HELP CELEBRATE THE 30TH ANNUAL MUSIC BOX STEPS DAY!

Honoring the iconic filming location of Laurel & Hardy's 1932 Oscar-winning short "The Music Box"

WHEN: Saturday, October 19, 11 AM to 4 PM

WHERE: Laurel and Hardy Park, 3022 Del Monte Dr., Silver Lake, CA

ADMISSION: FREE

Given these exceptionally harrowing times, at home and abroad, and with an election of epochal importance less than a month away, I’m taking a break from my angst-ridden screeds and offering up some comic relief—on screen and, if you’re in striking distance of LA, in the flesh as well.

Music Box Steps Day honors and celebrates 3 things: first and foremost, the legendary comedy team of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy; second, their Oscar-winning 1932 short The Music Box; and third, the famed filming location, the Music Box Steps.

The Music Box Steps as they looked when the film was shot.

The Steps as they appear today.

For those unfamiliar with the film, Stan and Ollie, playing delivery men with a slapstick nod to Sisyphus, spend the bulk of the film’s 29 minutes doing their bungling best to lug a player piano up the 133 steps to a home at the top.

Music Box Steps Day is free, features several screenings of The Music Box in a tent set up across from the Steps in Laurel and Hardy Park, and includes free pizza, live music by the Happy Neighbor Club, and the Great Reendini’s magic show.

The festival’s co-stars are Laurel & Hardy look-alikes John Mackey, playing Stanley, as he has at almost all previous Music Box Steps Days, and Joe Hanna as Ollie, replacing long-time Hardy impersonator Ed Bell (seen below with John).

The idea for the festival came to me when I discovered to my amazement that, as a lifelong Laurel & Hardy fan, I lived just 2 blocks from where The Music Box was shot. But my dream of building an event around this hallowed location couldn’t have been realized without the sponsorship and full support of the Silver Lake Improvement Association (SLIA), of which I’m a past president and current board member. And SLIA couldn’t have done it without the funding and input from the 13th Council District office and co-sponsorship and assistance from a host of neighborhood businesses and residents. It takes a village, goes the saying, and it couldn’t be truer with Music Box Steps Day.

Along with the fun and games and memorial to Laurel & Hardy, the film, and location, Music Box Steps Day pays tribute to Silver Lake’s unique charm and rich movie history. The Music Box Steps are actually one of close to a hundred steep outdoor stairways in this hilly region of Los Angeles, built in the early 1900s before the city became the world’s car capital, to accommodate residents lacking direct access to their hilltop homes from the streetcar lines below.

The stairways also proved a boon to the early film industry, especially the pioneering slapstick comedy studios of Mack Sennett and Hal Roach, which shot several films in the area and 3 silent shorts at the later-named Music Box Steps. One of these, by Hal Roach, 1927’s Hats Off, also starred Laurel & Hardy, lugging a washing machine instead of a piano, and clearly served as inspiration for the later sound film.[1]

While Music Box Steps Day’s additional purpose is to introduce a new generation of Silver Lakeans and other Angelenos to this historical gem, the Steps are nothing new to film buffs from LA, across the country, and around the world, who are often seen dropping by to pay their respects.

Nor have filmmakers forgotten the famed site.

Blake Edwards and Ted Danson used the Steps as a backdrop for a misbegotten 1986 chase comedy, A Fine Mess (the title a nod to Laurel & Hardy’s 1930 short Another Fine Mess). An episode of Billy Crystal and Josh Gad’s 2015 FX series The Comedians featured a scene on the Steps in which Crystal and Gad talk about the good old days of comedy. And John C. Reilly and Steve Coogan did a photo op at the Steps to promote their 2018 Laurel & Hardy biopic Stan & Ollie.

(Photo by Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times)

Further enhancing the film’s classic status, the U.S. National Film Preservation Board in 2019 added The Music Box to its National Film Registry, a select group of American films of all types chosen for preservation because of their exceptional historical, cultural, or aesthetic value.         

