Charlie Chaplin (inside lifebelt) and Stan Laurel (kneeling left) aboard SS Cairnrona
Credit: Popperfoto
Morecambe and Wise. Fry and Laurie. The Two Ronnies. French and Saunders. To these great comedy acts, could we possibly have added not Laurel and Hardy, but Laurel and Chaplin? That’s the tantalising question posed by the play Charlie and Stan, which begins touring later this month.
The two men had very different backgrounds. Laurel joined the successful family business by going into theatre in Glasgow, while Chaplin grew up in poverty in London: his father was absent, his mother committed to an asylum when he was 14. Yet both found their calling in the same comedy troupe, and the two performers travelled together to America, where they made their careers.