Trivia: Actor, screenwriter, and producer Stan Laurel was born to British stage performers. He started acting on stage in his mid-teens in music halls and theaters before touring the U.S. in 1910 and 1912 as Charlie Chaplin's understudy. He remained in the States to perform in vaudeville and, in 1917, supplemented his stage work by appearing as clownish misfit types in comedy shorts often spoofing dramatic films of the period. One of these was a two-reeler called Lucky Dog (1918), in which he appeared totally by accident with Oliver Hardy. The two would not appear together again until 1926, when they both found themselves working for comedy producer Hal Roach. Laurel, who had been hired by Roach as a gagman/director, was persuaded to appear in front of the camera and, thus, auspiciously again with Hardy. It soon became obvious that the two men had a certain comic onscreen chemistry, and they ended up starring together as an incredibly popular comedy team in more fifty films in the 1930s and early '40s, with their 1932 three-reeler The Music Box winning an Oscar for Best Short Subject. Laurel, the creative member of the team, had numerous run-ins with producer Roach; the actor wanted the team's films to aspire to the higher quality productions of their contemporaries, while Roach was firmly content with maintaining a low-budget norm. Laurel had a few short-lived victories, serving as producer on the team's Our Relations (1936) and Way out West (1937). The team left Roach in 1940 to seek more artistic control over their work, but were given even less at Fox and MGM. In the late '40s and early '50s, they enjoyed touring English music halls while continuing to make films. After Hardy's death in 1957, Laurel stopped performing but kept active. He died from a heart attack in 1965.

Trivia: Unlike his future screen partner Stan Laurel, American comedian Oliver Hardy did not come from a show business family. His father was a lawyer who died when Hardy was ten; his mother was a hotel owner in both his native Georgia and in Florida. The young Hardy became fascinated with show business through the stories spun by the performers who stayed at his mother's hotel, and at age eight he ran away to join a minstrel troupe. Possessing a beautiful singing voice, Hardy studied music for a while, but quickly became bored with the regimen; the same boredom applied to his years at Georgia Military College (late in life, Hardy claimed to have briefly studied law at the University of Georgia, but chances are that he never got any farther than filling out an application). Heavy-set and athletic, Hardy seemed more interested in sports than in anything else; while still a teenager, he umpired local baseball games, putting on such an intuitively comic display of histrionics that he invariably reduced the fans to laughter. In 1910, he opened the first movie theater in Milledgeville, Georgia, and as a result became intrigued with the possibilities of film acting. Traveling to Jacksonville, Florida in 1913, he secured work at the Lubin Film Company, where thanks to his 250-pound frame he was often cast as a comic villain. From 1915-25, Hardy appeared in support of such comedians as Billy West (the famous Chaplin imitator), Jimmy Aubrey, Larry Semon (Hardy played the Tin Woodman in Semon's 1925 version of The Wizard of Oz), and Bobby Ray. An established "heavy" by 1926, Hardy signed with the Hal Roach studios, providing support to such headliners as Our Gang and Charley Chase. With the rest of the Roach stock company, Hardy appeared in the Comedy All-Stars series, where he was frequently directed by fellow Roach contractee Stan Laurel (with whom Hardy had briefly appeared on-screen in the independently produced 1918 two-reeler Lucky Dog). At this point, Laurel was more interested in writing and directing than performing, but was lured back before the cameras by a hefty salary increase. Almost inadvertently, Laurel began sharing screen time with Hardy in such All-Stars shorts as Slipping Wives (1927), Duck Soup (1927) and With Love and Hisses (1927). Roach's supervising director Leo McCarey, noticing how well the pair worked together, began teaming them deliberately, which led to the inauguration of the "Laurel and Hardy" series in late 1927. At first, the comedians indulged in the cliched fat-and-skinny routines, with Laurel the fall guy for the bullying Hardy. Gradually the comedians developed the multidimensional screen characters with which we're so familiar today. The corpulent Hardy was the pompous know-it-all, whose arrogance and stubbornness always got him in trouble; the frail Stan was the blank-faced man-child, whose carelessness and inability to grasp an intelligent thought prompted impatience from his partner. Underlining all this was the genuine affection the characters held for each other, emphasized by Hardy's courtly insistence upon introducing Stan as "my friend, Mr. Laurel." Gradually Hardy adopted the gestures and traits that rounded out the "Ollie" character: The tie-twiddle, the graceful panache with which he performed such simple tasks as ringing doorbells and signing hotel registers, and the "camera look," in which he stared directly at the camera in frustration or amazement over Laurel's stupidity. Fortunately Laurel and Hardy's voices matched their characters perfectly, so they were able to make a successful transition to sound, going on to greater popularity than before. Sound added even more ingredients to Hardy's comic repertoire, not the least of which were such catch-phrases as "Why don't you do something to help me?" and "Here's another nice mess you've gotten me into." Laurel and Hardy graduated from two-reelers to feature films with 1931's Pardon Us, though they continued to make features and shorts simultaneously until 1935. While Laurel preferred to burn the midnight oil as a writer and film editor, Hardy stopped performing each day at quitting time. He occupied his leisure time with his many hobbies, including cardplaying, cooking, gardening, and especially golf. The team nearly broke up in 1939, not because of any animosity between them but because of Stan's contract dispute with Hal Roach. While this was being settled, Hardy starred solo in Zenobia (1939), a pleasant but undistinguished comedy about a southern doctor who tends to a sick elephant. Laurel and Hardy reteamed in late 1939 for two more Roach features and for the Boris Morros/RKO production The Flying Deuces (1939). Leaving Roach in 1940, the team performed with the USO and the Hollywood Victory Caravan, then signed to make features at 20th Century-Fox and MGM. The resultant eight films, produced between 1941 and 1945, suffered from too much studio interference and too little creative input from Laurel and Hardy, and as such are but pale shadows of their best work at Roach. In 1947, the team was booked for the first of several music hall tours of Europe and the British Isles, which were resounding successes and drew gigantic crowds wherever Stan and Ollie went. Upon returning to the States, Hardy soloed again in a benefit stage production of What Price Glory directed by John Ford. In 1949, he played a substantial supporting role in The Fighting Kentuckian, which starred his friend John Wayne; as a favor to another friend, Bing Crosby, Hardy showed up in a comic cameo in 1950's Riding High. Back with Laurel, Hardy appeared in the French-made comedy Atoll K (1951), an unmitigated disaster that unfortunately brought the screen career of Laurel and Hardy to a close. After more music hall touring abroad, the team enjoyed a resurgence of popularity in the U.S. thanks to constant showings of their old movies on television. Laurel and Hardy were on the verge of starring in a series of TV comedy specials when Stan Laurel suffered a stroke. While he was convalescing, Hardy endured a heart attack, and was ordered by his doctor to lose a great deal of weight. In 1956, Hardy was felled a massive stroke that rendered him completely inactive; he held on, tended day and night by his wife Lucille, until he died in August of 1957. Ironically, Oliver Hardys passing occurred at the same time that he and Stan Laurel were being reassessed by fans and critics as the greatest comedy team of all time.

