Laurel & Hardy - much missed on tv

Maybe BBC2 could do something in the daytime slot over the Xmas holidays - I seem to remember they did L & H quite often during that period in the past...
 
I know the Abbott & Costello film "Buck Privates" was shown on BBC4 last year.

There was a George Formby film on BBC2 last month.I 'm pretty sure this was the first GF film on the BBC for sometime.
 
Oh I've said that would be a good idea on a few LnH related theads, with a bit of luck the younger generation will get some joy from it too.

L & H, Harold Lloyd, Joe McDoakes(sp) and the like (no Chaplin) used to make Christmas for me.
 
The 2-reel (20 minute) comedies Laurel & Hardy, Edgar Kennedy, Leon Errol, Charley Chase etc did were very good, just the perfect length, and should be shown today.

Also agree with the comments about Will Hay, he made his films in a relatively short space of time, during which he was as popular as any other comedian there was. Very under-rated and largely forgotton today.

A shame a lot of people mostly think of Chaplin as being the best; the younger generation should have the chance to view a lot of the others work to see what talent there was.
 
Lots of people might talk about Chaplin been the best, frankly he leaves me cold.
Laurel and Hardy are the only one's I can think of that get any kind of even rare airing these days.
In fact, I don't remember Chaplin getting much of an airing even when I was watching Laurel and Hardy films (not shorts) on TV.

As an aside who produced those Harold Lloyd short compilations that used to air on the BBC in the afternoons?
Can even remember the theme tune, but not the words.
Those must have been as cheap as chips.
 
I pretty much in agreement with Captain Edmund Blackadder as far as Charlie Chaplin goes. I used to watch Laurel & Hardy and Harold Lloyd as a child, but I'd not put either on my top comedians list.
 
Chaplin's reputation has mainly become legend, part of the reason his films arent shown I beleive is because of greed - wanting too much money for them.

Harold Lloyd's shorts were produced by the same studio that L&H, Edgar Kennedy (before his own series), Charley Chase and Our Gang came from - the Hal Roach studios.
 
Remastering is essential, but my fear would be that they would be bastardised into a Widescreen format; so we'd end up with a horrendous image which was stretched horizontally (unlikely) or a 'pan and scan' monstrosity which had a zoomed in image and the top and bottom cropped out (as has been done with the recent re-release of The World At War 1970s TV series).

Can you imagine a publisher leaving the prints in their original non-widescreen format? Sadly, I can't - the blinkered marketing droids would think that people with Widescreen TVs would be moaning about black bars at the sides of the image .......... :mad:
 
Wow, thanks for that, I had considered doing it once myself. I know someone asked about it and was told it had to be done "properly" which would come at a cost.
 
Come on now, you forgot the punchline, don't leave it hanging.
Blackadder on Charlie Chaplin's films "about as funny as getting an arrow through the neck and discovering there's a gas bill tied to it."
 
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