Marriage is on the way out: according to a Bloomberg story last year, the percentage of Americans who are married has dropped in the last half century from 72 percent to about 50 percent. For comedians, professional marriage has become even more rare. Gone are the days of the great comedy duos: Abbott and Costello, Martin and Lewis, Burns and Allen, Olsen and Johnson, Clark and McCullough, Wheeler and Woolsey. A relic of vaudeville, the “double act” petered out in the “Me Decade” of the 1970s with teams like Cheech and Chong, Stiller and Meara, and Burns and Schreiber. Sure, there have been comedians who lived together for a while—Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor, John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler—but they never tied the knot. The double act survives now mostly in the one-night stand of the “buddy movie,” where performers such as Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg might try out their chemistry together (The Other Guys) and then walk away.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Such harmony was rare in double acts. Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis (together for ten years) fought bitterly, as did Bud Abbott and Lou Costello (together for 20). Strangely, the working dynamic of the great comedy duos was often the inversion of the characters’ onscreen relationship: the ostensible fool (Laurel, Costello, Lewis) was actually the brains of the operation, supervising the gag writers and shaping the films, while his supposedly domineering partner (Hardy, Abbott, Martin) was content to show up, deliver his lines, and enjoy the good life of Hollywood stardom. Conflicts usually resulted from the fool’s rampaging ego: in a typical power play, Costello once announced he would walk unless the act’s billing was changed to Costello and Abbott, and Lewis hastened his split with Martin by deciding he was a singer and horning in on the latter’s musical numbers. (Imagine trying to grab verses away from Dean Martin!)
Laurel resisted the idea at first—he’d spent years struggling to establish himself as a comedy star in vaudeville and then movies—but once the two began working together his natural generosity took over. Given the fact that he masterminded the gag creation, one has to marvel at how many laughs accrue to Ollie: he’s the victim of every slapstick disaster, each crowned by that priceless close-up of him staring at the camera in mute dismay. Actress Lona Andre, quoted in the liner notes to the box set, remembers Laurel “roaring” with laughter at nearly everything his partner did. For his part, Hardy understood Laurel’s creative need to work out his comic ideas behind the scenes and never complained that his costar, with his extra duties, earned much more than he did. Roach had them signed to separate contracts, a tactical advantage he exploited for years as they became the studio’s top stars, and in 1938 he fired the argumentative Laurel, briefly pairing Hardy with the faded silent comedian Harry Langdon. Laurel might have simply moved on, but instead the two friends waited Roach out and, when Hardy’s contract expired, negotiated a better deal.
Though inseparable friends onscreen and congenial collaborators off, Laurel and Hardy moved in different social circles during the Roach years; their friendship deepened only in the 50s, when they embarked on a series of theatrical tours of the UK. The British treated them like rock stars, and they were stunned by the outpouring of affection. But their health began to falter, and in August 1957 Hardy died following a series of strokes and heart attacks. Laurel would live for another seven and a half years, but he never performed again: in 1961 he sent Danny Kaye to the Oscar ceremony to collect his lifetime achievement award, and in 1963 he turned down an offer to appear in Stanley Kramer’s epic comedy It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World. Partly he was reluctant for fans to see him in his weakened condition, but also he could no longer imagine working without Hardy. Like an old married couple, both men were slightly awed by what they’d created together, which had somehow grown larger than the both of them.