Trivia: The son of an insurance man who'd aspired to appear onstage but never had the chance, British-born actor Reginald Gardiner more than made up for his dad's unrealized dreams with a career lasting 50 years. Graduating from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, Gardiner started as a straight actor but drifted into musical revues, frequently working in the company of such favorite British entertainers as Bea Lillie. His Broadway bow occurred in the 1935 play At Home Abroad, and though he'd made his film debut nearly ten years earlier in Hitchcock's silent The Lodger (1926), he suddenly became a "new" Hollywood find. Handsome enough to play romantic leads had he so chosen (he gets away with it in the 1939 Laurel and Hardy comedy Flying Deuces), Gardiner preferred the sort of kidding-on-the-square comedy he'd done in his revue days. His turn as a traffic cop who imagines himself a symphony conductor in his first American film Born to Dance (1936) was so well received that he virtually repeated the bit--this time as a butler who harbors operatic aspirations--in Damsel in Distress (1937). For most of his film career, Gardiner played suave but slightly untrustworthy British gentlemen; a break from this pattern occurred in Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator (1940), in which Gardiner played a fascist military man who turns his back on dictator "Adenoid Hinkel" to cast his lot with a community of Jews. Devoting his private life to the enjoyment of classical music, rare books, painting, and monitoring the ghost that supposedly haunted his Beverly Hills home, Reginald Gardiner flourished as a stage, film and television actor into the 1960s; one of his latter-day assignments was his weekly dual role in the 1966 Phyllis Diller sitcom, Pruitts of Southampton.

Trivia: French character actor Jean Del Val was a regular in American films from at least 1927. In the early days of the talkies, he offered his services as translator and vocal coach for the French-language versions of American films. Many of his later roles were fleeting but memorable: he's the French aviator in Block-Heads (1938) who rescues over-aged doughboy Stan Laurel from the trenches ("Why, you blockhead. Ze war's been over for twenty years!") and the French radio announcer who opens Casablanca (1942) by spreading the news of the murder of two German couriers carrying letters of transit. He enjoyed a larger role in Columbia's So Dark the Night (1946), a film seemingly conceived as a showcase for the best of Hollywood's foreign-accented bit players. Active in films until the 1960s, Jean del Val played a crucial non-speaking role in Fantastic Voyage (1966): he's the comatose scientist whose arterial system and brain are explored by the miniaturized heroes.

