Synopsis:

Removed narrative clutter for a more fitting tribute to these legendary comics.

Intentions:

My whole family loves Laurel and Hardy and we all enjoyed their biopic upon seeing it at the cinema in 2018, but we were also in unanimous agreement that the scenes of conflict and “betrayal” between the two felt formulaic and unnecessary. Apart from such events depicted appearing (as far as I can tell) to have little basis in fact, it should be enough for the story that they are dealing with the rapidly approaching ends of their careers without having to neatly resolve disagreements from over fifteen years previously. The offending scenes have thus been removed, the story remains much the same and artistic licence is still taken, there are just fewer bumps in the road as we progress along it.

Change List:

• Desaturated nearly the entire film, Laurel and Hardy appear (almost) exclusively in black and white so this feels appropriate to me, grading was greatly assisted by Wraith and Dwight Fry, who took my initial attempts and provided examples of how it could be improved. In general, boosted gamma to brighten the image and slightly increased the contrast. • Exported 1920x804 with 5.1 audio, total runtime of 78 minutes. Cuts and Additions: • Removed Ollie’s line during his phone call to Lucille about he and Stan getting to know each other again, makes it sound as if they’ve been apart for a long time. • Removed Stan’s flashback to 1930s where Laurel has approached Fox for a new deal and Ollie takes the part in Zenobia. • Removed Ida saying that Laurel could have left Hardy and Laurel saying that’s all in the past. • Removed argument and scenes of hostility, cut from dressing room discussion about Robin Hood to the contest prize-giving (no tea scene). • Faded from Stan leaving Ollie’s room to him returning two days later and added explanatory card, Stan no longer has breakfast with Delfont and Nobby Cook is no longer a part of this film. • Remove dialogue at Ollie’s bedside concerning the argument, Stan stands up and starts to talk but is quickly cut off by Ollie saying that he’s retiring. • Cut final part of bed conversation, no talk of Nobby Cook or the argument. • Kept the Robin Hood visualisations in colour, replaced the cutaway shot to Stan alone in his dressing room with a now-unused shot of him and Delfont at breakfast (from the cut scene where the idea of Nobby Cook is introduced). • Removed Stan preparing to go on stage with Nobby Cook and not going through with it, cut from end of Robin Hood visualisation to Stan waiting to talk to Ida. • Removed end of Laurel’s conversation with Ida after “I love him”, no talk of him continuing on to Ireland. • Second part of Lucille’s dialogue (concerning the Laurels continuing) is removed and the remaining sections spliced together, necessitating the shortening of the shot of Ollie that this plays over. • A section of Ollie reminiscing still contains excerpts from scenes I cut, two characters who we no longer see expressing their fondness for Laurel and Hardy, but I don’t think this is too distracting since they would have met a lot of people in their tour.

Additional Notes:

Prompted to do the edit after trimming down their first feature "Pardon Us" into a short.

Other Sources:

2019 blu-ray.

Special Thanks:

Many thanks to my grandparents for introducing me to Laurel and Hardy as a child with County Hospital, hardly remember any other times where I laughed so much! Also many thanks to Wraith and Dwight Fry for providing guidance on the B&W grading, learned that there is a lot more to it than simply a matter of setting the saturation to zero!