Stan Laurel

"If anyone at my funeral has a long face, Ill never speak to him again"

"We had different hobbies. He likes horses and golf. You know my hobby—and I married them all."

"So terribly funny. He can still make me laugh like crazy after all these years."

"Another great, and I use that word very carefully, not the way Milton Berle uses it. One of the reasons I love Buster so much is because he lives comedy as well as practices it. Some of his things are better than Chaplins."

"A real craftsman. He knows what consistent comedy characterization is. The only criticism I have is that once in a while he holds after his laughs too long. He milks those holds on occasion and he shouldnt."

"If they ever do a film of my life—and I hope they wont—Id like Dick to play me. Hes one of the very, very few comedians around who knows how to use his body for real.comedy."

"He could lift that eyebrow, and Id break up."

"About those boys, I dont care how rough you treat them. I cant tell you how much it hurt me to do those pictures, and how ashamed I am of them. We wouldnt have done them if we didnt have to eat. I kept thinking that sooner or later they would let us do the pictures in our own way, but it just got worse and worse, and we couldnt take it any more. I didnt always see eye to eye with Roach, but for the most part he left us alone, and Ill always be grateful to Hal for that. But those Fox people! You can give it to them good."

"I hope that the motto can be blue and grey, showing two derbies with these words superimposed: "Two Minds Without a Single Thought."

"Stan Laurel is a slap-stick comedian who really can act, and it is not only due to the situations which are given him that the fun is raised, but by the use he makes of them. He occasionally copies little actions used by Charlie Chaplin, but he does not literally imitate him, and since he has found it necessary to copy someone, he could not have found a better model."

"Laurel is now one of s stars, and his comedies have given him plenty of room in which to sparkle. The Laurel brand of screen nonsense is a combination of fine burlesque and pure [[absurdity]. In three of his recent two-reel subjects he built up screamingly funny travesties of well-known feature productions and appears to have entered into a field in which he has no competition. Laurels keen sense of values has made possible a new and welcome type of motion picture comedies. From time to time burlesques of current screen successes have been brought out, but no comedian but Laurel has seen the possibilities in this line of work. For general all-around nonsense Laurel easily wins the palm. It may not appear strikingly original to hitch a horse to a sulky, wrong end to, but as it is done on the screen in a comedy to be released soon [Wide Open Spaces] it is a high point of fun. Laurels personality and his utterly inane grin have much to do with "putting over" such bits of business and it is to these two possessions that he undoubtedly owes his success."

"Its a strange thing, but we really only got to know each other in the last years of his life. When we were making pictures together, we never saw each other off the set. As soon as the picture was finished, hed go his way and Id go mine. We both had our own circle of friends and our own interests. [...] After we were out of pictures, we did a lot of touring in Europe together and thats when we got to know each other intimately. You couldnt help it—you had to be together much of the time at theatres, in hotels, at press parties and on trains."