The most celebrated comedy duo in cinema history, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy formed their decades-long partnership in the late 1920s in a series of silent shorts produced at the Hal Roach Studios. Having developed their on-screen chemistry in the likes of Do Detectives Think?, Putting Pants on Philip and The Battle of the Century throughout 1927, Laurel & Hardy forged on as a double act in the last years of the silent era and into the age of talking pictures.
This collection brings together the silent Laurel & Hardy shorts produced during 1928, as their partnership began to gather steam: Leave 'em Laughingsees Stan desperately seeking treatment for a toothache; You're Darn Tootin'follows the pair as they turn their hand to busking; in From Soup to Nuts, the boys are hired as waiters for an upper-class dinner party; and in Early to Bed, Ollie gets to enjoy the highlife for himself when he inherits a fortune and buys an opulent mansion… but Stan soon finds ways to lower its market value. This collection also features the first Hal Roach film to officially bill Laurel & Hardy as a duo: Should Married Men Go Home?, in which a relaxing trip to the golf course quickly spirals into chaos.
The Masters of Cinema series is honoured to present some of the finest (and funniest) films Laurel & Hardy ever made — newly restored in 2K resolution from the finest available materials — in a special two-disc Blu-ray edition for the first time in the UK.
The set contains the following shorts: Leave 'em Laughing, The Finishing Touch, From Soup to Nuts, You're Darn Tootin', Their Purple Moment, Should Married Men Go Home?, Early to Bed, Two Tars, Habeas Corpus and We Faw Down.
LIMITED TWO-DISC BLU-RAY EDITION SPECIAL FEATURES*:
Limited edition of 2000 copies | Limited edition O-Card slipcase featuring new artwork by Scott Saslow | 1080p HD presentations on Blu-ray from 2K restorations | Scores by a variety of silent film composers | Brand new audio commentaries by film historian and writer David Kalat, Patrick Vasey, (editor of The Laurel & Hardy Magazine and host of The Laurel & Hardy Podcast), film writer Chris Seguin, Kyp Harness (The Art of Laurel & Hardy: Graceful Calamity in the Films), Glenn Mitchell (The Laurel & Hardy Encyclopedia) and silent film accompanist Neil Brand | Alternate Robert Youngson score on The Finishing Touch, newly restored by Stephen C. Horne | United we Fall — brand new feature-length documentary by David Cairns and Fiona Watson | Brand new interview with Neil Brand | Super 8 presentations of Dizzy Heights, Let 'em Rip, Out of Step and The Car Wreckers | On Location with Laurel and Hardy — 1928 home movie footage of Laurel and Hardy | Stills Galleries for each short | PLUS: A limited edition collector's booklet featuring newly written notes on each film by writer and comedian Paul Merton and new essays by silent cinema expert Imogen Sara Smith and film historian Sheldon Hall | * All extras subject to change
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