Handwritten gag by Stan Laurel: Museum Object and Cultural History
Handwritten gag by Stan Laurel: associated person: Laurel, Stan. maker: Laurel, Stan. Object Name: note.
The object in the museum catalogue
Handwritten gag by comedian Stan Laurel. Written in ink on a small piece of unlined paper, it reads:
"S. [Stan] explaining something to B. [Babe, Laurel's nickname for Oliver Hardy] looks around to see if
Laurel was the primary writer and creative member of the comedy duo Laurel and Hardy, and he often wrote notes for scenes and gags to be used in future films on scrap pieces of paper like this. When Laurel died, he left many of these notes to John McCabe, historian and author of a book on Laurel & Hardy. The English Stan Laurel and American Oliver Hardy appeared in 107 films together - 32 short silents, 40 sound films, and 23 feature films - over the course of a decades-long career. Their popular films for the Hal Roach Studio are acclaimed for excellence in physical and visual humor and earned the duo a new audience through broadcast on television in the 1950s and 60s.
Materials, dates and provenance
- associated person: Laurel, Stan
- maker: Laurel, Stan
- Object Name: note
- Physical Description: ink (overall material)
- Physical Description: paper (overall material)
- Measurements: overall: 3 1/8 in x 5 1/2 in; 7.9375 cm x 13.97 cm
- place made: United States: California
- Subject: Motion Pictures
- Subject: Comedy
- Subject: Entertainment, Film
- ID Number: 1987.0215.01
- accession number: 1987.0215
- catalog number: 1987.0215.01
- Credit Line: John McCabe
- Data Source: National Museum of American History
Sources and reuse
Catalogue descriptions and facts adapted from National Museum of American History through the Smithsonian's official Open Access dataset. This record explicitly marks its metadata CC0 1.0; formatting and selection have been changed.
Sources
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