Many special guests have graced Music Box Steps Day over the years. These have included the granddaughter of the film’s composer, Marvin Hatley; the daughter and granddaughter of Lilyan Irene, who plays the nanny in the film; and Brian Cooper, grandnephew of Billy Gilbert, who plays the snooty professor. Cooper even had a bit role as the postman (played by Charlie Hall in the original), in a recreation of The Music Box, which Hardy look-alike Ed Bell put on with John Mackey and other actors for our 25th annual in 2019.

“The Music Box” mock-remake (photo Mike Jittlov)

Former Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti was a big fan of the event, and appeared at several, as did former State Assemblymember Mike Gatto, and former Councilmembers Mitch O’Farrell, Tom LaBonge, and Jackie Goldberg.

Then Councilmember Eric Garcetti in the 1990s with look-alikes John Mackey and Brian Mulligan

Tom LaBonge was responsible for having official Music Box Steps signs placed at the top and bottom and of the stairway, and Jackie Goldberg (who also has served as a state assemblymember and board president of the Los Angeles Unified School District) had a special story to tell about the Steps, with which she regaled the crowd whenever she attended.

During her early teaching days, Jackie happened to live right next door to the Steps, about whose august stature she was still unaware. Until one summer, when she held a series of film nights for the neighborhood kids, projecting 16 mm prints on a sheet strung between some trees in Laurel and Hardy Park (not yet so-named). One evening, while laughing at two dopey guys with derby hats on the make-shift screen, the kids, and Jackie herself, realized the biggest laugh was on them. Turning back and forth between the staircase in the movie and the one directly behind them, they were thrilled to discover that the film they were watching had been shot, apparently ages ago, right next to Jackie’s house and in their own backyard!

The greatest thrill for everyone associated with Music Box Steps Day, however, occurred in 2017, when the look-alikes, the hilarious film, and the renowned location all had to take a back seat.

It started with a phone call I received the night before the event, like many I’ve received over the years asking for more information. But this night was different from all other nights. The person on the other end, having heard about the festival from a pitch in the LA Times, wanted to know whether he could come and also say a few words. Normally, I would’ve been a bit taken aback, but in this case I was floored—it was Dick Van Dyke! 

And another surprise was coming.

Dick Van Dyke is of course known mainly for comedies. The 23rd Music Box Steps Day, however, he turned into a thriller. The event was scheduled for 4 hours, and all the tables, chairs, and the tent would be picked up when it was over. But as things were winding down and the star of the show still hadn’t shown, and several people had given up and left—voila!—the tall gangly version of Stan Laurel finally arrived!

And the comparison isn’t meant glibly. At the event, Van Dyke, then 91, after bounding up all 133 steps, read a portion of the eulogy he’d delivered at Laurel’s funeral in 1965, where he mentions that Laurel had been his mentor and idol—no surprise given his Laurel-like pointy-chinned face and the naïf persona he adopted, and transformed, for his comedic roles.

Van Dyke surrounded by look-alikes John Mackey and Ed Bell, Charley Chaplin impersonator Pharaoh Kingsley, and the SLIA crew—bottom row left to right: Dorsay Dujon, Genelle Le Vin, and Karen Numme; middle row left: Mark Hummer; and top row right: me (photo Michael Locke).

While that was a tough act to follow, something very special is planned this year, too. The City has finally seen fit to recognize the Music Box Steps as a cultural-historical landmark, and a sign to that effect will be attached to the stairway signpost. And Stan Laurel’s great granddaughter, Cassidy Cook, and her family, will be on hand for the unveiling—and if we’re lucky, though it’s a longshot for the 98-year-old superstar, Stan Laurel’s most famous mentee might surprise us once again!

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NOTES

[1] The other two silent films shot at the Steps are Roach’s Isn’t Life Terrible in 1925 (starring Charlie Chase) and Sennett’s Ice Cold Cocos in 1926 (starring Billy Bevan, Andy Clyde, and Madeline Hurlock).