Laurel and Hardy were the most popular comedy team in American motion-picture history. Stan (Stanley) Laurel (1890-1965) played a timid little dimwit. He continually exasperated his partner, Oliver (Ollie) Hardy (1892-1957), who played a fat, bullying know-it-all. The team starred in more than 60 short films and 27 feature movies from 1926 to 1952. Unlike most stars of the silent film era, Laurel and Hardy also made successful sound films.
Laurel, whose real name was Arthur Stanley Jefferson, was born on June 16, 1890, in Ulverston, England, and began his career in vaudeville. He came to the United States in 1910 and made his first film in 1917. Oliver Norvell Hardy was born on Jan. 18, 1892, in Harlem, Georgia. He made his first short comedies in 1913 and moved to Hollywood in 1918. Laurel and Hardy first teamed up in 1926 in Putting Pants on Philip, which was released in 1927. Their other films included Big Business (1929), the Academy Award-winning short The Music Box (1932), Helpmates (1932),Babes in Toyland (1934), Sons of the Desert(1934), Way Out West (1937), Blockheads (1938), and The Flying Deuces (1939). Hardy died on Aug. 7, 1957, and Laurel died on Feb. 23, 1965.
