Laurel & Hardy's Co-Stars

Features:

RICHARD CRAMER

Walter Long is tough. Charles Middleton is grim. But the meanest villain in Laurel & Hardy movies has to be Richard Cramer, who made Laurel & Hardy very uncomfortable in Pack Up Your Troubles, Scram!, The Flying Deuces, and Saps at Sea.

Richard Cramer (not Rychard, and not Kramer, as he was sometimes known) was born on July 3, 1890, in Bryan, Ohio. He spent his youth in his home state and didn’t go into show business until 1911, while attending Ohio State University. In those days before mass media, when live entertainment was most prevalent, Cramer joined a repertory troupe that put on plays in various cities. His travels ultimately took him to New York, where he worked in dramatic productions. His burly frame suited him for character roles, often villainous, and in 1925 he appeared in his first Hollywood film, Kid Gloves. When talkies arrived, Cramer’s stage-trained voice assured his success.

While on the west coast, Cramer found screen work more plentiful at the smaller, independent studios. These very-low-budget outfits often made action pictures and westerns because they could be filmed largely outdoors, without building or renting sets. Cramer played his share of gangsters, sheriffs, hired thugs, and gamblers in minor fare of the early 1930s. Like many supporting players, Cramer supplemented his income by working in short subjects. He played super-villains opposite Laurel & Hardy at the Hal Roach studio, but at the Mack Sennett studio he demonstrated a flair for offbeat comedy. In the famous W. C. Fields short The Fatal Glass of Beer — a Yukon satire that few people in its day understood or appreciated — Cramer plays the stalwart Mountie “Constable Posthlewhistle,” who asks Fields to sing the title song. As Fields drones away about the curse of drink, Cramer loses his composure and sobs uncontrollably! One of Cramer’s generally forgotten Laurel & Hardy credits is Hollywood Party, released by M-G-M in 1934. Cramer appears not with Laurel & Hardy, but with The Three Stooges (he’s the tall. bearded scholar debating anthropology).

Cramer then appears to have accepted stage work, because in 1935 we find him back in New York, moonlighting (or more accurately, daylighting) in Vitaphone and Educational two-reelers. He’s terrific in the “Mr. Widget” comedies, menacing cheerful Joe Cook. In one lunatic scene Cook totally disarms Cramer by reading a children’s story to him! Cramer beams happily and listens intently to “the story of the little bird.”

But the movie industry offered more opportunities in California, so Cramer returned there for more work. He plays an iceman in M-G-M’s After the Thin Man, one of his relatively few A-picture credits, which could have been a turning point for the actor. Unfortunately his work in quickie movies seems to have typed him, and back Cramer went to westerns, melodramas, and serials. Stan Laurel remembered Cramer’s brand of villainy, because he arranged for Cramer to appear in some of the Fred Scott musical westerns he was producing.

Cramer shared the same plight as Charles Middleton: his memorable “stage” villainy of the old school was a little too broad for the more sophisticated 1940s, so he received fewer opportunities in important films. Laurel & Hardy director James Horne seems to have cast Cramer because he was of the old school; Cramer appears in Horne’s tongue-in-cheek Columbia serials. During the 1940s Cramer worked most frequently at PRC, the lowest of the low-budget studios still active by that time.

A liver ailment evidently slowed the actor’s career. Richard Cramer may well have had a drinking problem, which could account for his spotty film output as the 1940s came to a close. The only steady work he had during this period was in PRC’s inexpensive westerns with Eddie Dean and/or Lash LaRue. He retired from acting soon afterward, and died (of cirrhosis) in Los Angeles in 1960.

Richard Cramer was more versatile than his Laurel & Hardy pictures would indicate, and on occasion he had the chance to show the public how funny he could be.

