The seeds of this book were sown in 1999, when Sheldon McArthur, who was then the manager of the Mysterious Bookstore in Los Angeles, invited me to stay at his home in the course of my first promotional tour of the United States. Shelly now runs a book and antique business in Oregon, but even back then his house in Malibu was filled with curios, some to be sold and others to be kept.
During the course of a conversation, if the years have not caused me to misremember entirely, Shelly mentioned that one of his greatest regrets was losing a derby hat given to him as a youth by Stan Laurel. Now, I had long loved Laurel & Hardy – they were a part of my childhood, and my affection for them had not dimmed in adulthood – yet it seemed impossible to me that someone I knew might not only have met one of them, but have been bequeathed a hat in the process. To me, these were figures from a distant past, moving through a monochrome world, yet Stan Laurel did not die until 1965, only three years before I was born, and he kept his telephone number in the Malibu directory because he enjoyed being visited and had no fear of those who might make their way to his door.
But he no longer worked. He would not work without Babe. And I wondered about these two men, and the grief of the one who was left behind. Gradually I began to accumulate research books, and make notes, although I had no clear idea of what I might write: a monograph, perhaps, or some other form of non-fiction. But the more I read, the more I felt that so much of these men’s lives had already been documented: by biographers; by fans; by those, like Stan Laurel’s daughter Lois, who had known them personally; and by Stan Laurel himself, who was a prodigious correspondent and whose letters may be found at the wonderful Stan Laurel Correspondence Archive Project, LettersFromStan.com. Yet behind this great weight of words, and concealed by Stan Laurel’s own reserve – for despite his apparent openness, he was a product of Victorian times, and his letters reveal no more than he wished them to – there seemed to hover a more elusive presence, a being of great emotional complexity, of pain and loss, of love and regret. This book is an attempt to capture that presence.
Once I had decided that he was to be a novel, the basic structure was determined by Stan Laurel’s life, and I turned, at various points, to the work of four authors in particular. The first was John McCabe, who wrote the original serious studies of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy: Mr Laurel and Mr Hardy: An Affectionate Biography (Doubleday, 1961); The Comedy World of Stan Laurel (Doubleday, 1974); and Babe: The Life of Oliver Hardy (Citadel Press, 1990). The second was Simon Louvish, whose Stan and Ollie: The Roots of Comedy (Faber and Faber, 2001) remains, I think, the best general introduction to the actors and their work for the casual reader. The third was A.J. Marriot who, in Laurel & Hardy: The British Tours (A.J. Marriot, 1993) and Laurel & Hardy: The U.S. Tours (Marriot Publishing, 2011), painstakingly followed the paths taken by the actors on their promotional duties.
Finally, though, there is Randy Skretvedt, to whom I came quite late in the process, once I had settled on a form for he, and commenced work. Skretvedt’s researches are frequently referenced by any writer serious about Laurel & Hardy, and I first came across him in Louvish’s book, but I think I shied away from his monumental Laurel & Hardy: The Magic Behind the Movies for fear of finding that everything I wanted to say might already have been said by him. It was only once he was in draft form that I felt comfortable about turning to Skretvedt, who published the third edition of his book in 2016 through Bonaventure Press, a copy of which I now possess. Laurel & Hardy: The Magic Behind the Movies is an extraordinary work of film scholarship, and I might possibly have saved myself a great deal of time and effort had I read it first rather than last, but my own researches made me appreciate Skretvedt’s efforts all the more, and he would be a poorer book without the availability of the wealth of detail recorded by him.
Also hugely helpful were: A History of the Hal Roach Studios by Richard Lewis Ward (Southern Illinois University Press/Carbondale, 2005); The Big Screen by David Thomson (Allen Lane, 2012); The Comedians: Drunks, Thieves, Scoundrels and the History of American Comedy by Kliph Nesteroff (Grove Press, 2015); Larry Semon, Daredevil Comedian of the Silent Screen by Claudia Sassen (McFarland, 2015); Charlie Chaplin by Peter Ackroyd (Chatto & Windus, 2014); Chaplin: The Tramp’s Odyssey by Simon Louvish (Thomas Dunne Books, 2009); and My Autobiography by Charlie Chaplin (Simon & Schuster, 1964). I also drew upon Dick Cavett’s memories of meeting Stan Laurel (The New York Times, September 7th, 1992), while Oliver Hardy’s encounter with Aggie Underwood and Perry Fowler was detailed in Derangedlacrimes.com as part of its efforts to renew interest in Underwood’s life and work. By now, though, I think I’ve lost track of some of the many books and articles that influenced he in ways both large and small. All errors, though, are mine, despite the sterling efforts of Jennie Ridyard and Ellen Clair Lamb to spare my blushes.
But he is, in the end, a work of fiction. The version of Stan Laurel depicted in its pages is a construct, and one that I accept may not meet with unanimous approval. (The same may be true of the representation of Chaplin, about whom Stan Laurel resolutely declined to say a bad word, although what one says is not necessarily the same as what one may feel.) All I can say is this: by the end of the writing of this book, I loved Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy more than ever, with all their flaws, in all their humanity, and my admiration for their artistry had only increased.
My thanks to Sue Fletcher, my editor at Hodder & Stoughton, and Jamie-Hodder Williams, Swati Gamble, Kerry Hood, Lucy Hale, Alice Morley, Susan Spratt, Alistair Oliver, Jim Binchy, Breda Purdue, Ruth Shern and Siobhan Tierney, all of whom offered support and encouragement for this book, as well as the company reps who had to listen to me attempt to explain it so they could find a way to convince booksellers to stock it in turn. Kate O’Hearn, my fellow author, kindly agreed to help with clearance, while Mark Cubin, who now runs Ulverston’s Laurel and Hardy Museum (www.laurel-and-hardy.co.uk), graciously offered assistance with documents, as did my son, Cameron.
Finally, to Jennie, Cameron and Alistair: my love and gratitude.