AUDIOBOOK
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John Connolly conjures the Golden Age of Hollywood in this moving, literary portrait of Laurel & Hardy--two men who found their true selves in a comedic partnership.
An unforgettable testament to the redemptive power of love, as experienced by one of the twentieth century's greatest performers.
When Stan Laurel is paired with Oliver Hardy, affectionately known as Babe, the history of comedy--not to mention their personal and professional lives--is altered forever. Yet Laurel's simple screen persona masks a complex human being, one who endures rejection and intense loss; who struggles to build a character from the dying stages of vaudeville to the seedy and often volatile movie studios of Los Angeles in the early years of cinema; and who is haunted by the figure of another comic genius, the brilliant, driven, and cruel Charlie Chaplin.
Eventually, Laurel becomes one of the greatest screen comedians the world has ever known: a man who enjoys both adoration and humiliation; who loves, and is loved in turn; who betrays, and is betrayed; who never seeks to cause pain to anyone else, yet leaves a trail of affairs and broken marriages in his wake. But Laurel's life is ultimately defined by one relationship of such astonishing tenderness and devotion that only death could sever this profound connection: his love for Babe.
An unforgettable testament to the redemptive power of love, as experienced by one of the twentieth century's greatest performers.
When Stan Laurel is paired with Oliver Hardy, affectionately known as Babe, the history of comedy--not to mention their personal and professional lives--is altered forever. Yet Laurel's simple screen persona masks a complex human being, one who endures rejection and intense loss; who struggles to build a character from the dying stages of vaudeville to the seedy and often volatile movie studios of Los Angeles in the early years of cinema; and who is haunted by the figure of another comic genius, the brilliant, driven, and cruel Charlie Chaplin.
Eventually, Laurel becomes one of the greatest screen comedians the world has ever known: a man who enjoys both adoration and humiliation; who loves, and is loved in turn; who betrays, and is betrayed; who never seeks to cause pain to anyone else, yet leaves a trail of affairs and broken marriages in his wake. But Laurel's life is ultimately defined by one relationship of such astonishing tenderness and devotion that only death could sever this profound connection: his love for Babe.
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Reviews
"Delightfully eccentric . . . In he, the lonely comic [Stan Laurel] is haunted by Oliver Hardy, Charlie Chaplin, and ghosts of lovers past."
James Kidd, South China Morning Post
"The life and art of Stan Laurel, from vaudeville and silent movies to the talkies and old age, is explored in this artful novel . . . The book's great love story is that of Laurel mourning and yearning for his late partner [Oliver Hardy], still writing routines for the two of them, rehearsing them by himself. It's the best tribute to this novel that by the end of it you feel you have been given t
Kirkus Reviews
"Charts the evolution of comedy in Hollywood during its first half century with a keen eye to detail . . . An entertaining account of early-twentieth-century celebrity and the two men whose lives to posterity 'have become reflections, each of the other, an infinity of echoes'."
Huston Gilmore, The Daily Express