May Meeting 2022 – We are back. May 7, 2022

Hello Laurel & Hardy friends,

After no less than 26 months of no shows, at long last, I can tonight declare that our Re-launch Laurel & Hardy Show will be on Wednesday May 18th 7.30pm till 10.30pm.  

We’ve been able to re-secure the THE BRIDGE INN on Longmoor Lane, Sandiacre NG10 5LW – We will again be in the outside function room.  Horray!!!

Though we are having to pay a small fee for the booking, the event will remain FREE for all.   We have some funds that will cover our start-up and in time we hope costs will be covered by the raffle – so we continue to welcome any good raffle prizes that you would wish to donate.    I’ve not planned our first meet yet….but we will be showing a lot of your favourite talkie shorts and will remain in the same format as before.  I’ll send a reminder out on the week before the film show event as per we did b4.

I’m really looking forward to this first meeting, seeing the Boys back on a silver screen again, their wonderful comedy and of course hearing all your lovely laughter  –  i’ve really missed it.   We certainly all need a good laugh especially nowadays, don’t we? – So mark it in your diaries.  Now, whilst you’ve got your diaries open…I’ve booked the venue for the 3rd Wednesday of each month starting properly in July…that is July 20th, August 17th, Septober 21st, Octember 19th, and Nowonder 16th.  Our Christmas meeting, however has been booked for Weds December 14th.

I’ve decided this year we’ll have just the one meeting in June, that being on the Saturday afternoon of June 18th at the  Bull Inn, Bottesford 1pm til 6pm.   It’ll be our “Twice-Two – Part Deux” film show as I introduced last month.  What I can now add is that Robin Cook, our tent’s Hal Roach studios film expert and  known film restorer, has kindly agreed to show his restoration of the Boys silent film “The Second Hundred Years(1927)” in its most complete form based on  copies of the original 35mm film elements and specialist film restoration software/techniques.  Those that were lucky enough to see Robin’s restoration copy of “Duck Soup (1927)” 3 years ago at the Bull Inn would happily testify to say that they were blown away by the absolute quality of the restoration seeing detail that couldn’t be seen in the standard available commercial copies of the film.  So, I know from this, that it’s going to bean absolute treat to see a very clean and complete copy of “The Second hundred Years” .  Furthermore I know that Robin has been restoring other L&H silent films….so more treats are in the pipeline for the future.  My special thanks go to Robin and others for preserving, restoring and  keeping the memory of L&H alive.

The film show at the Bull Inn is FREE and WELCOME TO ALL.  We will be showing many Laurel &Hardy films on the day, there will be a quiz and a raffle and we are hoping that tent member John Palmer will be able to bring his amazing Model T Ford…so please do come along, it will be a great day out.  I will also be doing the guided walk around Barkston in the morning with visits to the Plough Inn (Olga’s first pub visited by the Boys in 1947)  and to Arthur Jeffersons grave (Stan’s father).  If all goes well, we hope to have Ant and Jo Mitchell-Waite from the Stoke Midnight Patrol Tent who’ll be on hand for book sales and signings.  Mark & Theresa Hammond will be up from Brighton and Mark might bring some of his fantastic memorabilia to show.  We are also hoping that Rob Lewis (GS of Helpmates tent and founder of the Laurel & Hardy Magazine) will be able to join us.

As we are now approaching the light at the end of the tunnel, this month i won’t tease you with yet another…”well if we had a meet this month, this is what I’ would have shown”..  Instead you might want to keep your eyes on the “Talking Pictures” TV (Sky channel 328) listings.  There have been quite a few L&H features and talkie shorts shown over the last few weeks   Also you may have caught a re-showing of the “Stan & Ollie” film on BBC2 a couple of weeks ago.  Its a very touching film, well produced,  worth a watch.  However in true Hollywood style it was very loosely based on fact.  Recently, I have been made aware of a reasonably good 15min documentary review of the film which you can find here from youtube which does a reasonably good job correcting the myth

 https://youtu.be/fcyZ0t35Ly8