LEARNING FROM STAN

One of my happiest memories is my mother laughing uncontrollably at Stan Laurel in a scene from The Bohemian Girl. Stan is using a siphon to fill bottles from a barrel of wine. He sucks on the rubber hose to get it started, sticks it in a bottle, fills the bottle, takes the hose out, but doesn’t crimp it shut. Of course the wine keeps flowing. Not knowing what else to do, he puts the siphon in his mouth while he readies another empty bottle. The process continues over and over again with Stan getting increasingly snozzled.

The scene is hilarious no matter how many times you’ve seen it. It’s done without a word being spoken as it would have been done in one of Stan’s silent pictures. I look at the scene now with a more technical eye, and marvel at Stan Laurel’s ability to act with his face. He had realized a kind of subtlety that was possible in acting before a camera. He was the genius who worked out the comic touches of the Laurel and Hardy films. But when he acted, that genius was hidden under the character he portrayed. You see only the comic effect, never the effort that went into producing the effect.

For me, there is a lesson about preaching in Stan’s work. Let people hear the message as clearly and directly as possible. Let listeners marvel over the Good News that is presented, but don’t let them marvel over the preacher’s rhetorical art or scholarship.

There is a deeper, more universal lesson I see in Stan Laurel’s work. Find your gift and use it. Stan had the gift to make people laugh without being vulgar. Boy, is that ever different from some modern “comics” who can’t tell a joke that doesn’t involve some debased sexual reference or a stream of obscene language. Making people laugh in a genuine way is a great gift. I grant that it is different from the gift to do medical research or the gift to organizing relief efforts to victims of natural disasters, but it is a gift nonetheless.

One of my big bugaboos is the huge number of people who feel themselves ungifted and therefore useless. One way or another many people seem to get crushed into the ground. Maybe it’s that wonderful competitive attitude we have, crush them before they can crush us. Whatever the cause, a lot of gifted people come to nothing because they don’t realize their own gifts.

One of the tasks we must be about on our pilgrimage is lifting up other people’s gifts. I try to do that, especially with young people. Tell them what’s good about them. Tell them what you can see in them. I suspect people would be happier if they could realize their own gifts, and all of us would be happier in a world where people used their gifts to good ends.

My goodness, I’ve gotten rather preachy not to mention crabby. My apologies, gentle readers. It’s time for me to make a cup of tea and watch Stan and Ollie in Sons of the Desert. After some good laughs, I’ll be ready to continue my journey with a better attitude a little less inclination toward exhortation.

May the Lord God bless you on your way and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne