MARCEAU CALLS HIM 'ZE MASTER OF PANTOMIME'
By James Bacon

Marcel Marceau, the great French pantomime, recently made a pilgrimage to a modest one-bedroom apartment on the oceanfront at at Santa Monica.
     Marceau generally is rated the world's greatest in the art of mime, but he pooh poohs it.
     "I am now in the home of ze master," said Marceau as he bowed in the direction of one of the great all time comics—Stan Laurel.
     It was a cheering visit for the surviving member of the famed Laurel and Hardy comedy team.
     "I learned my art from watching Laurel and Hardy movies," said Marceau. Then he did a perfect mime of the Laurel walk and the crying face. Laurel roared with laughter.
     Stan, 70, was obviously thrilled by Marceau's visit.
     "I don't see many people anymore," mused Laurel.
     "It's a long way out here to Santa Monica. And I can't go any place. I have diabetes and still haven't completely recovered from the stroke I had in 1955, so all I can do is stay in the apartment here and watch the ocean and television.
     "About the only visitor I have except for my family is Jerry Lewis. He's been after me to work as a comedy consultant on his movies. Once he came out here and stayed seven hours. We had a lot of laughs.
     "But, as for working again, I can't. I'm all washed up in this business."
     Hollywood may have forgotten Stan but the world hasn't. His living room was cluttered with fan letters from all over the world, some even from Ghana and other remote places.
     "Laurel and Hardy always were more important in Europe and Asia than they were in Hollywood," said Stan. "We once had a fan club in Europe that numbered two million members."
     At this, Marceau interrupted: "I know, because I belonged to it."
     Laurel patiently answers all the fan mail and sends along a little photo of himself and Oliver Hardy, who died in 1957.
     The 30-year partnership of Laurel and Hardy was unique in that they never had a cross word.
     "We had different hobbies," said Stan. "He liked horses and golf. You know my hobby—and I married them all."
     Laurel married four women a total of eight times and had a fifth sue to be declared his wife. Virginia Ruth Rogers, Stan's second, third and seventh bride, once observed in a classic of understatement: "Stan's a good boy, really, but he has a marrying complex."
     His last wife, Ida Kitaeva, married him in 1946 and shares the beachfront apartment with him.
     Laurel's sense of humor is still sharp. Although he gave and is still giving the world a million laughs, he was always sad-faced in his own comedy.
     In person, he is a belly-laugher.
     He laughs at how everybody made millions from Laurel and Hardy but the two comics themselves.
     "We made our pictures for a flat salary—never had an agent. They've played and played on television but we never got a cent out of it.
     "Manufacturers made Laurel and Hardy dolls, Laurel and Hardy ashtrays, Laurel and Hardy flowerpots, even—but we never got a cent."
     He reached for a Laurel and Hardy ceramic ashtray.
     "I bought this at Shannon airport. The manager said they were the best selling ashtrays he had—and then he charged me full price."
     Stan laughed uproariously.
     "It's been a great life and I'm happy that I have made people forget some of their sorrows—but it would have been nice to have made a little money along the way. I'm not complaining. I've got all I want in this little apartment.
     "We had a big house but it was too big for the two of us anyway."
     Laurel recalled how he came to the United States in 1910 in a cattle boat.
     "Charlie Chaplin was the star of our troupe. I had one pair of shoes for onstage and off. Our first night in New York we spent in a cheap theatrical boarding house. I think it cost $1 a day. When I went to bed the first night, I put my shoes outside the door, continental custom, expecting them to be shined by morning.
     "Naturally, they were gone. I had to go to the theater in carpet slippers. They had a big candle on the toe. I made a comedy hit because the rest of my costume was white tie and tails."
     Laurel and Chaplin roomed together for three years while the troupe toured the country.
      What does Laurel think of Chaplin's omission from Hollywood Boulevard's Walk of Fame project?
     "I think it's shocking. I have known Chaplin longer than anyone else. He's bitter but he's no Communist. Those names on the Hollywood Boulevard sidewalk honor the people who made this town the movie capital. To omit the greatest artist of all is shocking. You can't rewrite history."
     Laurel, who had been on the stage since he was 7, toured in vaudeville while Chaplin became the movies' greatest comedy star. Stan made a half-hearted attempt at the movies in 1917 and again in 1922.
     "By this time." he recalls, "I had more or less given up performing and was concentrating on writing and directing. I was employed at Hal Roach studios. One day in 1926 or 1927, I can't remember when, an actor hired to play a butler took sick and I replaced him in a scene."
     That unknown actor's illness brought on a moment of never-to-be-forgotten Hollywood history. When Laurel resumed his acting career, he did it opposite a 300-pound comic villain who had not exactly set Hollywood ablaze as a single.
     One old-time Roach employee recalls the moment: "When Laurel and Hardy started working in the scene, you could hear the laughs all over the lot. This brought us all running to the set because some of those electricians and cameramen hadn't laughed in years. Even Hal Roach himself visited the set—and laughed himself sick.
     "Laurel and Hardy became a team—and there never will be a funnier one—from that day on."
     The format of the Laurel and Hardy two-reelers was basically the same—Hardy, supposedly the intelligent member of the team, would suggest something—and during the execution, Laurel would louse it up—to Hardy's anguish. There was no straight man in the act.
     "And no script," recalls Stan. "Babe always let me handle everything. We only used a director for scenes for Laurel and Hardy and provided most of the gags.
     "Whenever the front office would call a conference about a new picture, Babe had a standard line he used: 'Whatever Stan decides is all right with me.'
     "In all our 30 years together, he never once questioned a decision I had made. Although we never went together socially, we were always good friends as well as partners. I miss him terribly."
     Laurel & Hardy's life will be made into a television spectacular sometime this year. Various castings have been specu1ated—Jackie Gleason for Hardy, Art Carney for Laurel. Another had Tony Perkins for Laurel and Jonathan Winters for Hardy. Laurel thinks Dick Van Dyke would be a good choice for him. He likes either Gleason or Winters for Babe.
     "But I can't see where there's any story in our lives. There was no friction, no drama—just a few laughs."

—Pittsburgh Post Gazette (Feb. 26, 1961)

SPECIAL OSCAR SOUGHT FOR STAN LAUREL

A dozen top stars have formed a committee to ask that a special Oscar be voted to the surviving half of one of the great movie comedy teams of all time, Stan Laurel of Laurel and Hardy. It would be a fine and warm gesture, symbolic of a salute to all the old-timers, both alive and dead, who entertain millions daily via their old and unrewarding films on TV.

—Sheilah Graham (February 20, 1961)