters are of two supremely brainless, eternally optimistic men, almost brave in their perpetual and impregnable innocence. Their humor is physical, but their accident-prone buffoonery is distinguished by the stars' friendly, kindly personalities and their devotion to each other. Stan and Ollie are grown-up children: a skinny-and-fat pair of life's innocent bystanders who always run afoul of irate landlords, pompous citizens, angry policemen, domineering women, antagonistic customers, and apoplectic bosses. Laurel and Hardy had an inbuilt physical contrariety to aid them, and they enhanced this ludicrousness with little touches, being very careful never to desert reality. Stan kept his hair short on the sides and back, but let it grow long on top to create a natural "fright wig" through his inveterate gesture of scratching his head at moments of shock or wonderment and simultaneously pulling up his hair. To achieve a flat-footed walk, he removed the heels from his shoes (usually Army shoes). When talking with Ollie, he would frequently look at his partner's forehead instead of his eyes, enhancing his out-of-this-world coloration. Inescapably, the ideogram for Laurel and Hardy is a pair of bowler hats. The quasi-British formality of this headgear is in perfect consonance with their bone-bred politeness. Whatever else they are, they are gentlemen -- "Mr. Laurel and Mr. Hardy." Off-screen, Laurel and Hardy were the opposite of their movie characters: Laurel was the driven, ambitious leader, while Hardy was more easygoing. Although Hal Roach employed writers and directors such as H.M. Walker, Leo McCarey, James Parrott, James W. Horne, and others on Laurel and Hardy films, somewhere between twenty-five and ninety-five percent of each was reworked by Stan Laurel on his own. Laurel would rewrite entire sequences or scripts, have the cast and crew improvise on the soundstage, and meticulously reviewed film dailies, often moonlighting to achieve all of these tasks. While Hardy also made contributions to the routines, he preferred to follow Laurel's lead and spent most of his free time on hobbies such as golf. 衰落 By 1936, although the relationship between the boys remained strong, Laurel's dealings with producer Roach became strained amid a tangle of artistic differences. Roach insisted that the films be padded with music and heavy-handed "stories" and/or subplots. Laurel maintained that these devices were distractions from the team's comedy. History has certainly proved Laurel right as the weakest of their films are the ones possessing the most baggage, while the best are those that unblinkingly focus on Stan and Ollie. Because of this friction, extended stand-off periods became common during the late 1930s with Roach occasionally threatening to pair Hardy with someone else. (He kept them under separate contracts). Those films were not made, since by April of 1939 the dispute between Laurel and Roach was over and the Laurel & Hardy team was again intact for further work with Roach. In 1938, the Roach studio switched distributors from MGM to United Artists. Laurel and Hardy made two more films for Roach before they split with the studio in 1940. Hoping for greater artistic freedom, Laurel and Hardy signed with the larger studios 20th Century Fox and MGM. However, at these studios, the pair were relegated to the b-film divisions, where they made eight films through 1944. These features, on which the duo were initially not allowed to improvise or provide much input, were not fondly remembered by the comedians themselves, but were extremely successful at the box office. In 1943, Laurel and Hardy filmed a silent sequence for the Department of Agriculture's patriotic short, The Tree In a Test Tube. The duo demonstrated the uses of wood, especially as part of the war effort. The most remarkable thing about the film, narrated by MGM's Pete Smith, was that it was filmed in Kodachrome, only the second of their films to be shot in color. (There are also color home movies of Laurel and Hardy, some of which have been included in video releases of their Hal Roach films.) Oliver Hardy made two solo appearances without Laurel in 1949. He played the comic sidekick to John Wayne in Republic's The Fighting Kentuckian. Then, Frank Capra cast him as a racetrack gambler in an uncredited appearance in Riding High, starring Bing Crosby. After spending the rest of the 1940s performing on stage in Europe, Laurel and Hardy made one final film together in 1950. Atoll K (also known as Utopia) was a French-Italian co-production directed by Leo Joannon, which suffered language barriers, production problems, and Stan Laurel's grave health during shooting. The film was a commercial and critical disappointment, and brought an end to Laurel and Hardy's film careers. 