September Meeting 2022 September 19, 2022

It has been a very sad couple of weeks with the passing of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.  She was a wonderful lady and monarch, we will all very much miss her.  I never had the opportunity to meet her but did see her a few times in public, from a distance, on various occasions.  I know many of you would have had similar experiences and some of you may have even met her?  Stan Laurel loved the Royal Family very much and deeply regretted not being able to meet the family after the Royal Variety Performance at the London Palladium, Nov 3rd, 1947…King George VI, Queen Elizabeth ( the Queen Mother), Princess Margaret and the newly engaged Princess Elizabeth to Lieutenant  Philip Mountbatten.   From letters written by Stan, both Stan & Ollie were so very proud of being asked to perform for the Royal family.  Likewise,  it is widely known that Queen Elizabeth loved Laurel & Hardy as well as number of the greats of British comedy.   On Wednesday, I hope to show a short 5 min clip from one of the BBC’s documentaries entitled “Elizabeth: Her Passions and Pastimes” and, yes of course, we will be dedicating our meeting to her memory and her shared fondness of Stan & Ollie.  We will also look to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the 1947 Royal Variety Performance at our November meeting.

So for this month……. we will be celebrating the university of the birth of Billy Gilbert (on the 12th).  Billy made 11 films with Stan & Ollie at the Hal Roach film studios and I’m planning to show 3 of them, all released in 1932.  This will include the Boys second feature film “Pack Up Your Troubles“.    In this film, the Boys are wanting to locate the grandparents of Eddie’s baby…..with surname Smith.  This causes much confusion and mayhem.  Billy Gilbert plays the big game hunter after he is told that his  future son in law hasn’t been completely honest with his daughter at their wedding.  We are also showing this feature in remembrance of Arthur Jefferson (Stan’s father) , who shares the same birthday as Billy G (September 12th)….his address at the time gets a mention in the film as the Boys peruse the telephone directory of Smiths…that is 49 Colebrook Avenue.

We will be starting the meeting with “Another Fine Mess (1930)”...a film based on the Bpys 1927 silent Duck Soup, which in turn was based on AJs play “Home from the honeymoon” from 1908.  I was going to show Duck Soup..but in AFM we hear some slowly becoming familiar words as Lord Plumtree flees the house at the end of the film.

Our meetings continue to be on the 3rd Wednesday of the month with our next one on Octember 19th at 7.30pm.

Hopefully, we’ll see you on Wednesday.  Please bring friends and family – all are welcome.