Laurel and Hardy, Christmas and the BBC
“Where would Christmas be without/ Laurel and Hardy…” So sang the band Squeeze on their overlooked festive single ‘Christmas Day’. And where indeed? Back in the 1970s, it seems that no Christmas TV schedule was complete without at least one helping of L&H, sometimes even a complete season of films. But was this really the case, or are we remembering it wrong? I’ve delved into the BBC’s programme listings as far back as they go to bring you the televisual history of Laurel & Hardy – at Christmas. For this review, I’ve considered all broadcasts of Laurel and Hardy during the month of December (although festive seasons would occasionally run on into January).
The BBC didn’t begin showing the films of Laurel and Hardy until 1948. For the record, the Corporation’s first ever broadcast of an L&H comedy was on Thursday 3 June of that year, when the sound short Perfect Day was scheduled at 15.45. The film was just nineteen years old at the time. That same year saw two L&H films shown during the festive season, Another Fine Mess (Monday 20 Dec at 15.00) and the feature film The Flying Deuces on New Year’s Eve at 20.45.
Viewers of 1950 could have sat down to enjoy A Chump at Oxford on Boxing Day afternoon at ten past three, and it got another outing the following year on Saturday 22 December at 17.30. 1952’s L&H offering for Christmas was Swiss Miss, and this broadcast marked the first time that any of the pair’s movies had been shown on Christmas Day itself: presumably, the Alpine scenery was considered appropriate festive fare by schedulers. Four days later, the 1939 feature Saps at Sea went out at 3.00pm. Do two films make a season? In 1952, I think they did...
Swiss Miss got a repeat showing the following year on Monday 28 December, but if viewers were anticipating a trend for Laurel and Hardy on television at Christmas, they were to be disappointed: Auntie didn’t offer up any further festive L&H for another eleven years. When the comics returned it was with their 1937 feature Way Out West (first broadcast back in May 1950), which got the prime spot of 5.30pm on Boxing Day 1964.
Of all Laurel & Hardy films, Way Out West is the title I associate most with Christmas, but I couldn’t have seen this sixty-year-old broadcast even if I’d wanted to, because it was shown on BBC2 – unavailable on our 405-line GEC television set. It was on again the following year, where it was ‘promoted’ to BBC1 on Christmas Day, but ‘demoted’ scheduling-wise to 9.45am. What with the excitement of new toys to be played with, we didn’t bother with television on Christmas morning. Way Out West wouldn’t be on again at Christmas for another nine years when once again it made the Christmas Day schedule for 1974, going out at 12.25pm on BBC1 and this time, I saw it. Christmas dinner would have to wait...
Laurel and Hardy material had been included in all of the compilation films that were put together by Robert Youngson during the 1950s, and beginning in 1965 these became popular fixtures in the Christmas listings, offering rare opportunities to see some of L&H’s early silent efforts – the BBC having ignored the pre-sound era up to this time. For the first couple of years, the Youngson compilations were confined to BBC2, but 1967 saw The Golden Age of Comedy scheduled on Christmas Eve at 12.20pm on BBC1. Over the coming years, it would return to the Christmas listings on numerous occasions.
Through the late 60s, viewers got a smattering of Laurel & Hardy around Christmas time, although the films were regularly shown all year round. Festive examples include The Music Box (Saturday 21.12.68 11.55 BBC1) Oliver the Eighth (Friday 27.12.68 11.45 BBC1) and Hog Wild (Saturday 28.12.68 12.05 BBC1): these were all ‘standalone’ broadcasts where later years would see ongoing seasons.
It wasn’t until 1970 that another Laurel & Hardy feature film showed up in the Christmas schedules: this year’s offering was Blockheads, shown on Sunday 27 December at 12.50 on BBC1, and of all the broadcasts to date this is the first one I definitely remember watching. To give it some context, the film was thirty-two years old and was being shown for the third time, having made its BBC1 debut on Halloween night in 1967.
Christmas broadcasts remained sporadic into the early 70s, with the Youngson compilations providing the only seasonal outing for L&H in some years. The 1936 feature-length Our Relations saw action on New Year’s Eve 1972 at 12.05pm on BBC1, while 1973’s schedules show only Swiss Miss (Friday 28 December, 11.00am BBC1) and The Music Box on the following day at 10.30am.
