Laurel & Hardy: Their Lives and Magic

I was lucky. As a kid growing up Laurel & Hardy shorts were always being repeated on the BBC. Rival ITV channel used to show the silent shorts as well. I grew up watching Laurel & Hardy. My kids hardly know who they are. The repeats have stopped and these silent era stars are slowly being consigned to history along with Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton.

German filmmaker Andreas Baum has made an exhaustive documentary on the duo including interviews with family, fans, friends and showbiz pals. We get to see newly recovered footage as well.

Stan Laurel was a Lancashire lad who along with Charlie Chaplin went to American vaudeville on the same boat and struck it big. Oliver Hardy also decide to strike his luck in the movies but fortune only smiled when Hal Roach paired both of them up. Until then Stan had gone on to writing and directing silent short comedies.

What made the pair stand out was that they made the transition to talkies and still sustained their success. However both had personal trauma as well. Stan was a womaniser who drank to hide away from his unhappy personal life.

Oliver's wife was an alcoholic and of course he had his vices which was food and gambling.

There were things here I knew about the duo but I also learned some new stuff. This was a German made documentary so you will get plenty of German contributors, some footage that have been taken from other sources sometimes makes the presentation look a bit clunky.