- Mini Bio
- Name: Arthur Stanley Jefferson
- Born: 16th June 1890, Ulverston, Lancashire, England
- Died: 23rd February 1965, Santa Monica, California, U.S.
- Occupation: Actor, comedian, writer and director
- Famous for: His comedy partnership with Oliver Hardy, in total they made 106 movies together
- Collaboration: He assisted Abbott and Costello in improving their scripts
- Name change: He changed his name to Stan Laurel in 1917
- Awards: Surprisingly no Laurel and Hardy movie was ever nominated for a Best Picture Oscar
- Trivia: His first screen appearance with Oliver Hardy was in the 1921 movie The Lucky Dog and the last movie they made together was called Utopia in 1951
"Humour is the truth; wit is an exaggeration of the truth"
Stan Laurel"I’m happy that I have made people forget some of their sorrows - but it would have been nice to have made a little money along the way. I’m not complaining. I’ve got all I want in this little apartment"
Stan Laurel"If any of you cry at my funeral, I'll never speak to you again"
Stan Laurel"Babe is coming along as well as can be expected, still in bed & unable to talk yet, poor chap, I sure sympathize with him"
Stan Laurel"The world has lost a comic genius. I've lost my best friend"
Stan Laurel"I feel lost without him after 30 odd years of close friendship & happy association"
Stan Laurel"We devised most of our own plots . . . frequently improvising as we thought of this funny thing or that funny thing"
Stan Laurel"Don’t sit around and tear comedy apart. It is like a fine watch, and you’ll never get it together again"
Stan Laurel"I never watch myself on TV any more. Everything is completely chopped. The important routines are ruined"
Stan Laurel"Nobody lifted gags in my time like they do now. There was more ethics then, hence more creativity"
Stan Laurel"We had different hobbies. He liked horses and golf. You know my hobby - and I married them all"
Stan Laurel"Crazy humour was always my type of humour, but it's the quiet kind of craziness I like"
Stan Laurel"What business do we have telling people who to vote for? They probably know more about it than we do"
Stan Laurel"People have always loved our pictures. I guess that's because they saw how much love we put into them"
Stan Laurel"If you had a face like mine, you'd punch me right on the nose, and I'm just the fella to do it"
Stan Laurel"And don’t ask me why people laugh - that is the mystery of it all"
Stan Laurel"I don't deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence with Charles Chaplin"
Stan Laurel"I had a dream I was awake and I woke up to find myself asleep"
Stan Laurel"I looked at Babe and he looked at me and we wept"
Stan Laurel"I feel like dying when I'm helpless"
Stan Laurel"We tried not to copy anybody’s style"
Stan LaurelGreat quotes are not where you find great wisdom. It's where you share this knowledge that counts
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Stan Laurel Biography
Stan Laurel was the comic genius whose facial expressions and dead pan understatement rewarded him with a career that lasted 30 successful years and forged an on screen partnership with Oliver Hardy that ranks them as the best Hollywood comedy duo partnerships to date. Their on screen humour is timeless, meaning still to this day their movies are being enjoyed by each new generation who can readily relate to the slapstick antics of these legends of comedy.
Together they had an on screen chemistry that just worked so well they easily made the transition from silent to the sound era of movies. But there was more to Stan than meets the eye as his creative genius was the catalyst behind many of the famous scenes played out in his films.
At his funeral the actor and comedian Buster Keaton was famously quoted as saying: "Chaplin wasn’t the funniest. I wasn’t the funniest. Stan Laurel was the funniest"
. In his day Charlie Chaplin was the biggest star on the planet but for all his fame his films do not stand the test of time in comparison with the Laurel and Hardy movies.
Stan was good friends with both Keaton and Chaplin, indeed he even sailed on the same ship as Chaplin in 1910 when the pair went to America.
Another comic genius Jerry Lewis once offered Stan $100,000 to write for him but he turned it down, at that time it wasn't about the money for Stan as he just lost all interest in working due to ill health and him being badly affected by the death of his close friend and comedy partner Oliver Hardy in 1957.
He dedicated his career to making us laugh and off screen he was a humble, gracious but quick witted man who could always be relied upon for a great one liner, so here is my compilation of 21 of the best Stan Laurel quotes.
Quotes About Stan Laurel
The French actor Marcel Marceau said this when he visited Stan shortly before his death: "I am now in the home of ze master. I learned my art from watching Laurel and Hardy movies"
The author Kliph Nesteroff made this observation: "Laurel and Hardy successfully straddled the silent-to-talkie film period in a way a lot of their contemporaries didn’t"
The actor Danny Kaye summed up how everybody felt: "They made us laugh because in them we kind of saw ourselves – ridiculous, frustrated, up to our necks in trouble, but nevertheless ourselves"
Lou Costello described the duo thus: "They were the funniest comedy team in the world"