Two for the Price of One, One for the Price of Two," and it was his idea to make a double feature of Laurel and Hardy in 1946. The second feature he booked for the first part of the afternoon show would be a double bill of cartoons. He put up posters for the films: "Stromboli...and Laurel and Hardy Double Bill." They were shown back to back. Ivan Reitman produced the double bill, in which a young boy, Joe Hardy, encounters the same mishaps his father, Oliver Hardy, usually had. They get trapped in ice caves and hit by flying missiles and so on. What made the two cartoons work well together was that both cartoons used similar gags and sight gags. It looked good and added up to being very funny, since these were cartoons. It worked out perfectly, as "Laurel and Hardy Double Bill" did good business. Joe Hardy proved so popular that Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy made a second animated cartoon that included their son. The movie that Laurel and Hardy made with Reitman, as you know, had been a complete failure and had to be quickly finished. They needed to have a new comedy for their return engagement to the Hal Roach Studios. To do this, they created the film "The Battle of the Century" (1947) from two sketches. They played two rival prizefighters in their club's saloon who fought to a draw. As they fought, they went into great detail about what a good fighter they were and how good each punch and blow would be. This is very reminiscent of the first Laurel and Hardy film, which also revolved around a fight. I guess that is what the audience wants in a film like this. When they finished filming, there was an air of completion, as if they had been waiting for something for a long time. I watched a bootleg of this new film at an early screening in the early 1980s at a theater in Studio City. When the film was over, the audience was very appreciative and excited. It was clear they enjoyed the film. However, I had a disappointing experience when I watched the movie again, in a real movie theater. I was very confused. The whole film is about nothing; the brothers Laurel and Hardy are in a saloon and nothing much is going on. Then all of a sudden, a whole gang of black prisoners appear in the saloon and start fighting in the background. This is a little like what happens in the old Laurel and Hardy films, except they used to always end with a fight or a dance or something. I noticed that the movie had taken more than twenty minutes to get to a fight scene. I was completely baffled by this and couldn't understand why the film took so long. To make things worse, in the film Stan Laurel keeps talking and goes back and forth between the fight and the saloon, just like I did in real life. It's very hard to follow and doesn't really work well. I remember seeing this film again at an early film festival in 1979 and sitting next to Bill Warren, who was the writer of the film. He and I had a wonderful discussion. He was very happy that Stan and I talked to each other and we got along so well. We laughed at what each of us thought of "The Battle of the Century." He also told me that he was sure we would enjoy watching it. I had a pleasant and enjoyable experience with "The Battle of the Century," because all Stan and I had in common was our curiosity about Laurel and Hardy and the joy we felt when we were together. It didn't matter how hard I worked, because Stan and I really connected. He was my first best friend in film, because his work spoke to me. Later in life Stan explained how he and Oliver had created an inanimate object of a fight: two figures that fought like maniacs against each other, with no dialogue and no spoken explanation. It was funny. But I knew what they were trying to do, because I saw Laurel and Hardy's "Sons of the Desert" (1933) in my early childhood. It was the perfect kind of entertainment, and it had both Stan and Ollie fighting and joking. The funniest part of that film is at the beginning when Stan, who had just been in the ring, was so sore he couldn't move. He was lying on the floor next to his big bag and was too sore to even get up. Then he lifted himself up on the bag, like Superman, and he had a hard time sitting down again. It was funny because his actions had no effect on anything, and then he pretended to do something for a little while. He was a good guy who didn't understand why anyone would find what he was doing funny. Stanley Vernon Gibson Laurel (1914–1980), the younger brother of Oliver Laurel, was one of the stars of the silent and sound films that Stan made with Stan and Ollie. He was known for his acrobatic skills as well as his talent as a singer and had a very close relationship with Buster Keaton. I was surprised that Stan Laurel had been the star of a short film called "Laurel & Hardy: Behind the Clouds" (1945). It was his last appearance with Oliver Hardy before his death. The film was a series of short scenes from their films, with Stan portraying Stanley and his wife as a young couple. It was the first time in his life that he was the star of a film that portrayed the two of them as adults. It was also his last appearance with Nancy Raver (Stan's wife) on camera. She had worked with Stan and Oliver for many years. Stan and Nancy had a lot of fun doing the film. Stan and Oliver had been through a lot together, and they had a special relationship that had endured for many years. A new generation of fans was just starting to learn about Stan Laurel, and this film helped him to get some recognition for his work. It was a pleasure for me to work with Stan. He came into my office the next day to talk to me about working on his new film and to see if it would be okay if I was the cameraman. Stan had a lot of fun working with me, and that same day he asked me to come by for dinner at his home. I remember when we were working on the film I asked Stan if it was okay to turn on the camera and film him talking and saying words, which would have been something we never did before. It would have been difficult for me to do this before, because I didn't understand why a person would want to record a spoken word. I had noticed that Stan was more open to filming me after he worked with me. He thought I was pretty good, and his son (Don Dennen) agreed with me. Stan's son had helped us to build a light source that looked like a Christmas tree, and it was a very strange gadget. Don also created other kinds of tricks, which Stan always loved. I noticed that Stan would ask me if I was interested in taking pictures of him, and I said sure. Then I felt a lot freer when I actually started to work with him. I had worked in some kind of way with many different people, but in those cases I had been the cameraman and had no contact with them. On this occasion I was the cameraman, and I began to see that he wasn't as shy as I had thought. We got along very well, and he gave me a hug and a kiss at the end. It was easy working with him, and I was really glad that I had given him my phone number. A lot of people who worked with Stan say they found him great to work with. His favorite thing was to tell jokes, and he loved to create ideas that other people thought were funny. And I got to know him when he was in his twenties, and he was already very intelligent. He knew a lot about all the subjects that interested me, but he didn't have too many problems in life. Stan would always make me laugh, and it was so obvious that he enjoyed what he was doing. He could be so serious sometimes, but he was a great artist, and I liked how he moved his hands to express himself. He was very spontaneous, and it was very interesting to watch him come up with things, because he always did something out of the ordinary. It didn't matter where or when we worked together, we had fun, and I never felt tired from working with him. Stan's son Don was great, and he wanted me to come to his home to see him often, and I went often to see his son because I liked him so much. When he passed away, I felt very sad. It was a great loss to the world of comedy. My friend Buster Keaton was born in a small town near my home town in Montana. I had never met him when I was a kid, but later on, in my teenage years, I got to know him very well. This was when I started reading about Buster's life, and I discovered some special things about him. Buster was born on the Fourth of July. I don't think his mom would have agreed with that, and she always made him write, "Happy Fourth of July" instead. He was a small, cute, and intelligent little boy who later developed