晚年 After Atoll K, Laurel and Hardy took several months off, so that Laurel could recuperate. Upon their return to the European stage in the early 1950s, Laurel and Hardy undertook a successful series of public appearances in a short sketch Laurel had written called "Birds of a Feather". In December of 1954, the team made their only American television appearance, surprised by Ralph Edwards on his live NBC-TV program, "This Is Your Life". An audible gasp went up from the studio audience when they were introduced, since — unlike Europeans — many were unaware that they were still alive and well. By the mid-1950s, partly due to the positive response from the television broadcast, the pair were negotiating again with Hal Roach for a series of NBC television specials (in color) to be called Laurel & Hardy's Fabulous Fables. (They also appeared on the BBC in the United Kingdom.) However, the plans for the specials were shelved, as the aging comedians suffered from declining health. In 1955, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy made their final public appearance together, taking part on a BBC television programme about the Grand Order of Water Rats, the British variety organization. It was titled "This is Music Hall". Laurel & Hardy provide a filmed insert during which they reminisce about their friends in British variety. They conclude with thanks and a fond goodbye to their fans. Neither would have known this to be their farewell appearance, but there could have been none more appropriate. Hear the audio and see a still picture from the TV broadcast at http://www.laurelandhardy.org/lastTV.htm Under a doctor's advice, Hardy lost over one hundred pounds in 1956. However, he suffered several strokes — some say partly due to the rapid weight loss — and died of a major stroke on August 7, 1957. A depressed Laurel did not attend his partner's funeral, due to his own ill health, explaining his absence with the line "Babe would understand." For the remaining eight years of his life, Laurel refused to perform, even turning down Stanley Kramer's offer to make a cameo in his landmark 1963 movie, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. In 1960, Laurel was given a special Oscar for his contributions to film comedy; he was invited to appear at the ceremonies but declined; when he received the statue, he immediately dubbed it "Mr. Clean" since he was an avid television viewer and familiar with the popular commercials for the cleaning product. Despite not appearing on-screen after Hardy's death, Laurel did contribute scripts and gags to several comedy filmmakers, and did some personal writing as well. Late in life, he hosted many visitors of the new generation at his modest seaside apartment, including Dick Cavett, Jerry Lewis, and Dick Van Dyke. The latter (who became a great friend of Laurel) did an imitation of Stan on his television show in the early 1960s, which Laurel saw and wrote — much to Van Dyke's amusement — a lengthy set of "tips" to perfect the imitation. Laurel would live until 1965, surviving to see the duo's work rediscovered through television and classic film revivals. He died in Santa Monica, and is buried at Forest Lawn-Hollywood Hills in Los Angeles, California. A few months after Laurel's death, the inaugural meeting of The Sons of the Desert, the official Laurel and Hardy appreciation society, was held in New York City. Since that time, chapters of the organization have formed across North America and Europe, as well as in Australia. Larry Harmon became the owner of Laurel and Hardy's likenesses in the mid-1960s, and co-produced a series of animated Laurel and Hardy cartoons in 1966 with Hanna-Barbera Productions. The animated versions of Laurel and Hardy also guest-starred in a 1972 episode of Hanna-Barbera's The New Scooby-Doo Movies. Harmon voiced Laurel in the 1966 series, with Jim MacGeorge voicing Hardy; for the 1972 appearance on Scooby-Doo, Harmon did both voices. In 1999, Larry Harmon produced a direct-to-video film, The All-New Adventures of Laurel and Hardy: For Love of Mummy, based upon the films of Laurel and Hardy. The film dealt with Laurel and Hardy's identical nephews falling into some of the same messes that their legendary uncles fell into. Actors Bronson Pinchot and Gailard Sartain took over the respective roles for this one film. Laurel and Hardy films have appeared frequently in television syndication and on cable television networks such as American Movie Classics, Turner Classic Movies, The Family Channel, and the Hallmark Channel. Many of the films are also available on home video and DVD.