PHYLLIS BARRY

We are frankly at a loss to explain the strange detours of Phyllis Barry’s career. Movie-comedy buffs know her as Buster Keaton’s leading lady in What! No Beer? and as Wheeler & Woolsey’s femme fatale in both Diplomaniacs and Hips Hips Hooray. The comedy community in Hollywood was close-knit, and people who worked with the big-name comics almost always worked with Laurel & Hardy at least once. Phyllis Barry did appear in a Laurel & Hardy movie — once. It’s only a bit role; she’s one of the women gossiping about military officers in Bonnie Scotland.

She was born in London on December 7, 1908. Her first screen credit appears to be the 1932 Samuel Goldwyn production Cynara. The Keaton film was Phyllis Barry’s next screen credit, and a leading role in a prominent M-G-M movie was a prize that actresses dreamed about. So it’s interesting that she went from neophyte starlet to leading lady at M-G-M in one jump. Possibly M-G-M hired her as a backup for Maureen O’Sullivan, another M-G-M contractee of British origin. (Laurel & Hardy co-star Felix Knight said that M-G-M often signed performers similar to those under contract.) M-G-M did not extend Phyllis’s contract, however; she was generally limited to continental vamp roles. A brief stay at RKO yielded a few features, including the two Wheeler & Woolseys; Bonnie Scotland was in fact filmed on RKO’s set for The Little Minister. But movie actors, like the rest of America, were hit by the depression and took whatever work they could get. Phyllis Barry, without a long-term contract, found herself freelancing. By 1937 she was playing small roles: she’s a Cockney barmaid in Paramount’s “B” adventure Bulldog Drummond Comes Back.

Then her career took a wrong turn. In 1937 she accepted a major role in Damaged Goods, an exploitation film dealing with social diseases. Based on a prestigious play, and filmed by professional screen actors and technicians, the project wasn’t as sordid as it might have been but the notoriety seems to have hurt Phyllis’s career. By 1938 she was working for Jules White in Columbia’s two-reel comedies (not a prestigious move) and in 1940 she was back in the slightly scarlet exploitation field, for the film Secrets of a Model. (Phyllis Barry is not to be confused with actress Phyllis Barrington, who started in the exploitation field in 1930 and never advanced beyond the minor-league studios.)

Many hungry actors took jobs in exploitation pictures, and in fairness, this often resulted in job offers from mainstream producers. Secrets of a Model was a cheap-thrill melodrama that wasn’t as overtly shocking as the subject matter of Damaged Goods, so this time an exploitation picture improved Phyllis Barry’s fortunes. It jump-started her career in the early 1940s; she played small supporting roles until 1947. She passed away in 1954.

Phyllis Barry could have been another Thelma Todd: a dependable, attractive foil for lowbrow comedians. It’s too bad she wasn’t more firmly established in comedies, but she is probably best remembered for the handful she did.

FELIX KNIGHT

Felix Knight in "Babes in Toyland" Laurel & Hardy fans (and video-store shoppers) look forward to this time of the year, because they're almost sure to find Babes in Toyland (also known as March of the Wooden Soldiers), one of Laurel & Hardy's most popular features. Among the memorable things about this 1934 feature is the performance of the juvenile lead, Felix Knight.

Felix Knight was born in Macon, Georgia. Although one source gives his date of birth as 1908, Knight’s own account of Toyland places his birth at 1915. Many of Toyland’s storybook characters were played by young people: Felix Knight, Charlotte Henry, Henry Brandon, Johnny Downs, Virginia Karns. “We were all young,” explained Knight to this writer, “because they needed somebody who would be believable in re-enacting the rhymes of Mother Goose. I was 19, and you couldn't tell whether I was 14 or 15.”

When Laurel & Hardy tackled another operatic project, The Bohemian Girl, Felix Knight was called in. One of the score’s successful songs, “Then You’ll Remember Me,” became a vehicle for Knight’s lyric tenor. Knight also appears in Hal Roach’s Pick a Star — an appearance he didn’t even know about until years later. “I did a test — a nightclub scene for a movie that they were going to make — and the excuse they used was that they didn't raise the money for it, so they had to shelve it.” Felix Knight’s specialty number was then incorporated into Pick a Star. “And I wasn't the star picked!” he quipped. “But the best part of that story is, I was never paid anything for it. That was one of Mr. Roach's tricks. He was tricky!”

