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Queering the Fraternity Laurel and Hardy and Heterosexual Brotherhood 5 139 They [Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy] are the comedy sensations of the season. And all because they have learned, by a lucky stroke, that the public likes to see themselves caricatured on the screen; that the public can laugh at the maundering of a fat man who shakes a warning pudgy forefinger at a sensitive simpleton who is prone to weep. Dorothy Spensley,“Those Two Goofy Guys,” Photoplay (July 1930) Written as Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy were gaining widespread celebrity in sound shorts, the above observation acknowledges one of the key points stressed throughout this book. The comedians of Classic Hollywood could serve as points of identification for the male public,who could“see themselves” in the comedians’ outsider positions. As comics embraced often-neglected narratives of economic, ethnic, and queered otherness, they became beloved cultural icons, and Laurel and Hardy are particularly potent examples of this phenomenon—ones with, as will be discussed, a thriving fan community that distinguishes them from many of the other figures this book covers.1 As the article suggests, even their relatively low-budget shorts upon release were“billed over feature pictures with sex appeal heroines in theater electrics.”2 In short, Laurel and Hardy’s film personae conform to the perceived queered aspects of buffoonish masculinity, implying through their appearances on screen a denaturalization of “normal” masculine protocols in ways that ultimately proved iconic. Even when describing the duo’s physicality, Photoplay stresses it by reminding its readership which comedian is which through characterizing each of their physical and mental“lacks”in contrast to other male stars: Oliver 140 | chapter 5 “weighs well over two hundred and fifty” pounds while “Stan is the one who weeps,” feminizing the comic by highlighting a behavior seen as unmanly.3 While each comedian is prototypical of much of the buffoonish masculinity discussed thus far, Laurel and Hardy move us into a cinematic construct that more overtly plays with queered masculine relationships—the comedy duo. As a male-male couple, they are the most long lasting of any on-screen twosome (male-male, female-female, or male-female). Their first pairing as an official comedy team was for Hal Roach Studios in the silent short Do Detectives Think? in 1927, in which they appear for the first time in their trademark bowler hats and poorly fitted suits. They finally finished their careers in the odd international feature Atoll K in 1952, wearing the same outfits and still, to an extent, playing the same basic characters they originated twenty-five years prior. Southerner Hardy is the overweight, bossy figure, though with a sheepish sensitive side. West Side Londoner Laurel is the childlike dim-bulb who feels hopelessly clueless and manages to get his partner into various complicated and sometimes physically painful situations. Despite any obstacles the world outside creates, they remain loyal companions who never could really abandon each other. They are unlike other popular duos on screen in the form of heterosexual romantic couples, since such twosomes as Myrna Loy and William Powell or Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn had recognizable screen personalities independent from their partnerships.Despite three minor solo appearances by Hardy in his sound career, Laurel and Hardy appeared together in multiple films a year solely as a team, a defined male-male couple in the eyes of the studio and the public.It is safe to say,outside of George Burns and Gracie Allen,true“comedy duos”usually were established male pairings in the eyes of the moviegoers. Along with Laurel and Hardy, these queered twosomes would eventually include popular teams like Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey, Bud Abbott and Lou Costello, and Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis.4 While all the comedians in this book artfully play with their positions as outsiders, the comedy duo forces the issue by existing as a more easily identifiable queered affront to established parameters of homosocial male relationships . Laurel and Hardy’s comedy usually positioned them as outsiders from successful male figures—often portraying them as victims of the Depression in such shorts as Below Zero (1930) and One Good Turn (1931). Making films as the turmoil of the 1930s was changing masculine roles in society,Laurel and Hardy most notably challenged different male orders as opposed to just being contrasted to individual masculine archetypes. The humor is often based in their intruding upon symbolic orders of maleness: such as the military in Beau...

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