Might Laurel and Hardy have been Laurel and Charlie Chaplin? – The Feud

They stay, no doubt, two of essentially the most well-known British movie comedians of all time, recognized worldwide for his or her hilarious slapstick antics. Londoner Charlie Chaplin and Lancastrian Stan Laurel not solely sailed to America earlier than the First World War in the hunt for fame, however had been shut pals who roomed collectively for 3 years.

But whereas each discovered stardom, Chaplin along with his Little Tramp persona and Laurel along with his US comedy associate Oliver Hardy, the teenage pals fell out and by no means spoke once more. So how and why did they fall out? The story of the 2 legendary comics has not too long ago been examined on stage in a touring present, Laurel & Chaplin: The Feud.

It’s possible Chaplin’s meteoric rise to fame after assembly actor, director and studio boss Mack Sennett whose Keystone Studios in LA gave him his early break is guilty.

“They worked together and shared rooms but, after Chaplin joined Mack Sennett, that was it,” explains author and producer of The Feud, Jon Conway. “There is no known record of them ever meeting again. So I wanted to find out more.”

Both Stan Laurel and Charlie Chaplin got here from performing backgrounds.

Laurel’s father Arthur Jefferson was an actor and theatre-manager, whereas Chaplin’s mother and father had been each on the stage. But their upbringings had been very completely different.

Laurel’s household weren’t rich however comfortably off. Chaplin in contrast was introduced up in excessive poverty. His early years had been spent out and in of grim Victorian workhouses and institutes for destitute youngsters.

This harsh Dickensian childhood gave Chaplin a way of insecurity which he by no means misplaced. By the time he was 10 he was recurrently acting on stage in a clog-dancing ­firm. Chaplin and Laurel – then going underneath the title of Stanley Jefferson – joined theatre impresario Fred Karno’s pantomime troupe, performing comedy sketches in music halls up and down the nation.

Laurel described himself as Chaplin’s understudy, however in truth everybody had to have the ability to cowl for one another. In September 1910, the 2 pals set sail with the opposite Fred Karno ­gamers for a tour of North America, ­the transformed cattle ship they had been on first ­calling in Montreal, Canada. Chaplin specifically was decided to make his mark.

Laurel later recalled how, on sight of land, his good friend dashed to the boat’s railings ­crying: “America! I am coming to conquer you! Every man, woman and child shall ­ have my name on their lips! Charles Spencer Chaplin!”

Simon Louvish, writer of Stan And Ollie: The Roots Of Comedy, says: “As he was addressing the shoreline of Quebec rather than the US, we can imagine young Stanley standing by, puzzled, perhaps scratching his head in what would become a world famous quirk.”

While reviews of Karno’s shows were mixed, Chaplin as lead performer was ­singled out for special praise. Laurel soon left the tour to return to England but, finding little success back home, went on a ­second tour of America with Karno in 1912.

It was then that Chaplin was head-hunted by the film producer Sennett and his Keystone Studios company and made an offer he couldn’t refuse. Laurel hoped that, with Chaplin gone, he would now replace him in the lead role, but he was passed over.

Meanwhile, Chaplin soon became a huge star in the new medium of silent films. This became the cause of the falling-out. Laurel claimed that Chaplin had vowed that if he did strike it lucky in Hollywood he wouldn’t forget his old room-mate and would offer him a ­helping hand. But none was forthcoming.

Bizarrely, Laurel didn’t receive a single mention in Chaplin’s 500-page ­autobiography. While, in a letter, auctioned in 2017, he described his former friend Chaplin as “mean and cheap” and claimed the star confirmed “signs of insanity”. In a 1957 letter, Laurel wrote: “He [Chaplin] never to my knowledge ever had any time for any of his close friends who worked with him in the early days.

“I was closely associated with Charlie for two or three years. I was his understudy and shared rooms with him on many occasions, so am fully aware of his idiosyncrasies.”

He added: “He was a very eccentric character, composed of many moods, at times signs of insanity, which I think developed further when he gained fame and fortune.”

A man with a tremendous libido, Chaplin confessed to having slept with more than 2,000 women. “Procreation is nature’s principal occupation, and every man, whether he be young or old, when meeting every woman, measures the potentiality of sex between them,” he wrote.

In addition to numerous affairs, he fathered 11 children with four different wives and had a particular penchant for much younger women – three of his wives being teenagers at the time of marriage. His acrimonious divorce from his second wife, actress Lita Grey, whom he is thought to have seduced when she was just 15, led to a then record settlement ­
of £625,000.

Chaplin could ­have faced imprisonment on charges of ­sex with a minor and, with his career threatened by the scandal, marriage to Grey was the only way out.

But while he was a shameless womaniser, who at times treated his lovers shabbily, in his defence, he was usually loyal to those who worked for him. He tended to have the same team for most of his films. And when his old mentor Fred Karno went bankrupt and came to the US, Chaplin did his best ­ to assist him.

“I think jealousy came into it,” says Jon Conway. “Chaplin was jealous of Laurel and saw him as a rival. Also, he very much wanted to leave his old life in England behind. He wanted to reinvent himself ­ in America.”

In the end, despite their rift, both ­­Chaplin and Laurel achieved success they could only have dreamt of when they were teenagers, rooming together in seedy ­boarding houses.

As the Little Tramp, Chaplin became the most recognisable man in the world, more famous than any king, emperor or politician. The one-time workhouse inmate became fabulously wealthy, signing a contract worth $1million in 1918.

The biggest name in silent comedy, the multi-talented Chaplin went on to star in, direct and also compose the music for a number of cinematic classics.

In 1940, in his first full sound film, ­­he ­lampooned Adolf Hitler in The Great Dictator, the film ending with a stirring ­anti-war monologue regarded by many as the greatest speech made in any film.

A global celebrity of his age, Chaplin met with and befriended leading political figures such as Winston Churchill and Mahatma Gandhi.

Yet after the war, the man who played ­ the Little Tramp found himself at the ­ centre of controversy again when his “progressive” political views fell foul of the US authorities and he was accused of Communist sympathies. Banned from America, he moved to Switzerland where ­he finally found contentment with his fourth wife, Oona.

Knighted in 1975, Sir Charles Chaplin died on Christmas Day 1977, aged 88, and the world mourned a genius. ­ And once his one-time understudy Stan Laurel teamed up with Oliver Hardy in 1927 he ­too became an international star and a very rich man.

They made 106 movies collectively, together with 27 full-length sound options, amongst them ­classics akin to Way Out West and A Chump At Oxford, during which Stan receives a bump on the top and is mistaken for the good scholar Lord Paddington.

Regarded because the funniest and most influential double act of all time, Stan and Ollie, like Chaplin, loved world enchantment, with their slapstick antics nonetheless loved by hundreds of thousands of viewers right now.

They made their final movie collectively in 1951, and their final public look 4 years later. In 1957, Hardy died and Laurel, who had been sick himself, made it clear it was the top of the highway ­ for him too. “What is there to say? He was like a brother to me. This is the end of the history of Laurel and Hardy,” he instructed the press.

Like his former good friend Chaplin, Laurel had a sophisticated love life. He was additionally married 4 occasions, together with twice to the identical girl. Suffering from most cancers, he died in February 1965 aged 74. Now right here’s an attention-grabbing thought. Without the fall-out, would possibly it have been Laurel and Chaplin, as a substitute of Laurel and Hardy?

All issues thought-about, it was most likely for the very best that the 2 males took completely different paths. That method we acquired double the laughs.