Felix Knight’s film career was relatively short. “First movie I made was a real stinker,” he said with a chuckle, “called Down to Their Last Yacht for RKO. And then I went to 20th Century-Fox and made a movie with Charles Boyer and Loretta Young called Caravan. It was about the grape country in Hungary, and I had a good singing part in that. I also did the French version, because I was quite fluent in French at that time. Then I went to First National and did two color [two-reelers] there, Springtime in Holland and Carnival Days. And I made the three at Roach.”

Knight was under contract to M-G-M, where he usually sat on the bench. The huge studio would sign promising performers, but keep them idle or loan them to other studios, so they could gain experience somewhere else. M-G-M “had Nelson Eddy and Allan Jones, and they had three or four younger singers who didn't do anything,” explained Knight, “but they were all under contract. They signed me so they'd have somebody to farm out! I was paid $750 a week and they used to collect $1500 to $2000 a week for farming me out.”

Later in the 1930s, film roles became scarce because “the movie musicals were dying out. I had done about everything that the young American tenor could do on the Coast.” Knight was a frequent soloist with several West Coast symphony orchestras and opera companies, and he sang with diva Lily Pons at the Hollywood Bowl. He moved to New York for the Metropolitan Opera stage and network radio work.

Knight went to war in the 1940s, serving in the South Pacific. “After the war I did a lot of early television. I did the first complete opera ever broadcast on NBC, the opera Carmen.” His wide experience made him a fine teacher, and he spent his later years as a vocal coach.

Babes in Toyland was reissued in 1950 as March of the Wooden Soldiers, and the film became a perennial movie-matinée and TV favorite. Felix Knight was pleasantly surprised by the public's renewed interest in his career: “I've become a movie star in my old age!” Felix and his wife Ethel made their home in New York, and they were frequent guests at Sons of the Desert banquets and conventions.

Felix Knight passed away on June 18, 1998. He was a genial, charming gentleman, and he is missed by his many friends and fans.

SECOND EDITION, REVISED AND EXPANDED

Laurel & Hardy: From the Forties Forward
by Scott MacGillivray

Scott MacGillivray’s Laurel & Hardy: From the Forties Forward was the first book to fully chronicle the later careers of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, and everything that followed, from theatrical reissues to home videos. If you enjoyed the book the first time, you’ll like this new edition even more. The author has expanded the original text by more than 50 percent, to include new insights, new information, and new discoveries in Laurel & Hardy history, never before published. (Which Laurel & Hardy comedy of the 1940s was withheld from release for almost four years? Which “forties” movie was their all-time biggest hit? Which movie was almost shut down by federal intervention?) You’ll read much more about Stan and Ollie’s unrealized projects, including five more feature films, two TV series, and two Broadway shows. A must-read for Stan and Ollie’s fans everywhere, Laurel & Hardy: From the Forties Forward is better than ever!

Praise for the first edition of Laurel & Hardy: From the Forties Forward…

“What a marvelous book! I read it straight through, getting happier by the minute to think that more and more material is being set into history about the boys. The writing is so lucid — and that in this day of film books that aren’t is high praise. Really wonderful!” — JOHN McCABE, Laurel & Hardy’s authorized biographer

“Scott MacGillivray has accomplished something that most historians can only dream of doing: overturning the conventional wisdom… he rewrites the book on the movie-comedy team.” — BOSTON HERALD

“All the world’s admirers of Laurel & Hardy will now forever be indebted to Scott MacGillivray for providing so much new information about two of the world’s most beloved figures.” — STEVE ALLEN

“Displays a knowledge and affection for its subject that one would be hard pressed to find in most academic texts.” — CLASSIC IMAGES

“To write a book about screen performers as well covered as these two and still present a wealth of heretofore unpublished information is quite an accomplishment.” — FILM QUARTERLY

“MacGillivray takes great pains to provide the context necessary to reassess these films after so many years of knee-jerk dismissal and neglect… His book will remain the definitive study of the late years of the Laurel and Hardy phenomenon.” — ARNE FOGEL, Minnesota Public Radio

You don't think of "leading men" in a Laurel & Hardy movie. With Stan and Ollie as the center of attention, the male leads consisted of either a traditional "juvenile" role or an incidental romantic presence.

