Stan and Ollie still rule.

• Author: Gehring, Wes D.
• Position: REEL WORLD

IN RESEARCHING EVERY MAJOR screen comedian during Hollywood's golden age, stretching from the 1920s until the early 1950s, one uncovers an army of critics putting forth a case for the inherent superiority of their favorites. Yours truly would be a spokesman for Charlie Chaplin, but there likewise would be numerous scholarly advocates for the Marx Brothers, Buster Keaton, W.C. Fields, Mae West, Will Rogers, Bob Hope, and many others.

Having said that, however, a better case can be made for the most popular comedians from this bygone era with today's general public. Indeed, it is not even close; Laurel and Hardy win in a landslide. An old axiom about the team says it all: "Nobody likes Laurel and Hardy except for the people." Though they were not without their own tony supporters, too, Laurel and Hardy never were the toast of the critics like Chaplin or the Marx Brothers, but the public seems to have always connected with Start and Ollie. Even the team's international fan club, "The Sons of the Desert" (based on the name of their best feature film, 1933), puts comparable organizations honoring other comedians to shame, both in sheer membership numbers, and in the inspired labeling given each local "tent" (club). The chapters take the name of one of Laurel and Hardy's many film titles.

So, what are the comic components of their everyman universality? First, they are pivotal transition figures in American humor's move from the capable character (crackerbarrel philosopher as personified by Will Rogers), to the modern antihero. Yet, this entertaining slide into perpetual frustration is timeless. Laurel and Hardy's comic problems are as old as Greek mythology's Sisyphus: the doomed figure forever forced to roll uphill a large stone which always rolls down again. In fact, the duo's lone Academy Award-winning picture, a 1932 short subject, "The Music Box," is based loosely on Sisyphus. That is, the pair must deliver a crated piano to a house on a hill, necessitating that they carry said crate up an almost endless flight of outdoor steps. Each time they reach the top, something causes the seemingly possessed piano to roll back to the bottom of the hill.

Comedy teams invariably are built upon contrast, and Laurel and Hardy maximize this attribute. Beyond the age-old fat man-skinny man, there is the difference of demeanor. Ollie always is the authority figure, the quasi-parent or teacher. Stan is the child or student in need of correcting. Yet, the...