Laurel and Hardy
and the
Sons of the Desert
are at the heart of
Bowler Dessert magazine
and
Bowler Dessert Online

Laurel en Hardy book

 

I recently got a new book for my Laurel and Hardy collection. It's in Dutch and is called Laurel en Hardy. This hardcover book features Laurel and Hardy comic strips by Marten Toonder (1912-2005), considered to be one of the most successful comic writers in the Netherlands, and he was widely regarded throughout Europe. His success was at its highest during the 1950s and '60s, when he had his comic serials published routinely in newspapers - the comics were called Tom Poes and Ollie B Brommel. But, very early in his career, he published about nine or ten four-panel comic strips based on Laurel and Hardy and these may have been his first published work. These comic strips were published (one at a time) in 1933 in a weekly magazine called Cinema and Theatre under the MGM copyright.

The particular book that I got features seven of those strips and is published by the Marten Toonder Verzamelaars (Collector) Club, with the cooperation of the Marten Toonder family. These strips were also used by MGM in Germany. It is thought that the character in Mr Toonder's comic strip Ollie B Brommel, who is a very rotund bear (see below), was influenced by Oliver Hardy.

This book was published in 2008 and is a very limited edition. It measures 11 inches x 8 inches, 16 pages, high quality.

I want to thank sincerely Bram Reijnhoudt of the Netherlands Perfect Day Tent for his help in getting background information on this.

 

Gino Dercola reports

 

Cover of the book 

One of the comic strips inside the book