Bruce Calvert
2009-01-19 17:04:34 UTC
http://www.jacksonville.com/news/metro/2009-01-19/story/club_marks_jacksonville_link_to_oliver_hardy
Club marks Jacksonville link to Oliver Hardy
The comedian of Laurel and Hardy fame got his start here.
By Charlie Patton
Story updated at 2:47 AM on Monday, Jan. 19, 2009
In July 2006, about 400 Laurel and Hardy enthusiasts descended on
little Harlem, Ga., for the 15th biennial convention of the
international fan club the Sons of the Desert.
If Harlem, a town of about 1,800 people near Augusta, could host that
convention, Jacksonville should be able to as well, says Joe
Fortunato, a Jacksonville resident who visited Harlem and its Laurel
and Hardy Museum over the weekend.
The occasion is the birthday of Oliver "Babe" Hardy, born in Harlem on
Jan. 18, 1892.
Fortunato, a Web site developer, is Grand Sheik of the Any Old Port
Tent (a tent is what Sons of the Desert call a chapter). Fortunato
started the Any Old Port Tent in 2004 after he moved to Jacksonville
from Connecticut.
After a couple of years, he stopped holding regular meetings and let
the tent go inactive. Now he's trying to revive interest.
He has arranged to hold monthly meetings, followed by screenings, at
the Museum of Science and History. The next meeting will be Sunday at
1 p.m., with a screening at 2 p.m. The screening is free to anyone who
pays admission to the museum, and admission to the museum is free to
members of Sons of the Desert.
Fortunato said he will show the 1937 feature Way Out West and several
cartoons and shorts including a Little Rascals short featuring a
Laurel and Hardy cameo.
As it happens, a former member of Fortunato's tent, writer Steve
Bailey, started his own tent at the Beaches in August 2006. The Leave
'Em Laughing Tent holds screenings on the second Monday of each month
at 6:30 p.m. at the Pablo Creek Branch Library.
In a way, two tents in Jacksonville makes a strange kind of sense
because Laurel and Hardy were, in the words of film historian Ephraim
Katz, "the most fabulously successful comedy duo the screen has ever
known."
Besides, Jacksonville has a connection to half the duo, a connection
both Fortunato and Bailey think the city has failed to adequately
recognize. It was here, in 1914, that the rotund Hardy made his screen
debut.
At the time, Jacksonville was a flourishing movie production center.
Hardy moved here in 1913, hoping to break into the movies, and found
work as a singer, billing himself as The Ton of Jollity. He also
acquired his life-long nickname, Babe, from a local barber.
He began hanging out at the Florida Yacht Club, then located in
Riverside, which Lubin Studios had rented. Eventually he was cast in
the comedy short Outwitting Dad, Shawn Bean wrote in his 2008 book The
First Hollywood. The movie was released, to middling reviews, in April
1914.
Over the next three years, Hardy made about 170 movies, Fortunato
estimated, most of them in Jacksonville, though he moved to New York
for a while in 1915.
But, by June 1917, Jacksonville's movie heyday had run its course and
Hardy moved to Hollywood.
Simon Louvish, author of Stan and Ollie, found a 1934 letter from
Hardy to an old friend in which he wrote "the best times of my life
were spent in Jacksonville."
In 1927, writer/director Leo McCarey teamed the large, round Hardy
with the small, slim Stan Laurel.
Together, as amiable, frequently frustrated dimwits, Laurel and Hardy
would make 106 movies, beginning with silent shorts, moving into sound
and eventually expanding into features.
Hardy died in 1957 at the age of 65. The grief-stricken Laurel never
made another movie but lived long enough to sanction the founding of
the Sons of the Desert in 1965.
Both Fortunato and Bailey think Jacksonville should do more to honor
Hardy: Name a street or a park for him, erect a statue. Fortunato also
wants the city to try to bring the Sons of the Desert convention here
in 2014, the centennial of Hardy's first movie role.
Fortunato and his brothers, including Mike, 61, who lives in
Jacksonville and is vice sheik of the Any Old Port Tent, grew up
outside New York City, watching old Laurel and Hardy movies on TV.
"I think their humor is timeless," Mike Fortunato said.
"It's a type of humor where you don't have to be embarrassed to watch
it with kids or with your mother," Joe Fortunato said.
"As a kid, I enjoyed the slapstick and the comedy," Bailey said. "As
an adult, every time I do something goofy, I realize I am them."
charlie.patton(at)jacksonville.com, (904) 359-4413
--
Bruce Calvert
Visit the Silent Film Still Archive
http://www.silentfilmstillarchive.com
Club marks Jacksonville link to Oliver Hardy
The comedian of Laurel and Hardy fame got his start here.
