Silent Films: pre-team 1921-1927 Laurel and Hardy Silents 1927 Laurel and Hardy Silents 1928 Laurel and Hardy Silents 1929 Laurel and Hardy sound films (alphabetical order): A-Haunting We Will Go Air Raid Wardens Another Fine Mess Any Old Port! Atoll K (aka Utopia) Babes In Toyland Beau Hunks Be Big! Below Zero Berth Marks The Big Noise Block-Heads Blotto The Bohemian Girl Bonnie Scotland Brats The Bullfighters Busy Bodies Chickens Come Home - The Chimp A Chump At Oxford Come Clean County Hospital The Dancing Masters The Devil's Brother aka Fra Diavolo Dirty Work The Fixer Uppers The Flying Deuces Fra Diavolo aka The Devil's Brother Going Bye-Bye! Great Guns Helpmates Hog Wild The Hoose-Gow Jitterbugs Laughing Gravy The Laurel-Hardy Murder Case The Live Ghost Me And My Pal Men O'War The Midnight Patrol The Music Box Night Owls Nothing But Trouble Oliver The Eighth One Good Turn Our Relations Our Wife Pack Up Your Troubles Pardon Us Perfect Day Saps At Sea Scram! Sons of the Desert Swiss Miss Their First Mistake Them Thar Hills They Go Boom! Thicker Than Water Tit For Tat Towed In A Hole Twice Two Unaccustomed As We Are Utopia (aka Atoll K) Way Out West Specials: Cameos Cartoons For Love Or Mummy Laurel and Hardy Memories "Stan"

Laurel and Hardy - Memories - Year: 1998 Written by: Giordan Reynolds Directed by: Giordan Reynolds Duration: 62m DVD Availability: Try sendit.com (region 2 only) Viewpoint: "This is probably the last film of Stan Laurel. After this he joined his partner Oliver…" Tasteful stuff, mawled over by lacklustre narrator Giordan Reynolds. With a series of largely unintroduced, unrelated clips, these Laurel and Hardy Memories feel like the memories of a war victim suffering random flashbacks. Though for a Laurel and Hardy collector it's almost essential as it compiles together odds and sods meaning you don't have to obtain them individually. So it is you get their miniscule cameo in The Stolen Jools without having to endure the entire film, and their documentary short, The Tree In A Test Tube. You also get some of their scenes from Pick a Star and Hollywood Party. Yet perhaps most disturbing of all, you get their December 1954 This Is Your Life appearance, some four years after they made their final film. I once knew a girlfriend's grandmother who was so insensitive she took photographs of her husband's emaciated body as he lay dying of cancer. I grew increasingly angry as she related this story, whereby she carried on taking snap after snap while her husband begged her on his deathbed to allow him some dignity in his passing. The same sort of feeling comes across you when you watch Laurel and Hardy's shanghaied appearance on This Is Your Life. Mistakenly believing they were there for potential work, the two aged icons manage to consistently fail to recognise anyone introduced on the programme. With smarmy, insincere Ralph Edwards who believes they made "over 300 films together" and is nothing short of downright rude to Ollie, it's a distasteful sight. Their obvious discomfort and resentment at being there (Stan reportedly complained afterwards) is tangible, and none of the anecdotes are memorable or amusing. Perhaps most notable is Leo McCarey, revealing how Ollie once fell forty feet and producing a concerned silence throughout the indulging audience. Things do pick up somewhat at the end with appearances in England, even if they do sadly remind you that Laurel and Hardy's act had very little relevance towards the end of their career. An interview with Ollie shows him as a thoroughly nice guy, even if you might detect mild bitterness at the way his act had dated, or utter a puerile snigger at his pronounciation of Larry Semon's surname. Ultimately if you were a Laurel and Hardy collector you'd want this in your collection, but it does tend to range from the ghoulish to clips that you sense the makers were only allowed to use because they were cheap. The last shot? A scene of the two together, where Ollie had lost weight dramatically, "it really was, for this incredibly talented pair, the end." Still, we were spared writer/director/narrator Reynolds sticking his camera in their coffins, at least. Think that's sick? Try this TV movie, the biggest slice of cinematic grave robbery you'll ever witness.