1974 brought something a bit different as for the first time the BBC acknowledged Laurel and Hardy’s films as a subject worthy of serious analysis. Omnibus: Cuckoo went out on Sunday 22 December 1974 at 22.20 on BBC1. This documentary was a revelation, featuring interviews with surviving stars of the silent movie era and L&H producer Hal Roach Junior, who had outlived his two stars by a decade. It also shone a light onto the team’s very last venture onto celluloid, Atoll K (aka Robinson Crusoeland), shot under trying circumstances in 1950 and memorably described by Bob Monkhouse as ‘a horror film’ on account of the team’s aged appearance.
I’d been watching Laurel and Hardy films for as long as I could remember, but the Omnibus documentary was when I began to take a serious interest in their work. The following year, 1975, was something of a watershed moment: the song ‘Trail of the Lonesome Pine’ had been extracted from the Way Out West soundtrack and released as a single, charting in late November and reaching a peak position of number 2 in the Christmas week chart. If it hadn’t have been for a little ditty called Bohemian Rhapsody, Stan and Ollie would have had the Christmas number one…
The single was culled from a compilation album of soundtrack highlights released by United Artists records, which I obtained soon afterwards. Meanwhile, on BBC1, a season of L&H shorts had been running on Sunday afternoons since mid November and would continue through the festive season. The Lonesome Pine clip from Way Out West got shown a lot on Top of the Pops, while the full feature turned up on Saturday 3 January 1976 in a double bill with Helpmates.
A similar season of L&H shorts ran through Christmas 1976, but 1977 brought only County Hospital on Thursday 29 December – it’s there in the diary. But change was afoot: up to now, Laurel & Hardy had been shown almost exclusively on BBC1, with only a couple of exceptions like that 1964 screening of Way Out West. Beginning in the autumn of 1978, the comics found a new home and a new time – 5.40pm on BBC2. Shorts were the order of the day, and the broadcasts continued through the festive season. A further run of shorts appeared the following year and again in 1980 – by which time I had the means to preserve them on video tape.
The L&H features, once a staple of Christmas scheduling, now became thin on the ground. Whilst they continued to appear at other times of the year, by the late 80s one scanned the Christmas Radio Times in vain. A rare exception – and seldom seen at all on the small screen – was The Bohemian Girl, the 1936 film of Balfe’s Irish Romantic opera in which L&H appeared as comic foils. This was shown as a double bill with the short Come Clean on Friday 23 December 1988 at 4pm on BBC2.
By this time, I’d collected VHS copies of most of the L&H sound era films from various BBC broadcasts. ITV held rights to the later MGM/ Fox features, although they appeared only infrequently. What we really needed were some of the classic silent shorts. Big Business, with its festive theme of selling Christmas trees, had turned up on ITV in the early 80s, but on the whole the silent era, spanning some two years of the comics' screen careers, had been neglected by broadcasters.
Then, in December 1990, BBC2 rolled out a season which for the first time included some of the team's silent short subjects: From Soup to Nuts went out on Christmas Eve at 10.15am, with Bacon Grabbers following on Boxing Day at 15.35. The season continued on into the new year, including more silent shorts in the form of Early to Bed (01.01.91, 14.45), and Habeas Corpus (13.01.91, 14.45).
By this time, Laurel and Hardy’s appearances on the small screen were becoming infrequent. The restoration of old prints by Hal Roach studios provided an impetus for further broadcasts through the 1990s, but come 2005 the duo disappeared from Auntie’s listings seemingly forever, with Pardon Us, at 10.20am on Wednesday 25 September proving to be the boys’ BBC swansong.
Today, even with the plethora of digital channels available, it’s next to impossible to find Laurel and Hardy on the small screen at any time of year. One of the few broadcasters that still shows the Hal Roach era shorts is Talking Pictures TV, champion of obscure and forgotten items.
Laurel and Hardy have always enjoyed greater popularity in England than in their home territory, and their enduring appeal over here was thanks in no small part to those BBC broadcasts from the late 40s onwards. Without them, many generations would have been deprived of two comic heroes whose genius deserves to endure into the present century and beyond. And not just for Christmas...
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