I took another journey this past week, but a domestic trip, not an international one. The purpose, primarily, was to attend a Laurel and Hardy Convention. I am not as much a diehard fan as some of the other attendees are, but they are iconic figures of American film comedy and, in addition, the conventions are grand social events, enabling attendees to meet friends from various part of the country whom they otherwise might not have an occasion to meet for months or even years.
The convention took place in Albuquerque, NM, and I traveled there by airplane. Although domestic travel is a good deal less complicated than international travel, travel by airplane remains travail. It simplified matters that I was using carry-on luggage, with none to check in, and that I departed from Reagan National Airport rather than from Dulles. The flights were on time and I encountered none of the frustrations that I met with on my previous international flights. But flight routes have diminished over the past several years. Previously direct flights from Washington to Albuquerque were available; none exist now. I had to use flights with layovers in Atlanta both coming and going. The airport at Atlanta is very efficiently run and the ongoing journey, at least, had no particular complications. Going back was another matter. The layover was originally only 35 minutes; and since boarding for flights closes 15 minutes before flight departure time, that left only 20 minutes for deplaning, locating the gate for the connection, and scurrying to that gate in time to board. Fortunately the flight to Atlanta arrived early. I would have missed my connection had it simply been on time, for it took 15 minutes to deplane.
The convention took place from Thursday (the 18th) and ended on Sunday. I flew in on Tuesday (the 16th) and left on the following Monday to allow myself some leisure in addition to the convention activities. There was little to do on Tuesday evening except to have dinner and stroll about the Old Town for a bit (the hotel is on the outskirts of Old Town). On Wednesday I drove to the trailhead for the La Luz Trail and went up to the Sandia Summit. This trail starts out with a continual but very moderate upward angle and is relatively clear of rocks for the first five miles. Then it becomes steeper and its switchbacks pass to and fro a talus for about 2½ miles. After that the trail reaches the ridgeline and ends in a junction, with one trail going to the summit and the other going to a tramway. The trail to the summit is about ¾ mile and is slightly steeper than the preceding trail, but not excessively so. I had done this route several years earlier and I remembered this last portion as being particularly difficult. But I suppose I have become accustomed to steep trails over the years, for this time it did not appear especially taxing. Ironically the best views were not on the summit, where clouds were gathering, but at various overlooks several hundred feet lower. The entire city of Albuquerque can be seen on the plain below, as well as the cinder volcanoes and Mount Taylor in the distance. I completed the hike in about 2½ hours – not too bad, when one considers that the total ascent is about 3775 feet.
I had started early and thus it was not quite 10:30 when I completed the ascent. I went along the ridgeline in a more leisurely fashion; it is slightly under 2 miles to the tramway if one sticks to the trail, but I detoured from time to time in order to stop at various overlooks and to visit the Kiwanis Cabin midway between the tram and the summit. From there I took the tram down towards Tramway Rd. and, after getting of the tram, went along the Tramway Trail to a junction with the La Luz Trail, located about 1 mile from the latter’s trailhead, and descended back to the parking area. This last section is about 4 miles in all and adds another 1200 feet or so of elevation gain (the tram descends to a point considerably lower than that of the La Luz trailhead), so it made for a full day.
I have said the convention began on Thursday, but there actually was a preliminary welcoming event where the attendees gathered at the hotel’s courtyard attached to its restaurant. Here an overview was given of the upcoming events and, more importantly, attendees had an opportunity to meet with one another, in many cases “catching up” with each other’s activities since the previous convention, which took place four years ago. Normally the conventions are held at 2-year intervals, but the one originally scheduled for 2020 was canceled on account of the pandemic.
And, indeed, the convention itself provided a reminder that the pandemic is not yet behind us. One of the attendees developed symptoms shortly after deplaning and traveling to the hotel. He administered a self-test and the results came out positive, which resulted in his being confined to his room during the entirety of the convention, not emerging until Sunday, when his illness had subsided.
There was little to do on Thursday morning, which I spent swimming in the hotel’s pool. We had a picnic, along with various games, in the courtyard. Then attendees partook of one of three activities (they had to make their choice of the three beforehand, during convention registration). The choices were going up to the Sandia Mountains on the tramway, taking the crest caravan with a visit to Tinkertown Museum, or visiting Santa Fe. I was not particularly interested in Tinkertown, which appeared to me to present artwork of a very Disneyfied version of the Old West. I like Santa Fe very much, but the ride from Albuquerque is about 90 minutes each way, which would have left less than 3 hours for going through the city. The ridgeline of the Sandia Mountains provides a network of trails in addition to the ones I have traversed the day before (the trail along the spine itself is 26 miles), so I was looking forward to sampling some of these.
But it was a washout. The slight cloud covering I had encountered the day before at the ridgeline had become denser and stormier, punctuated by thunder and lightning, and the tram operators, of course, would not run the tram under such conditions. We waited for about an hour, at which point the tour guides decided that it would be best to cut our losses and return to the city. We did stop on the way at a produce market (the Fruit Basket, as it is called) of some fame in the city and saw a demonstration of how chili peppers were roasted. So it was not a complete loss, but on the whole it was a disappointing outcome.
