«Above all, don’t move!»
How Leo McCarey created the team of Laurel & Hardy
Hands down, [Leo] McCarey’s greatest decision as supervisor of production (1927-early 1929) for Roach was the teaming of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. Though credit for that unique action is seldom questioned today, there was a time when Roach (1892-1992), long outliving his other studio principals, appropriated the credit. Thus, one might recap the case for McCarey. Roach gagman Frank Butler, who was working with the team at its inception, is most adamant about crediting McCarey’s significance:
It was Leo McCarey, and no one else, who created the team of Laurel and Hardy... Leo was the first among us to notice that putting the skinny fellow in juxtaposition with the fat fellow was not only nice contrast but very funny contrast... At the time Leo first thought of giving the boys the biggest roles… Roach was on an around-the-world tour.
[…] Just the joining of the duo would be grounds for placing McCarey in a film comedy hall of fame. But of equal importance is the fact that he largely molded what we have come to know as Laurel & Hardy comedy. […] One must be quick to add, however, that Laurel was a giant comedy talent who often worked closely with McCarey. Indeed, at one point in the American Film Institute’s «Oral History of Leo McCarey» the director observes: «Stan and I shaped all those things [the character traits of Laurel & Hardy]». And while the immensely creative Laurel was generally the unofficial director of most team projects, that was not the case when McCarey was directly involved. Roach later described this exception with the blunt observation, «Oh, Leo McCarey [as director], hell, Stan wouldn’t open his mouth. He adored McCarey».
Not surprisingly, what is arguably the most unique characteristic of Laurel & Hardy comedy – slower pacing, something that would literally change silent comedy, is generally attributed to McCarey, too. The inspiration for this change occurred during his supervision of the Stan and Ollie short subject From Soup to Nuts (1928). Leo the raconteur later related the incident in his amusingly earthy style:
I came in one morning and I said, «We’re all working too fast. We’ve got to get away from these jerky movements and work at a normal speed«, I said. «I’ll give you an example of what I mean. There’s a royal dinner. All the royalty is seated around the table and somebody lets out a fart. Now everybody exchanges a glance, that’s all.» Everybody died laughing but I got my point over.
He then applied the concept to a particular scene in From Soup to Nuts, where Stan and Ollie are hired waiters at a society dinner. Hardy is about to serve a cake but trips and falls headfirst into said cake. McCarey shouted: «Don’t move! Above all, don’t move! Stay like that; the cake should burn your face!»
Wes D. Gehring, Leo McCarey: From Marx to McCarthy, Scarecrow Press, 2005.