When the Ringling Blue Unit played Los Angeles back in 1972 I noticed an old man hanging around the programme stand, talking to one of the last of the ancient concessionaires the show still carried. Because I had once helped him unload a truckload of circus programs without asking for anything in return, he took a shine to me. This particular day he waved me over to introduce me to his old pal, Abe Goldstein. The name meant nothing to me, until the concessionaire told me Abe had originally started with Mack Sennett’s Keystone Kops and had even worked briefly with Laurel and Hardy.
Now I was thrilled. Mr. Goldstein looked like he could use a good square meal, so I invited him to go across the street with me to the local IHOP -- my treat. He accepted with determined alacrity.
As we dug into our Swedish pancakes with lingonberry sauce, with a side of sausage AND bacon, Mr. Goldstein began to talk. And he could really talk. And eat. At the same time. Between innumerable refills of coffee he told me he was just waiting for something to break for him. He hadn’t had a gig in some time, he confided in me -- in fact, he hadn’t actually put on his Keystone Kop outfit since doing a cameo on Bowling for Dollars with Milton Berle. But he expected his agent to be calling any day now with something big. When I could finally get in a word edgewise I asked him about his affiliation with Laurel and Hardy.
“Oh, that” he began, wiping up the last of the lingonberry sauce with the last of the Swedish pancakes. “Well, I was with the Hagenbeck Wallace show back in the early Thirties and we were out here playing some dusty baseball field when the call came in from my agent -- they needed a bunch of clowns to film a couple of scenes for a circus movie over at the Hal Roach lot.”
My eyes glittered and my mouth watered. I knew exactly what film that was.
“Don’t know the name of it -- all I did was put on my Kop clown outfit and hit another gilliper on the head with an exploding mallet. We did it in one day. I got paid fifteen dollars for the day, plus a box lunch. Another refill here, hon . . . “
“You were doing the Lady Godiva gag -- Laurel and Hardy played the horse she was riding” I told him. All he did was shrug and look at the flyblown menu wistfully.
“Would you like something else, Mr. Goldstein?”
“Well, if you wouldn’t mind -- I’m kinda partial to a Denver omelette.”
I’d seen ‘The Chimp’ a half dozen times over the years -- it was a favorite at the Minneapolis Film Society back in the 1960’s in my hometown of Minneapolis. Stan and Ollie manage to bring down the big top after spoiling Tiny Sandford’s strongman act, and then get stuck babysitting a gorilla and being pursued by a lion. It all ends with the gorilla chasing the boys while firing a pistol at them.
As Abe tucked into his omelette I badgered him some more -- was there anything, anything at all, he could remember specifically about working with Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy?
“Yeah, one thing” he said between mouthfuls. “They liked to play checkers between takes. The fat one -- who was that, Hardy? -- always beat the skinny one, Laurel.”
And that was all I could learn from Mr. Abe Goldstein about his one day of reflected glory working with the world’s greatest comedy team. Of course who knew back then that Laurel and Hardy would be idolized years later by someone like me -- who loved to sit back in a large movie theater and just immerse myself in the waves of hysterical laughter that washed over me when those two wonderful clowns were doing their screen schtick. To Abe it was just the usual grind. Slapstick comedians were a dime a dozen back in those days.
Still, I couldn’t begrudge him his breakfast at my expense. Abe taught me a lesson that morning that I’ve tried to always keep in mind: Remember everyone you work with, because someday those memories could become a cherished part of history.
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