II. Anmerkungen zum Buchtext, Teil II - Einsnull

XXI. English Summary or International Readers
Das Dick und Doof Buch
by Norbert Aping
English Summary
by Dr. Ulrich Rüdel
with a special tip of the bowler to Glenn Mitchell
Part I
ilm, as entertainment or as art, does not exist ouside of a cultural context. It is determined by economical,
political and social factors, and any step from planning, production, casting, shooting, releasing and
marketing has an impact on the success of a film project. Censorship, too, is such a force. If their films had
not been submitted for rating, Laurel and Hardy could never have been introduced to the German audience
in the 20s and 30s of the last century. Nowadays, the surviving censorship records from that era allow us to
reconstruct the release history of Laurel and Hardy in Germany, an exemplary case of how the intricacies of
film import and export can shape the reception of films and film history. That is the story traced in this
book; it is the story of how the American comedy team Laurel and Hardy became Dick und Doof.
German film censorship goes back to 19 th
century control of theatrical and stage events; thus it was a
present force from the nascent days of the film medium, when Skladanowsky presented the world’s first
film exhibition on November 1, 1895 in the Berlin Wintergarten. But only in 1906, when a film was to be released
about Karl Rudolf Henning, a murderous robber just sentenced to death, authorities stepped in and
banned the release of a film for the first time This move that was followed by a number of further decrees,
essentially establishing a censorship system.
Yet, when Philip Scheidemann announced a German republic in his November 12, 1918 speech, he also
stated: «Censorship will not take place. Theatrical censorship will stop.»
The German film industry reacted immediately to these new liberties, launching a wave of sexand crime
films. Thus, it was not very long before the reintroduction of censorship was demanded by various groups
comprising, among others, teachers and theologists. On May 11, 1920 the new Lichtspielgesetz («ilm
Law») was passed.
Of course, nowadays these years in German film history are remembered rather as the days of Expressionist
Cinema, as it was to be called later, as the time of sinister Dr. Caligari and Dr. Mabuse, where film geniuses
like ritz Lang dealt with their WWI experiences in masterpieces like DESTINY, and where Murnau invented
horror cinema as we know it with NOSERATU. Meanwhile, in the United States, an equally remarkable
event took place in films, yet its significance only became clear in hindsight ... that is, the first chance
encounter of Laurel and Hardy, in the 1921 film THE LUCKY DOG. Previously considered to date back as far as
1917-19, this film has recently been found to be of later vintage and, while featuring a brief joint appearance,
actually is quite a typical example of the films of Stan Laurel’s solo years. Laurel was an aspiring star
comedian. In contrast, Hardy, a film comedy pioneer as early as 1914, had by now found his niche as a supporting
actor, a comic villain, or ‹heavy›, specifically in the films of Larry Semon, Jimmy Aubrey or the
vastly underrated, then highly successful Chaplin imitator Billy West. Here, Hardy made a brief appearance
as a villain threatening Laurel. But whatever a German title of LUCKY DOG might have been, no documentation
to support a contemporary German release of the film can be located. This may not be surprising, considering
that even this minor film’s US release history has never been conclusively documented.