After dinner I attended an Author’s Panel, in which authors of various film books discussed the subject matter of their works, and then I saw showings of Laurel and Hardy movies: Way Out West and The Battle of the Century. Way Out West is considered one of the best films Laurel and Hardy did, and many argue that it is their supreme achievement. I would not go so far as to advance that claim for it, but it is perfect as far as it goes: a plotline that is simple, but which never comes across as padded, several musical numbers that provide a showcase for Hardy’s beautiful singing voice and the dancing skills of both of them, an admirable supporting cast (James Finlayson, as the villainous bartender, particularly excels in this film). The Battle of the Century is of course a much slighter work; and, until recently, could be seen only in a mutilated form. There is still about a minute and a half of footage missing, but most of the material previously considered lost has happily been located and restored.
On Friday morning we heard presentations from Randy Skretvedt, the author of numerous books on vintage films and, in particular, of “Laurel and Hardy: The Magic Behind the Movies,” the standard reference work on the subject; and from Mike Jones, a member of one of the British “tents” (as the local chapters of the society are called), who discussed how various locations in the northeast of England provide traces of Stan Laurel’s past. Both were interesting but the latter especially, at least to me; part of Jones’s presentation focused on Ulverston, Laurel’s birthplace, which brought back fond memories of a visit there I had made during a previous convention.
Following that we enjoyed a contest in which some of the more knowledgeable attendees played “Video Jeopardy,” in which they would be given photos of stills from films – but only portions of them – and then identify the film from which they were taken. I also participated in a “Soup to Nuts” relay in which team members, one at a time, viewed a table setting and then attempted to reconstruct it when moving out of its sight. The setting was a complicated one, full of tongue-in-cheek references to various films (a tiny playing card, for example, stood for the dinner cards used at place settings for formal dinners at that time) and it took several attempts of the team members to get it right. It wasn’t until I noticed that the cap for the pepper shaker was unscrewed halfway and I replicated that feature on our reproduction that the judges accepted it as complete.
We had dinner on our own and then went to the Kimo Theater in downtown Albuquerque, a wonderful example of the adobe-style Pueblo Revival Architecture, replete with decorations along the walls with artwork in the indigenous style. The presentation began with a skit by Laurel and Hardy impersonators Jeffrey Weissman and E. E. Bell. Frankly, I found it rather thin, but my opinion of these two performers went up on the following day, when they discussed their careers in playing their respective roles. Afterwards we viewed several films on the screen, where they showed to better advantage than on home projectors. The films were Towed in the Hole, Sons of the Desert, One Good Turn, Helpmates, and Busy Bodies. All of these are delightful.
Sons of the Desert, of course, is described as the iconic Laurel and Hardy film; the fraternal organization for which these conventions are provided takes its name from the film’s title. It is actually in some ways atypical of Laurel and Hardy feature films, being somewhat faster in pace than most of them and providing a dimension to the female characters not often seen in the other L&H films, in which the wife figures are simply shrews or vixens. It is undoubtedly one of their funniest; and not only are the comic duo at the top of their form, but the other major members of the supporting cast – Charley Chase, Mae Busch, and Dorothy Christy – give standout performers.
On Saturday a trivia contest was held, with four teams of three members each participating, after which Jeffrey Weissman and E. E. Bell, the impersonators we had seen last night, spoke about their experiences in the course of participating in reconstructions of Laurel and Hardy routines. Both of their accounts were fascinating, and they gave an insight into the entertainment industry obscured by the wild antics and the heavily publicized acts of charity of the well-known Hollywood stars. I am bound to say that this second tier of industrious actors and actresses who do not receive the exaggerated acclaim of our top movie stars appears to be by far the more wholesome and the more prepossessing of the two.
After lunch some of us watched two films that were of historical interest: the Spanish version of Pardon Us, followed by We Faw Down. For a time Roach Studios created foreign-language versions of their films for export, with Laurel and Hardy and some of the supporting actors supplying the dialogue in French, Spanish, German, or Italian. The Spanish version of Pardon Us is the only foreign-language version of that film that has survived.
The interest it affords is historical rather than intrinsic. Pardon Us was the first Laurel and Hardy full-length feature, but it was not the happiest of debuts. It is in fact a thoroughly unpleasant film, with the prison scenes accomplishing the difficult feat of making the penal system of the day appear even more abusive than it was in reality. Moreover, it is bogged down by an interlude in which Laurel and Hardy, after escaping prison, daub their faces with mud and take refuge in a cotton plantation to hide among the African-American farmhands. This sequence is not, to be sure, overtly offensive in the manner of a similar scene in the Marx Brothers’ “Day at the Races”: Laurel and Hardy simply mingle among the other farm workers and no racial jokes are made. But it is repellent nonetheless. The workers happily sing minstrel songs as they work (for ten minutes on end, a fairly significant fraction of a 70-minute film), and the implication is that they are thoroughly contented and could ask for no better living conditions. What possible need could these cheerful menials have for opportunities of education or for voting rights?
We Faw Down, by way of contrast, is a pleasant bit of fluff. It is of interest, however, because it provides the basic plot of the much more elaborate Sons of the Desert: Laurel and Hardy as husbands having an errant night out, only to have their cover story disproved by a disaster overtaking the place that they were claiming to be during their absence from home.
In the evening we dined together at a banquet, after which several members performed a version of the Match Game, in which the “stars” for whom the contestants attempted to match answers were characters from various L&H films and the judges were Laurel and Hardy themselves. This was very well-done. Much of it, of course, had been rehearsed in advance, but the two members who had been selected as contestants had not been coached beforehand and thus their answers to the host’s questions were improvised. It was a wonderful way to conclude the evening.
The following morning featured a farewell brunch, during which tributes were given to the performers in the films.