Oliver Hardy, born
on 18 January 1892, in Harlem, Georgia, U.S., was an American comedic film actor
best known as half of the Laurel and Hardy comedy duo. Teamed with Stan Laurel,
Oliver Hardy made some 100 comedies—many of them classics—between 1921 and
1950.
Norvell Hardy was the youngest of five children. His father died in late
1892; in tribute, the younger Hardy later adopted his father’s first name,
Oliver, though he was known as “Babe” by friends and family. As a boy he toured
in singing and vaudeville acts. While managing a movie theatre in
1913, Hardy decided that he could do better—or at least no worse—than the
actors he saw on-screen, so he went to work at the Lubin studio
in Jacksonville, Florida, the following year. He played the menacing “heavy”
role in many of these early motion pictures. During the next decade Hardy
appeared in more than 200 mostly short films for various studios (beginning
with Outwitting Dad [1914] and including an appearance as the
Tin Man in the 1925 silent version of The Wizard of Oz). In 1926 he
and Laurel separately joined the Hal Roach Studios, one of Hollywood’s great
comedy factories. The two soon became members of Roach’s “All-Stars,” an
ensemble of comic performers featured in several short comedies. As producer
Roach and director-supervisor Leo McCarey noticed the chemistry between
Laurel and Hardy, the comics started to work together more often. By the end of
1927 they had officially become a team; their first successful joint comedy was
the silent movie Putting Pants on Philip (1927).
In their comedies they played two
friends who were brainless but eternally optimistic. Laurel was the guileless
nitwit who caused most of their troubles, while Hardy was the pompous, irascible,
overbearing windbag whose plans always went awry. With their incredible
ignorance and stupidity, they typically managed to convert a simple, everyday
situation into “another nice mess.” The robust but agile Hardy was often
the skilled slapstick victim of Laurel’s chronic clumsiness, and, in turn,
would take his anger out on his friend. One classic and oft-repeated skit
involved the two men seamlessly swapping their iconic bowler
hats, with Hardy becoming increasingly flustered to find Laurel’s too-small hat
repeatedly perched on his head. Hardy was often portrayed as a gallant flirt
who would coyly toy with his necktie, only to be left embarrassed by
Laurel’s ineptitude as the plot progressed. As the silent film era ended, the
pair achieved great popularity in comedies such as The Battle of the
Century (1927), Leave ’Em Laughing (1928), Two
Tars (1928), Liberty (1929), and Big
Business (1929).
Unlike many other actors of the silent era, Laurel and Hardy easily made
the transition to sound motion pictures. Hardy’s Southern tones were perfectly
suited to his character, and, with the rise in popularity of musical films, the
trained singer was eventually able to utilize his dulcet tenor in a number of
pictures. An expert in performance, he generally left to his partner the work
of writing and creating their comedy routines. Continuing to work for the Roach
studio, the two made sound shorts at first. The Music Box (1932)
won an Academy award for best short subject. Starting with Pardon
Us (1931), they also made full-length feature films. Of their
features, Sons of the Desert (1933) and Way Out West (1937)
are generally regarded as classics.
The Laurel and Hardy films of the 1940s, made for other studios, were
generally not as successful. In the early 1950s the two toured England with a
stage act. They were set to make a series of U.S. television specials in 1956
when Hardy suffered a disabling stroke. He died the following year with his third
wife, Virginia Lucille Hardy, at his side. He had no children.