Trivia: American character actor Crane Whitley made his first film appearance in 1938, acting under his given name of Clem Wilenchik. One of Whitley's first billed roles was the Foreign Legion corporal in Laurel and Hardy's Flying Deuces (1939). From 1939's Hitler: The Beast of Berlin until the end of the war, the actor was generally cast as a Nazi spy or military officer. In this capacity, he showed up in several Republic serials, including Spy Smasher (1942). After the war, and until his retirement in 1958, Crane Whitley played scores of doctors, ministers, and detectives.

Trivia: Scottish comedian James Finlayson attended the University of Edinburgh with the intention of pursuing a business career. He was deflected by his best friend, stage actor Andy Clyde, who encouraged Finlayson to give theatre a try. After serving his apprenticeship in regional repertory, Finlayson was cast in the West End production of Bunty Pulls the Strings in 1912, a production which brought him to New York. He embarked on a vaudeville tour with Alec Lauder (brother of the more famous Sir Harry Lauder), then headed to Hollywood, working at the Ince and L-KO studios before settling at the Mack Sennett fun factory in 1919. While with Sennett, Finlayson developed his famous, apoplectic caricature of the old-fashioned "me proud beauty" Victorian villain.In 1923, Finlayson moved to Hal Roach, where he would spend the next 17 years as both a star comic and (more successfully) a supporting player. During his Roach years, Finlayson perfected his comic signature, the "double take and fade away": a reaction of surprise, followed by several turns of the head and an upraised eyebrow, capped with the expletive "Doh!" Legend has it that one of Finlayson's double-takes was so energetic that it caused him to crack his skull against a wall and lose consciousness! Though he worked with everyone on the Roach lot, Finlayson became most closely associated with Laurel and Hardy, co-starring with the team on 33 occasions between 1927 and 1940. Fin's most memorable films with L&H include Big Business (1929), Another Fine Mess (1930), Chickens Come Home (1931), Our Wife (1931), The Devil's Brother (1933) and, best of all, Way Out West (1937), wherein as western saloon keeper Mickey Finn, Finlayson outdoes himself with his own hilarious brand of double-dyed villainy. He also appeared frequently with another team, Clark and McCullough, over at RKO. While some of Finlayson's feature-film roles were sizeable, notably his assignments in Dawn Patrol (1930) and All Over Town (1937), he was most often seen in unbilled bits, sometimes (as in the 1938 Astaire-Rogers vehicle Carefree) minus his trademarked paintbrush moustache. Because of his long associations with Sennett and Roach, James Finlayson was frequently called upon to appear in nostalgic recreations of Hollywood's silent era, notably Hollywood Cavalcade (1939) and The Perils of Pauline (1947).

Trivia: A mustachioed supporting player from Russia, Jack Chefe (sometimes credited as Chefé) played exactly what he looked and sounded like: headwaiters. That was also his occupation when not appearing in films, of which he did literally hundreds between 1932 and 1959, serving such stars as Carole Lombard (My Man Godfrey, 1936), Jeanette MacDonald (Bitter Sweet, 1940), Bob Hope (My Favorite Brunette, 1947), and even Dick Tracy (in the 1945 RKO feature film). Once in a while, Chefe managed to escape typecasting, playing one of the legionnaires in Laurel and Hardy's Flying Deuces (1939) and a croupier in The Big Sleep (1946).

Trivia: Danish-born actor Kit Guard came to prominence in the mid 1920s as a regular in a trio of 2-reel comedy series: "The Go-Getters," "The Pacemakers" and "Bill Grimm's Progress." Guard appeared in at least 200 feature films, usually cast as sailors, barflies and foreign legionnaires. Usually unbilled, he managed to attain screen credit in the 1931 Ronald Colman vehicle The Unholy Garden and as Dinky in the 1940 Columbia serial The Green Archer. Kit Guard made his last fleeting film appearance in Carrie (1952).

Trivia: Burly Russian actor Michael Visaroff launched his film career in 1925. Like many of his fellow Russian expatriates, Visaroff claimed to be of noble lineage, which enabled him to land such roles as Count Bosrinov in Disraeli (1929). From the early '30s until his death, he was usually cast as innkeepers, most memorably in Universal's first two Dracula films and in Laurel and Hardy's The Flying Deuces (1939). Michael Visaroff's funniest film appearance was as the homicidal maniac ("She's the first wife I ever killed!") who shares a jail cell with W.C. Fields in Man on the Flying Trapeze (1935).