Citations

If any of you cry at my funeral, I'll never speak to you again!

A friend once asked me what comedy was. That floored me. What is comedy? I don't know. Does anybody? Can you define it? All I know is that I learned how to get laughs, and that's all I know about it. You have to learn what people will laugh at, then proceed accordingly.

[on Oliver Hardy's death] The world has lost a comic genius. I've lost my best friend.

Crazy humor was always my type of humor, but it's the quiet kind of craziness I like. The rough type of nut humor like The Marx Brothers I could never go for.

[about the eight films he and Oliver Hardy made at 20th Century-Fox in the 1940s] We had no say on those films, and it sure looked it.

What business do we have telling people who to vote for? They probably know more about it than we do.

[on Dick Van Dyke] Dick is a very clever comic, very talented, he does resemble me facially but thats about all, firstly, he is much taller and his mannerisms are entirely his own style. I enjoyed very much meeting him, a very interesting chap.

[on the death of Oliver Hardy] Ben Shipman called me the day before and told me Babe had taken a turn for the worse and the end was expected any hours, even knowing this, the final news came as a shock to me. However, I think it was a blessing - poor fellow must have been really suffering (they discovered recently he had a bad cancer condition), so under the circumstances there was no hope of his ever recovering. What a tragic end to such a wonderful career.

[on Charles Chaplin] Just the greatest.

[on a comic he refused to name] Very funny when he's not being dirty. I can't stand him.

People have always loved our pictures. I guess that's because they saw how much love we put into them.

[on Oliver Hardy] He really is a very funny fellow, isn't he?

I don't deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence with Charles Chaplin.

[about the trip he and Oliver Hardy] took to Ireland in 1953] The love and affection we found that day at Cobh was simply unbelievable. There were hundreds of boats blowing whistles and mobs and mobs of people screaming on the docks. We just couldn't understand what it was all about. And then something happened that I can never forget. All the church bells in Cobh started to ring out our theme song "Dance of the Cuckoos" and Babe [Oliver Hardy] looked at me and we cried. I'll never forget that day. Never.

What's there to say? It's shocking of course. Ollie was like a brother. That's the end of the history of Laurel and Hardy.

[on his working relationship with Oliver Hardy] There was never any disagreement between us, ever. Everything I did was tops with him.

[on a fan letter he received in the late 1950s] I got this letter from this poor chap in England. He was only expected to live two or three days at the most. He wanted to let us know how much Laurel and Hardy had meant to him and all the happiness they'd given him in his life. He just wanted to say goodbye and thank us. I really flipped over that one. I felt terrible. There was nothing I could do. I couldn't write the guy back. There was nothing I could possibly do or say.