LOS ANGELES, Aug. 13 /PRNewswire/ -- An amateur home movie has been discovered recently which apparently contains the last known film images of comedy legend Stan Laurel, once celebrated as half of the most famous comedy duo in the world: Laurel & Hardy.
The rare and historic eight millimeter film, which captures a playful Laurel displaying his trademark impish smile while scratching his head, is just two minutes in length and was taken at his Santa Monica apartment by James and Irene Heffernan, a Los Angeles couple who were acquainted with the film comedian in his final years.According to Laurel's daughter, Lois Laurel Hawes, the film was made in late December of 1964, just two months before his death. A letter from Laurel to the Heffernans, dated January 15, 1965, mentions their yuletide visit when, apparently, the footage was shot.
Also featured in the brief home movie segment is Laurel's honorary "Oscar" award for Lifetime Achievement which was presented to him by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences (AMPAS) in 1961.
Apparently lost and forgotten for decades among the numerous entertainment and travel home movies made by the active couple during the 1960s, this final footage of Laurel was not known to exist until several months ago and has never been viewed publicly.
However, the film's present owner plans to arrange for the landmark footage to be seen by Laurel & Hardy fans worldwide on June 16, 2010, which happens to be the comic's date of birth. According to actor/producer Tyler St. Mark, who purchased the remarkable footage from the Heffernan estate, "Stan Laurel performs a special gesture at the end of the film clip which was clearly intended for his millions of fans worldwide and so we will help him deliver his message 46 years later - on the 120th anniversary of his birthday."
I'm always eager to see anything relating to Laurel and/or Hardy...but I'm especially wondering what Stan's "special gesture" is.
Back when there was a lot more hollering about Gay Marriage than there's been lately, some comic fans tried to rustle up a boycott of the Manchester Grand Hyatt Hotel in San Diego by attendees of the Comic-Con down there. As I explained here, I'm all for letting consenting adults marry or just hang out with the consenting adults of their choice, regardless of race or gender, but I'm not big on boycotts. I don't think they usually accomplish much of anything except maybe to make the boycotters feel like they're doing something.
Lately, I'm getting e-mails saying I should stop shopping Whole Foods Market because of an op-ed against "Obamacare" in The Wall Street Journal by the CEO of that chain. (And by the way, I think it would do us all a world of good if more of the health care situation was debated by folks who can't afford to buy the Mayo Clinic.)
I'd been thinking of curtailing my Whole Food purchases before that because, frankly, I'm tired of paying double the prices at Gelson's for meat that's not any better and maybe a little worse. I also keep getting produce and prepared meals at Whole Foods that taste they like were prepared by one of those experts who "styles" food for advertising photos, painting fake gloss on the Fuji apples and daubing the bananas with Turtle Wax. But I won't be taking my biz elsewhere because of Mr. Whole Foods' opinion piece...and I doubt that many other folks will, no matter how much he offends them. In times of anger, people in this country may swear they're not going to patronize a certain business or buy a certain product...but if it's what they want or it's cheaper or it's closer, that's what and where they buy.
Getting back to the Manchester Grand Hyatt, where again I stayed this last Comic-Con — and was treated quite nicely, by the way — the threatened boycott in '08 was because its CEO, Doug Manchester, was donating large sums to ban Gay Marriage. He said that he felt it was his duty as a Catholic...and of course, he's right that the Catholic church frowns on that kind of thing.
Of course, as this article notes, the Catholic church also frowns on divorce and that isn't stopping Mr. Manchester from leaving his wife of 43 years. They're currently in the midst of one of those messy millionaires' severances where both sides fight over six and seven figure properties and holdings, with much soiled laundry hung to flap in the breeze.
I don't think this is funny or a reason to gloat or anything of the sort. It's sad when a marriage goes sour and people suffer...just as it's sad when two people who love each other are denied the right and dignity to have their union respected. I just have to point out that "my duty as a Catholic" sometimes, like threats of boycotts, only goes as far as is convenient. And while we're at it, let's remember that despite the Neanderthal talking points, Gay Marriage is not what's threatening Heterosexual Marriage. I dunno what broke up the Manchester marriage but I don't think it was same-sex wedlock...unless Mrs. Manchester was furious at her hubby for spending their money to push Proposition 8.
By the way, I think I mentioned it here before but I'm curious what the divorce rate will turn out to be like for Gay Marriage. Will it be the higher, lower or the same as for mixed couples? For your information, the divorce rate in this country for straight marriages is between 41 and 50% for first marriages, 60 to 67% for second marriages and over 73% for third marriages. And that's just Larry King.
You know what's missing from comic books these days? Letter columns. In my day (read this sentence in the voice of Dana Carvey's Grumpy Old Man, who I think was him imitating Lionel Barrymore), comics had letter columns and readers would write in and either point out errors or ask questions or critique the previous issue. And then the editor (or someone impersonating the editor) would reply...and it made for a nice interaction. Julius Schwartz's in his DC books were especially good, while over at Marvel, the ones composed by Stan Lee (or sometimes, "Stan Lee") were as much a part of some books' appeal as the stories, themselves.
That all started to go away in the seventies. For a while, we had letter columns but it wasn't the editor who handled them. It was some kid in the office...some assistant to the assistant or something. In a few books, it was even me. That wasn't as much fun as engaging in a dialogue with the actual editor or even someone pretending to be him. Then at some point, comics just stopped having letter columns at all. Groo the Wanderer, which I work on, was one of the last holdouts. We had a letters page long after most comics didn't bother.
I used to jest that this was because we truly cared about our readers, whereas other comics didn't. That caused an editor at one of the companies to get real, real angry at me...though apparently not angry enough that he decided to prove me wrong and add letter pages to his comics. That, he did not do. Soon after, I stopped doing the joke not because I feared him but because when Groo shifted from monthly publication to the intermittent mini-series format, I stopped receiving a steady flow of letters. I suppose I could have made some up. A lot of letter pages used to do that...more than you'd imagine. But I have integrity I haven't even used yet.
Well, I've decided it's high time to get back into the letter column business. We have a new Groo mini-series starting later this year and I'm cobbling up a letters page for it. Wanna see your name and letter in Groo? Send both of those things to letters@groothewanderer.com. I'll repeat that address for those of you who are slow of mind: letters@groothewanderer.com. It pays nothing and if you heckle us, we heckle you back...and we have home court advantage so watch it.
A recurring, too-occasional theme on this blog is how writers can protect themselves from getting swindled, burgled, fleeced, taken, exploited, cheated and generally ripped-off. It's a big problem and it requires a lot of policing and advising and warning. In 1998, the Science Fiction Writers of America set up Writer Beware, a website intended to help educate writers — new ones, especially — to some of the pernicious practices that may be employed to get them to pay to have their writing published (instead of the other way around) or at least to not be paid when their writing is published.
Thanks to the efforts of author Lee Goldberg, who is probably too busy trotting 'round the globe to writers' conferences to have lunch with his ol' pal Mark, the Mystery Writers of America group has joined the battle, throwing support behind Writer Beware. Good for all of them.
Remember: The way this is supposed to work is that you write it and they pay you to publish it. You do not pay to have it published. You do not pay to have it agented or critiqued or submitted or anything of the sort. They pay you and they pay you on an agreed-upon amount on an agreed-upon schedule and in real money. No matter how badly you want to see your work in print.
August 18, 2009
