Bruce Calvert
2007-04-07 14:58:15 UTC
http://www.dailybulletin.com/news/ci_5605948
L.A.'s Music Box stairs are a 133-step program
David Allen, Columnist
Article Launched: 04/06/2007 12:00:00 AM PDT
I guess I'm easy to please. For their birthdays, some people want to go to
Paris, London, Madrid. Others desire an around-the-world cruise.
All I wanted was to visit a stairway in L.A. where Laurel and Hardy tried to
move a piano.
You oldtimers and film buffs may know the stairs I mean. In 1932's "The
Music Box," Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, who have pooled their resources of
$3.80 to start a moving company, attempt to deliver a piano.
They pull over their horse-drawn wagon and ask a postman for directions to
1127 Walnut Ave.
The postman points across the street at an impossibly tall set of stairs
that starts at the curb and rises to the top of the hill.
"That's the house there, right on top of the stoop," he says.
Stan and Ollie, after a momentary panic, set their jaws and begin carrying
the piano up the stairs, one step at a time. Hijinks, needless to say,
ensue.
The stairs are real. Even more improbably, they still stand in Silver Lake.
Laurel and Hardy fans with love in their hearts and time on their hands
diligently tracked down the location and, in 1994, a historical plaque was
inlaid at the bottom.
Well-wishers arrived in vintage dress and autos, impersonators
performed, dignitaries spoke, neighbors looked on in puzzlement and everyone
went home with a happy glow.
Almost immediately, the plaque was scratched up by vandals. Another fine
mess, as Oliver Hardy would say.
After reading about the ceremony, I sought out the film on video. "The Music
Box," which I've seen a half-dozen times, is supremely silly.
Carrying a piano up this flight of stairs is no simple task, but Laurel and
Hardy manage, through circumstance and their own ineptness, to make it even
more complicated.
The piano slips from their fingers and careens down dozens of steps into the
street - not once, not twice, but three times.
The fourth attempt finds the piano lugged all the way to the top. As Stan
and Ollie gasp for breath, the postman returns. He asks why they didn't
simply bring their wagon up the side road.
How do Stan and Ollie react?
They pick up the piano, carry it back down the stairs, load it on their
wagon and drive it up the driveway. Adam Sandler should be so brilliant.
I watched "The Music Box" again last month before setting off to see the
stairs for myself. It was a visit I'd wanted to make for a dozen years and,
for my birthday, at last was inspired to take.
No, I didn't bring a piano, just a camera.
The address is on Vendome Street a block south of Sunset Boulevard. As
expected, the street looks far different from the 1930s. The vacant lot next
to the stairs is long gone, replaced by terraced homes.
And the stairway now has a metal railing. Very thoughtful. Nice to see that
a stairway known worldwide as the scene of a series of comic pratfalls is
now mindful of safety.
Even with the changes, the Music Box Steps, as a sign at the bottom calls
them, are darn tall.
I gazed upward and, like Sir Edmund Hillary mounting Everest, set off to the
summit.
There are 133 steps, according to Laurel and Hardy Web sites. I didn't
bother counting, being more concerned with climbing. A series of landings,
seven or so in all, provide plateaus for hikers to rest a moment.
Some of us dreamy-eyed nostalgics dote on places like this stairway - humble
spots made grand by their legend, poetry or significance.
Ray Bradbury, for instance, set two of his short stories at the steps: "The
Laurel and Hardy Love Affair," in which two fans of the duo begin their
romance with a pilgrimage to the stairs, and "Another Fine Mess," in which
the ghosts of Stan and Ollie perpetually carry that piano up those steps,
night after night, year after year.
The romance, of course, is in our imagination, if we have one. The stairs
themselves are nothing special. As Freud might say, sometimes a stairway is
just a stairway.
Movie mogul Hal Roach, whose studio made "The Music Box," was dragged to the
stairs in 1987 by his friend Raymond Bann - after an afternoon shooting game
birds on a sporting ranch in Chino, incidentally.
Roach had never seen the steps and, in Bann's account on the Laurel and
Hardy Web site, didn't much care that he was finally standing in front of
them.
"What am I supposed to be looking at?" he asked impatiently.
Bann, trying to prolong a moment that wasn't much of a moment, asked, "Don't
you want to walk up to the top?"
No, Roach didn't.
To him, the magic was only on the screen, not in the steps.
Either that, or he was worried that if he didn't scram, he'd be flattened by
a runaway piano.
David Allen writes Friday, Sunday and Wednesday, three more descents. E-mail
d_allen(at)dailybulletin(dot)com, call (909) 483-9339 or write 2041 E.
Fourth St., Ontario 91764.
