To your left please note the two funniest human beings ever to be projected on a screen.
Mark Twain said that "dissecting humor is like dissecting a frog--you can examine the heart, stomach, liver, kidneys...but in the end all you're left with is a dead frog!"
Accordingly, I will not presume to do a painstaking analysis--nor is it even possible-- of what makes Stan and Ollie the absolute gold standard in film comedy.
Like God, it surpasses all understanding.
Is there any doubt that taking two other human beings and having them go through the exact motions, uttering the exact same words, and trying to essay the same gestures and mannerisms would fall abysmally flat?
When Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, already having established themselves as solo film performers--although nowhere near having ascended to the rarefied artistic heights of Chaplin, Keaton and Lloyd--teamed up in 1927, it was the divine pairing of two comic soulmates.
Call it chemistry, speak of it in metaphysical terms, whatever-- in tandem they instantly joined the aforementioned troika of comedy masters.
I would argue that in their two and three-reeler shorts and their features, from their first duo effort up until 1940, they were, in terms of sheer laughter quotient, the funniest of them all. No lesser than Chaplin concurred in this in his autobiography and that ain't a bad reference!. Those of us who know of the pair beyond their screen efforts, are well aware that Stan,"the dumb one",was the creative force behind the duo. .
Logic therefore dictates, if one concurs with Chaplin's assessment, that Stan Laurel may have been the greatest comic genius in the history of Hollywood. Producer Hal Roach, with whom there was precious little love lost between him and Stan, called the latter the greatest gag writer in comedy.
In turn, Stan, always the modest gentleman, looked in awe at his partner, Ollie. It was Stan, the creator, who laughed hysterically at Hardy's performances as he surveyed the daily rushes(interestingly, the same self-deprecating and at the same time, lavish praise for a partner occurred in the case of Jackie Gleason and Art Carney on "The Honeymooners" which Steve Allen called the Laurel and Hardy of television--Gleason thought Carney was the real funny one). Stan knew all too well what he had--a true NATURAL--Hardy's meticulous, precise-and-perfectly-appropriate-to-the-situation mannerisms, his preternatural timing, his unflagging efforts at maintaining dignity and social decorum which were usually instantly negated by a tumble down a flight of stairs or a tearing of the pants in the hindquarters--and perhaps, most endearing and riotous of all, his taking us into his confidence with his looks into the camera-- exasperated, resigned, baffled or like a guilt-ridden little boy caught with his hand in the cookie jar. These brilliantly executed "mute appeals for sympathy", in the words of one writer, always elicited the hardiest ( unintentional pun instantly realized)) laughs from me.
The interaction between the two was the very definition of comic choreography--perhaps it was no surprise that Stan and Ollie often 'commenced to dancing' in their films. These literal terpsichorean turns were the logical next step to their timeless comedy Carioca.
You may have John Phillip Sousa, I will always March to the sound of the Cuckoos-- Arthur Stanley Jefferson and Oliver Norvell Hardy--synonyms for joy and laughter.
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