Only rarely did we see an actor who shared equally in Laurel & Hardy's dialogue, plot situations, and comic routines. In the 1930s, it was Dennis King (The Devil's Brother). In the 1940s, it was Bob Bailey (Jitterbugs and The Dancing Masters).

Robert Bainter Bailey was born on June 13, 1913 in Toledo, Ohio. Like Stan Laurel, Bailey was born into a show-business family and grew up in a theatrical atmosphere. He became a regular member of the Chicago radio community, with recurring roles in such shows as "The Road of Life," "Scattergood Baines," and "That Brewster Boy."

Bob Bailey answered the call from Hollywood in 1943, and broke into films opposite Laurel & Hardy in Jitterbugs. This was a remake of a 1933 Fox film called Arizona to Broadway, and Bailey took the featured role of "Chester Wright," a worldly confidence man.

Bailey worked so well with Laurel & Hardy that he was hired for their next film, The Dancing Masters. His role of "Grant Lawrence," boy inventor, was neither as demanding nor as prominent as his work in Jitterbugs, but he tried his best with low comedy. In the aftermath of a ginger-ale-spraying sequence, Bailey's half-sheepish, half-snarling "I got my pants wet!" is a comic highlight.

Bob Bailey had superb dialogue skills but limited visual "business"; his few moments of facial mugging in The Dancing Masters are amusing but mechanical, as though he was uncomfortable in broad comedy. 20th Century-Fox took the hint and turned him into "Robert Bailey," promising young dramatic actor. Throughout 1944 Bailey had moderate to minor roles in five 20th Century-Fox features. He lacked the chiseled profile and rugged physique of the typical Hollywood leading man. His soft, boyish features were not the matinee-idol type. His talents, and especially his voice, were better suited to broadcasting, so Bailey returned to network radio.

In 1955 CBS Radio revived one of its popular detective series, "Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar," and cast Bob Bailey in the lead. The role had been played in the hard-boiled gumshoe tradition by Hollywood actors Edmond O'Brien and John Lund, but Bailey brought new dimension and sensitivity to the tough-guy role. The Bob Bailey "Johnny Dollars" are among the most popular and collectible recordings of vintage radio.

In late 1960, CBS moved production of "Johnny Dollar" to New York. Bailey, unwilling to relocate, was forced to relinquish the job. He kept busy writing TV scripts -- the children's adventure show "Fury" was an ongoing project -- but his heart was in acting. Plans to bring "Johnny Dollar" to television were dropped when producers couldn't reconcile Bailey's colorful voice with his unimposing (5-foot-9, 150-pound) physique. Bailey made one more film appearance: he plays a reporter in the 1962 Burt Lancaster drama Birdman of Alcatraz.

After this film, Bailey suddenly withdrew from show business and settled into a solitary private life, apart from family and friends for many years. In the 1970s, reunited with his daughter Roberta Goodwin, he lived comfortably in a California suburb. Bob Bailey suffered a stroke in 1983 and passed away that year. He was 70 years old.

Bob Bailey was a skilled dramatic actor who made two funny movies almost by accident. We salute his contributions to the world of Laurel & Hardy.

NEW!

SECOND EDITION, REVISED AND EXPANDED

Laurel & Hardy: From the Forties Forward

SECOND EDITION, REVISED AND EXPANDED

Laurel & Hardy: From the Forties Forward by Scott MacGillivray

Laurel & Hardy: From the Forties Forward
by Scott MacGillivray