By Charlie Patton
Story updated at 2:47 AM on Monday, Jan. 19, 2009
In July 2006, about 400 Laurel and Hardy enthusiasts descended on
little Harlem, Ga., for the 15th biennial convention of the
international fan club the Sons of the Desert.
If Harlem, a town of about 1,800 people near Augusta, could host that
convention, Jacksonville should be able to as well, says Joe
Fortunato, a Jacksonville resident who visited Harlem and its Laurel
and Hardy Museum over the weekend.
The occasion is the birthday of Oliver "Babe" Hardy, born in Harlem on
Jan. 18, 1892.
Fortunato, a Web site developer, is Grand Sheik of the Any Old Port
Tent (a tent is what Sons of the Desert call a chapter). Fortunato
started the Any Old Port Tent in 2004 after he moved to Jacksonville
from Connecticut.
After a couple of years, he stopped holding regular meetings and let
the tent go inactive. Now he's trying to revive interest.
He has arranged to hold monthly meetings, followed by screenings, at
the Museum of Science and History. The next meeting will be Sunday at
1 p.m., with a screening at 2 p.m. The screening is free to anyone who
pays admission to the museum, and admission to the museum is free to
members of Sons of the Desert.
Fortunato said he will show the 1937 feature Way Out West and several
cartoons and shorts including a Little Rascals short featuring a
Laurel and Hardy cameo.
As it happens, a former member of Fortunato's tent, writer Steve
Bailey, started his own tent at the Beaches in August 2006. The Leave
'Em Laughing Tent holds screenings on the second Monday of each month
at 6:30 p.m. at the Pablo Creek Branch Library.
In a way, two tents in Jacksonville makes a strange kind of sense
because Laurel and Hardy were, in the words of film historian Ephraim
Katz, "the most fabulously successful comedy duo the screen has ever
known."
Besides, Jacksonville has a connection to half the duo, a connection
both Fortunato and Bailey think the city has failed to adequately
recognize. It was here, in 1914, that the rotund Hardy made his screen
debut.
At the time, Jacksonville was a flourishing movie production center.
Hardy moved here in 1913, hoping to break into the movies, and found
work as a singer, billing himself as The Ton of Jollity. He also
acquired his life-long nickname, Babe, from a local barber.
He began hanging out at the Florida Yacht Club, then located in
Riverside, which Lubin Studios had rented. Eventually he was cast in
the comedy short Outwitting Dad, Shawn Bean wrote in his 2008 book The
First Hollywood. The movie was released, to middling reviews, in April
1914.
Over the next three years, Hardy made about 170 movies, Fortunato
estimated, most of them in Jacksonville, though he moved to New York
for a while in 1915.
But, by June 1917, Jacksonville's movie heyday had run its course and
Hardy moved to Hollywood.
Simon Louvish, author of Stan and Ollie, found a 1934 letter from
Hardy to an old friend in which he wrote "the best times of my life
were spent in Jacksonville."
In 1927, writer/director Leo McCarey teamed the large, round Hardy
with the small, slim Stan Laurel.
Together, as amiable, frequently frustrated dimwits, Laurel and Hardy
would make 106 movies, beginning with silent shorts, moving into sound
and eventually expanding into features.
Hardy died in 1957 at the age of 65. The grief-stricken Laurel never
made another movie but lived long enough to sanction the founding of
the Sons of the Desert in 1965.
Both Fortunato and Bailey think Jacksonville should do more to honor
Hardy: Name a street or a park for him, erect a statue. Fortunato also
wants the city to try to bring the Sons of the Desert convention here
in 2014, the centennial of Hardy's first movie role.
Fortunato and his brothers, including Mike, 61, who lives in
Jacksonville and is vice sheik of the Any Old Port Tent, grew up
outside New York City, watching old Laurel and Hardy movies on TV.
"I think their humor is timeless," Mike Fortunato said.
"It's a type of humor where you don't have to be embarrassed to watch
it with kids or with your mother," Joe Fortunato said.
"As a kid, I enjoyed the slapstick and the comedy," Bailey said. "As
an adult, every time I do something goofy, I realize I am them."
charlie.patton(at)jacksonville.com, (904) 359-4413
--
Bruce Calvert
Visit the Silent Film Still Archive
http://www.silentfilmstillarchive.com