Our Relations

Our Relations is a 1936 feature film starring Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, produced by Laurel for Hal Roach Studios. Laurel and Hardy star as both their famous Stan and Ollie characters and as Stan and Ollie's twin brothers Bert and Alf. In most of the Laurel and Hardy films, their usual Stan and Ollie characters are a pair of hopeless dimwits, often just barely able to earn a living. In Our Relations, Stan and Ollie are respectable citizens with wives and steady employment. It is their sea-faring twin brothers, Alf Laurel and Bert Hardy, who are dim-witted incompetents sailors aboard the... S.S Periwinkle. On board, Alf and Bert wear seafaring garb. Once ashore, they dress in "civilian" clothes—down to the traditional derbies—making them nearly indistinguishable from their brothers. Stan always wore a bow-tie, while Oliver wore the more conventional type. This is reversed for the brothers, with Alf wearing the usual style and Bert wearing the bowtie. Music cues also help differentiate between the twins; Laurel & Hardy's theme song, "Dance of the Cuckoos", plays when Stan and Ollie appear; the Sailor's Hornpipe plays when Alf and Bert are onscreen.
more