L.A.'s Music Box stairs are a 133-step program
David Allen, Columnist
Article Launched: 04/06/2007 12:00:00 AM PDT
I guess I'm easy to please. For their birthdays, some people want to go to
Paris, London, Madrid. Others desire an around-the-world cruise.
All I wanted was to visit a stairway in L.A. where Laurel and Hardy tried to
move a piano.
You oldtimers and film buffs may know the stairs I mean. In 1932's "The
Music Box," Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, who have pooled their resources of
$3.80 to start a moving company, attempt to deliver a piano.
They pull over their horse-drawn wagon and ask a postman for directions to
1127 Walnut Ave.
The postman points across the street at an impossibly tall set of stairs
that starts at the curb and rises to the top of the hill.
"That's the house there, right on top of the stoop," he says.
Stan and Ollie, after a momentary panic, set their jaws and begin carrying
the piano up the stairs, one step at a time. Hijinks, needless to say,
ensue.
The stairs are real. Even more improbably, they still stand in Silver Lake.
Laurel and Hardy fans with love in their hearts and time on their hands
diligently tracked down the location and, in 1994, a historical plaque was
inlaid at the bottom.
Well-wishers arrived in vintage dress and autos, impersonators
performed, dignitaries spoke, neighbors looked on in puzzlement and everyone
went home with a happy glow.
Almost immediately, the plaque was scratched up by vandals. Another fine
mess, as Oliver Hardy would say.
After reading about the ceremony, I sought out the film on video. "The Music
Box," which I've seen a half-dozen times, is supremely silly.
Carrying a piano up this flight of stairs is no simple task, but Laurel and
Hardy manage, through circumstance and their own ineptness, to make it even
more complicated.
The piano slips from their fingers and careens down dozens of steps into the
street - not once, not twice, but three times.
The fourth attempt finds the piano lugged all the way to the top. As Stan
and Ollie gasp for breath, the postman returns. He asks why they didn't
simply bring their wagon up the side road.
How do Stan and Ollie react?
They pick up the piano, carry it back down the stairs, load it on their
wagon and drive it up the driveway. Adam Sandler should be so brilliant.
I watched "The Music Box" again last month before setting off to see the
stairs for myself. It was a visit I'd wanted to make for a dozen years and,
for my birthday, at last was inspired to take.
No, I didn't bring a piano, just a camera.
The address is on Vendome Street a block south of Sunset Boulevard. As
expected, the street looks far different from the 1930s. The vacant lot next
to the stairs is long gone, replaced by terraced homes.
And the stairway now has a metal railing. Very thoughtful. Nice to see that
a stairway known worldwide as the scene of a series of comic pratfalls is
now mindful of safety.
Even with the changes, the Music Box Steps, as a sign at the bottom calls
them, are darn tall.
I gazed upward and, like Sir Edmund Hillary mounting Everest, set off to the
summit.
There are 133 steps, according to Laurel and Hardy Web sites. I didn't
bother counting, being more concerned with climbing. A series of landings,
seven or so in all, provide plateaus for hikers to rest a moment.
Some of us dreamy-eyed nostalgics dote on places like this stairway - humble
spots made grand by their legend, poetry or significance.
Ray Bradbury, for instance, set two of his short stories at the steps: "The
Laurel and Hardy Love Affair," in which two fans of the duo begin their
romance with a pilgrimage to the stairs, and "Another Fine Mess," in which
the ghosts of Stan and Ollie perpetually carry that piano up those steps,
night after night, year after year.
The romance, of course, is in our imagination, if we have one. The stairs
themselves are nothing special. As Freud might say, sometimes a stairway is
just a stairway.
Movie mogul Hal Roach, whose studio made "The Music Box," was dragged to the
stairs in 1987 by his friend Raymond Bann - after an afternoon shooting game
birds on a sporting ranch in Chino, incidentally.
Roach had never seen the steps and, in Bann's account on the Laurel and
Hardy Web site, didn't much care that he was finally standing in front of
them.
"What am I supposed to be looking at?" he asked impatiently.
Bann, trying to prolong a moment that wasn't much of a moment, asked, "Don't
you want to walk up to the top?"
No, Roach didn't.
To him, the magic was only on the screen, not in the steps.
Either that, or he was worried that if he didn't scram, he'd be flattened by
a runaway piano.
David Allen writes Friday, Sunday and Wednesday, three more descents. E-mail
d_allen(at)dailybulletin(dot)com, call (909) 483-9339 or write 2041 E.
Fourth St., Ontario 91764.
--
Bruce Calvert
--
Visit the Silent Film Still Archive
http://www.silentfilmstillarchive.com
Bruce Calvert
--
Visit the Silent Film Still Archive
http://www.silentfilmstillarchive.com