Laurel and Hardy Live on Stage In Color
From YouTube... L&H start a little under a minute in.
Labels: Laurel and Hardy, Oliver Hardy, Stan Laurel
posted by Don at
6:56 PM
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4 Comments:
Oh god, I can't believe that it was truly them!
Do you know where this was or why they were there?
By
Combustibillion, At
January 6, 2009 at 7:30 PM
According to the poster on YouTube, it's "Rare colour footage of the boys performing the 'drivers licence' sketch at the Riverside theatre in Milwaukee 1942." Pretty amazing!
By
Don, At
January 6, 2009 at 9:11 PM
Its a great to see Laural and Hardy on stage.
Thanks for posting.
Kate
By
Anonymous, At
January 15, 2009 at 11:59 AM
Newly Discovered Rare Footage Of Laurel and Hardy Performing On Stage In 1940. Rare colour footage of the boys performing the 'drivers licence' sketch. This color footage is from the Riverside Theater in Milwaukee, taken between October 11 through October 16th in 1940. This was the third city in their "Hellaballou" tour. The dance number costumes are the same costume that Lois Laurel (Stan's daughter) was photographed in that had appeared in a recent Intra Tent Journal article on the tours. The girls are doing a number called "The Three Musketeers", and you get to see the fencing in one segment of this clip.
The male-female dance couple are the Fredricos, and the end singer is Maxine Conrad. second mark.
The Danny Dare Girls appeared on stage only during this tour, and the dance number is The Three Musketeers number that Stan's daughter Lois appeared in a few weeks later. The Fredricos only appeared in this particular week's appearance. They were a classical dance team, added to the Riverside show to "pad" out the show, picked up locally, and not with the tour beyond Milwaukee. The next city, (Chicago), had another classical dance team, Gonzalez and Christina, for the last time. The show went back to the original cast after Chicago. The boys did play Milwaukee again in 1942, but during that tour, the boys had a changing cast, most playing with them for only a few cities. The cast seen here was not part of that tour.
Maxine Conrad sang popular numbers from the "big bands" of the day. While these numbers changed somwhat during the tour, based on time needed for the show.
The Riverside in Milwaukee was 4 shows per day, majority sell-out. The theater management had bragged that the boys had broken all house records.
The DL Examiner is James C Morton. He was in all the shows that week.
In the opening clip, there is a young girl doing "cartwheels" in front of the Danny Dare Girls. Her dress is different from the dancers behind her. She is wearing a sequined black (or dark green) dress. This is Darlene Garner.
Born Lee Watts, out of Ohama, Nebraska, Darlene won an amateur contest several years prior at the State theater in Ohama, which led her to Hollywood, where she did a job of "stunt doubling" for Mary Beth Hughes, in scenes from the John Barrymore film "The Great Profile". Joining the Danny Dare Girls, she had been a part of the dancers during rehersals for the L&H tours. Her talent won her a feature spot in the revue, which you see a peice of in this film. For the real info hounds, she was five foot one inch tall, 112 pounds, and had recently graduated from Los Angeles' High School.
The only performers not in the clip were Lew Parker, Syd Gold (aka Sid Gould), and Carlton Kelsey.
The Laurel and Hardy theme song (the cuckoo song) was played to introduce Laurel and Hardy. Each city's orchestra used this music, which started before the Boy's came out on stage. The applause was reported to be "show-stopping" each time it started up.
By
Stan_And_Ollie, At
February 2, 2009 at 10:33 PM
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