On a weekday afternoon early in 1976, I attended an informal showing of two Laurel and Hardy films -- their Academy Award-winning 1932 short, The Music Box, and their 1937 feature, Way Out West -- held in a medium-sized lecture room at De Anza College in Cupertino, California. Besides myself, about thirty other people appeared for the showing: Some young people of high school and college age; a couple of housewives, along with their children; a couple of middle-aged businessmen; and a gentleman of about seventy. In short, we were a diverse audience. As the films played, however, all of our differences seemed to melt away and vanish, as we all became caught up in the bumbling misadventures of Stan and Ollie, and reacted to the comedians in exactly the same manner -- with unrestrained laughter, the youngest child howling right along with the seventy-year-old man.
