Hal Roach Studios produced many of the best short and feature comedies of the silent and early sound era. Roach’s most successful films were the shorts and features starring Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, but his studio also boasted Our Gang (aka The Little Rascals), Charley Chase and others. Roach was a businessman, but making his comedies good was equally important. As he had done earlier with silent great Harold Lloyd, Roach nurtured his properties, favoring strong characterizations over broad slapstick. His was a small company with a family atmosphere, the “Lot of Fun,” as it was nicknamed, his pictures distributed by bigger companies (first Pathe, later MGM and finally United Artists), and he gave artists like Stan Laurel (the main creative force behind Laurel & Hardy) much more freedom than the big studios would ever have allowed.
The great success of Laurel & Hardy in the last d…Read the entire review
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