Sons of the Desert
THAT’S ANOTHER FINE MESS STANLEY
While on a visit to the Tourist Office in Ulverston which is in Cumbria, we came across a statue of Laurel and Hardy.
This comedy pair were well known in the silent film era and went on to make many ‘talkies’. I have seen many of their films.
Stan Laurel was born Arthur Stanley Jefferson in 1890 at the home of his grandparents, Sarah and George Metcalf. He lived there for the first six years of his life before moving to Bishop Auckland. Stan however continued to spend much of his school holidays with Grandma and Grandpa Metcalf in Ulverston and apparently Grandma Metcalf had to keep a close eye on Stan as they walked through the streets as often he would stop and make faces in the glass windows of the shops. Mrs Metcalf would often find that she had left Stan behind as she walked.
The Council have now made a Stan Laurel Trail around Ulverston and the statue (see picture) of ‘The Boys’ was given to the town by the Sons of the Desert which is the International Appreciation Society for Laurel and Hardy. When Stan returned to Ulverston with Ollie in 1947, he received a hero’s welcome and was presented with a copy of his birth certificate on the balcony of the Coronation Hall.
Sons of the Desert is devoted to keeping the lives and works of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy before the public, and to have a good time while doing it.
The group takes its name from a lodge that the co-medians belong to in the 1933 film Sons of the Desert. In keeping with the tongue-in-cheek “desert” theme, each local chapter of the society is called a “tent,” and is named after a Laurel & Hardy film. Worldwide, there are well over 100 active tents, whose members meet regularly to enjoy Laurel & Hardy movies in an informal atmosphere
So what is the film Sons of the Desert all about?
Well Stan and Ollie trick their wives into thinking that they are taking a medicinal cruise while they’re actually going to a convention, the wives find out the truth the hard way.
So that he and Stan can sneak away to Chicago and attend the annual “Sons of the Desert” lodge convention, Ollie pretends to be sick, and gets a doctor (who turns out to be a veterinarian) to prescribe a long ocean voyage to Hawaii. They return home only to learn that the ship supposedly carrying them has sunk in a typhoon. Their hastily- contrived tale of “ship-hiking” their way back cuts no ice with their wives, who’ve been at the movies watching a newsreel of the lodge’s convention parade, starring… guess who?
The nearest tent to Wenvoe is in Bristol and called the Fraternally Yours Tent.
Colin Jenkins