Oliver Hardy passed on this date, August 7th, 1957 at 65 years of age. When his on stage and screen partner, Stan Laurel heard the news, he was devastated and from then on, refused to perform on stage or act in another film again. Ever since they became partners in 1927, he thought of himself as half of an entity called Laurel & Hardy and consequentially, without Hardy there couldn't be any Laurel. That's how close they were. Their friendship had blossomed during their fading years when, out of work in movies, they began to tour appearing live before delighted audiences in the U.S. and abroad. Ollie was by this time, married to Virginia Lucille Jones, a script girl he met while filming THE FLYING DEUCES. Stan was married to Ida Kitaeva Raphael and the four of them struck a very close friendship during those tours.
Many people think of Hardy as being the perfect straight man to Laurel but in fact, there was no straight man in this team since Ollie shared the comedy equally with Stan. You could laugh at Stan's fumblings and get another laugh watching Ollie's reaction to his pal's blunders, which did not keep Hardy from committing some equally hilarious bits of slapstick himself!
Here's a link to last year's post on Oliver Hardy:
