Long Islander talks love of Hollywood and its lore

Stan Laurel, half of the quintessential comedy duo of Laurel and Hardy, was known to welcome strangers into his home. There, Laurel and his guest would typically kick back and watch a Laurel and Hardy movie or two together.

Jack Benny, who, in a span of 14 years in the 1950s and ’60s, did 343 episodes of “The Jack Benny Program” on television, was born Benjamin Kubelsky.

These are just two of the fun facts Lawrence Wolff recently shared with the audience at his “Holidays With the Comedians” presentation at Huntington Public Library that is part of the Lectures of Classic Hollywood series that he gives at Long Island libraries.

“If anyone’s here looking for warm, fuzzy holiday stuff, you’re in the wrong place,” Wolff advised two dozen people in attendance.

Peppering his lecture with photos, film and TV clips and all manner of trivia about his subjects, Wolff enumerated Laurel’s hobbies, which included marrying (four times), and mentioned that Abbott and Costello appeared on “The Colgate Comedy Hour” television show 20 times — more than any other act.

Screening Laurel and Hardy’s 18-minute 1927 film “Big Business,” in which the comedy team attempts to sell Christmas trees door to door and end up destroying a man’s house — as he, in turn, destroys their car — Wolff described the caper as a “study in reciprocal destruction.”

“What’s the moral of the film?” asked Wolff, 66, of Islip. “If Laurel and Hardy come to your house selling Christmas trees, you better buy one!”

Jack Benny, the enthusiastic audience later learned, developed his famous exasperated hand-on-cheek pose to cover scratch marks his wife made in a jealous rage just before he went on stage during a performance in 1927 in Hartford.

After the lecture, Valerie Meszaros commented that Wolff, “seems so knowledgeable and his material is great. How can you miss?”

“I enjoy seeing people so passionate about something,” added Meszaros, 71, of Huntington, who’s retired from the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.

“It was good,” said her son Matthew Meszaros, 32, an urban planner who lives in Huntington. “A little older than the world I know.”

“Even though they died many years ago, he [Wolff] kind of brings the people back to life for the hour,” noted Don Becker, the media librarian at Northport Public Library, who has scheduled many of Wolff’s appearances there. “He’s really entertaining. He’s just really personable and funny — and the crowd loves him.”

A fan is born

Growing up in Lynbrook, Wolff developed a love of cinema by watching movies with his family.

“I started with the comedians and then the great horror stars: Lugosi, Karloff and Chaney,” Wolff said, referring to Bella Lugosi, Boris Karloff and Lon Chaney. “And then I branched off into gangsters.”

Among his favorite gangster films: James Cagney in “The Public Enemy” (1931), “White Heat” (1949) and “Angels With Dirty Faces” (1938); Edward G. Robinson in “Little Caesar” (1931); and Humphrey Bogart in “The Petrified Forest” (1936) and “Dead End” (1937).

The first film that really hit home for him was, unquestionably, “Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein” (1948).

“Lou Costello was so likable,” said Wolff, who is retired from the State Department of Taxation and Finance. “When you match this child-man with classic monsters, the Wolfman, Dracula and Frankenstein’s monster, it was just the perfect combination. And it turns out to be one of their best films.”

Feeding his budding love for the horror genre, the young Wolff relished Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine and watched “Chiller Theatre” and “Creature Features,” weekly TV horror showcases.

“It was fun chills,” he said. “You knew that they were monsters. You imagined them chasing you and [wondered] what would you do?”

Film buff to lecturer

About 20 years ago, Wolff joined Sons of the Desert, the international Laurel and Hardy appreciation society, eventually becoming the organization’s “sheik” — he is currently a co-sheik — where he met John Carpenter, now 60, of Massapequa Park, a film historian who asked Wolff to present at one of his own lectures.

“After speaking a few times with John Carpenter, I decided to do my own lecture series,” Wolff explained. “I started with Laurel and Hardy. I went to Abbott and Costello. And since then, I’ve been off to the races.”

Praising his fellow guide on the film lecture circuit, Carpenter said, “He’s opening up new eyes and new minds to old films. But to these new eyes and new minds, they’re not old — they’re brand-new.”

Over the past 10 years, Wolff, who has written, produced, directed and acted in comedy dinner theater shows, has broadened his lectures to include in-depth discussions about Jack Benny, Victor Borge, Buster Keaton, The Marx Brothers, James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart. He has a whole lecture dedicated to Laurel and Hardy’s “March of the Wooden Soldiers” (1934).

At his Bogart lecture, he discusses “All Through the Night” (1942), one of his favorite films, in which Bogart battles Nazi spies in New York City.

“It’s not a very well-known film, but it has touches of film noir, comedy, drama, mystery, and it does it very well,” Wolff said. “You can watch that film, by the way they talk and the clothes, it puts you back in 1941.”

The bad language and violence in a lot of modern movies turn him off, Wolff said.

And, for him, the classic films never get old. “The stuff I grew up with, I still like,” he said, whether it’s “The Bride of Frankenstein” (1935) or “Arsenic and Old Lace” (1944). 

Others, like “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” (1930), “High Noon” (1952) and the relatively recent “Jaws” (1975), he’s learned to appreciate as an adult for their acting, writing and messages.

Of Charlie Chaplin’s “City Lights,” Wolff said, “That’s a film that, in my opinion, has the greatest ending of any film — silent or sound — ever.” (For those who haven’t seen Chaplin’s 1931 classic, we won’t spoil the ending.)

Expanding tastes

Along with his passion, Wolff brings DVDs, books, movie posters, photos, autographs and other memorabilia to his lectures; he sets the mood with period music or film soundtracks.

His audiences, he noted, are mostly middle age or senior citizens.

“When I do get a younger person, I find that’s a real treat. And I really do try to talk to them,” Wolff said, adding, “I am ecstatic when I’ve piqued their interest and opened a door for them.”

Over the years, Wolff has shared his love of movies with his wife, Joan, 66, a nurse, and his sons, Tim, 35, a mortgage broker, and Dan, 29, who works for Stony Brook University, both of whom live in Islip.

Tim often watches “Svengoolie,” a classic horror film series on TV. His dad, Tim said, has “pretty much seen all of them already, so before the movie starts, he’ll just tell me everything, all the background and all that stuff. Sometimes, I have no idea what he’s talking about. He’ll start naming people I don’t know .  .  . It makes it more fun.”

When he was growing up, Tim didn’t appreciate the older movies. “Everything was black-and-white,” he said. “Sometimes there were no words. Now that I’m older, I can definitely appreciate them more.”

His father’s tastes have expanded over time, too: Wolff still loves Laurel and Hardy and Abbott and Costello, and the ghoulish films, but now also appreciates Gary Cooper in “High Noon” for facing down evil and standing up for what’s right.

“That’s why it was a favorite film of Presidents Ronald Reagan, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Bill Clinton and, reportedly, Harry S. Truman,” he said.

Another relative newcomer to his favorites list, “Casablanca” (1942) he said he appreciates for “the directorial touches and a bit of film noir here and there. Everything just clicks.”

As ever, the film connoisseur is riveted by the great screen actors — Cagney, Bogart and John Wayne.

“When they come on the screen, everyone else just fades into the background,” Wolff said. Movies, he said, remain the great escape, a break from bad news and life’s troubles.

Watching “The Wizard of Oz,” he said, you can delight in a fresh-faced, velvet-voiced, 16-year-old Judy Garland and not think about the troubles she would face later in life.

“I think when you’re engrossed in a film, you’re just transported into another world,” Wolff said. “These people will never age, they will never have problems with drugs or alcohol.”

“Whatever it is you like about a film, it gives you a chance to get away from all your everyday headaches and just get lost in some feel-good times,” Wolff said, adding, “For 90 minutes, [or] two hours, you’re transported back in time.”