The Magic Behind the Movies: The Ultimate Edition, By Randy Skretvedt

Randy Skretvedt’s seminal LAUREL & HARDY: THE MAGIC BEHIND THE MOVIES is generally acknowledged as the gold standard in writing about the work of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy.

Since the book’s original release in 1987, it has been updated several times through the early 1990s. But over the last 15 years, author Skretvedt has been compiling an Ultimate Edition of his master work, with nearly 50% more text and quadruple the number of photos of previous editions.

Features include:

• Close to 800 of the 1,000+ images are new to this edition, and include many never-before-published, one-of-a-kind pictures from Babe Hardy s personal collection.
• Exclusive quotes and fascinating anecdotes from interviews with more than 60 of the team’s co-workers, including producer Hal Roach, editors Richard Currier and Bert Jordan, musical director Marvin Hatley, actresses Anita Garvin and Dorothy Granger, and actor Henry Brandon.
• Detailed accounts of hilarious unused scenes, culled from the original scripts.
• Details about the locations where the team filmed many of their most famous scenes.
• Full cast and credit information for each film, providing the names of all the players and their roles as well as previously unknown members of the technical crews. And full information about the musical scores, including the titles of all cues and names of composers.
• Full information on the many films which are still missing, as well as a section about the new short subjects created for TV.