Exhaustive… And exhausting… Research

It definitely advertises that it’s going to be comprehensive, so it certainly accomplishes that goal. The problem with that is – unless you are the most diehard Laurel and Hardy fan – getting several chapters in before they even meet each other and/or collaborate winds up being a monotonous slog for most of the readers. in addition, I’m assuming that it’s the normal inflection “across the pond”, but the narrator has one way & one way only to deliver sentences, and he does it for 13 hours in this book. And I don’t have to tell you how old that gets after a while.

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Imagine 18 hours of listening to William Shatner

Apparently this narrator studied at the same school as Shatner. It gets a bit easier toward the end of the book, but still a bit of work to listen to. The narrator' emphasizes at least' three' words of each' sentence, and it is very' hard to listen to (read the accent marks as emphasized words, and you may get a hint). However, if you want a detailed look at our two favorite comedians, this book definitely provides that. One point in the book that I found fascinating is how Stan's salary is always significantly more than Ollie's.

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2 people found this helpful

Entertaining and Factual

I would call this more of an educational resource than light reading, but that said, I still found it very enjoyable. It covers the lives of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy fairly comprehensively from birth to death. It also covers their works, both separately and as a team, in detail. Being a history buff and a biography lover, I did find it entertaining, and learned some things too.
Being a lover of the old Hal Roach Laurel & Hardy movies, I also enjoyed the synopses of their works, because the descriptions called the movies up in my imagination while listening to the book.
I did NOT find the narrator to be annoying, as some other readers described. He speaks very precisely & has a bit of a British accent, but I found this to be appropriate.
This is a book I will listen to again.

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1 person found this helpful

Quite good, incredibly detailed and thorough.

The perfect kind of book for old movie obsessives. History lessons galore, not just on the families, life, work and times of Stan and Ollie, but an incredible lesson regarding the birth of the movie industry.

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5 people found this helpful

Love Laurel and Hardy!!

This is the most difficult review for me to-date. I've always loved Laurel and Hardy and some of my earliest memories from the 1960's revolve around their movies. This book is difficult to work through due to it's long length - >17 hours. The actual biographical portrait of the boys is great and I thoroughly enjoyed that. The complete filmography of their work is very tedious to work through. Great reference material but very hard to listen to due to the minute details of each work. Another element of the book is a critique of movies. I also struggled mightily in this part of the book. The author ravaged my two very favorite L&H movies (Flying Dueces and The Big Noise) and I probably took his criticism too personally. Summing up, this book is a magnificent reference work for L&H fans or researchers but not so good as a general read for L&H fans.

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2 people found this helpful

What a struggle with narrator!

I think the content of the book is very good, but I work so hard trying to understand the narrator that I can't follow the story. He seems to be like Alfred Hitchcock channeling William Shatner. This might be the only audiobook that has a narrator I dislike more than Lavar Burton's desecration of Carl Sagan's Cosmos audiobook.

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Painful and Pointless

I am giving this two stars for its subjects. One star for Stan and one for Ollie but they deserve a much better telling of their story. The author has nothing new to say and the narrator has an annoying cadence, like a bad newscaster with a sing-song rhythm but instead of listening to it for a three minute news story....it goes on for more than 17 hours!

I was hoping to learn some new things about the greatest comedy team ever put on film. What was it like working at Hal Roach as they were united and creating their best material? How painful was it as they lost their independence at FOX? How did their friendship grow in those final years when they were touring on stage in the UK? Instead of insight, this book was cobbled together from newspaper articles, reviews and divorce filings. What little background there is on the making of the films comes directly from quotes from Randy Skretvedt's indispensable Laurel & Hardy: The Magic Behind the Movies.

Instead of new information, we are given blow by blow descriptions of the films by the narrator who sucks the joy out of the material with his painful recitation of bits and dialogue from their best loved movies...and worse, endless descriptions of long forgotten and often lost to time silent films Stan or Ollie appeared in separately with lesser talents like Larry Semon and top Chaplin imitator Billy West. Oh, but even worse are the tedious and unfunny descriptions of various music hall and vaudeville performances prior to the boys getting into the film business. We even get to hear what performances were canceled due to rain.

There are better books about Laurel and Hardy but none on tape. I wish the book showed even a fraction of the love and respect shown to Laurel and Hardy by the makers of the film "Stan and Ollie." I'm sure the author reveres them but he does little to honor them.

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