Stan Laurel

An iconic comedian who shot to fame as one-half of the most famous pair in film history, Stan Laurel was born Arthur Stanley Jefferson in Ulverston, England, on June 16, 1890, and honed his skills in an English acting troupe alongside a yet-to-be-discovered Charlie Chaplin before moving to the United States and taking on work behind the camera.

But the lanky Laurel's film career didn't really take off until he teamed up with portly American actor Oliver Hardy in a string of silent films and talkies throughout the 1920s, '30s and '40s, including Do Detectives Think? (1927), Pardon Us (1931), Sons of the Desert (1933) and Babes in Toyland, aka March of the Wooden Soldiers (1934), as well as the Oscar-winning comic short "The Music Box" (1932).

After appearing in more than 70 films with his longtime partner, who died of a heart attack in 1957, Laurel died on Feb. 23, 1965, at the age of 74.

Stan Laurel in Air Raid Wardens / Nothing But Trouble

Laurel & Hardy: Air Raid Wardens / Nothing But Trouble

1944 NR

If there's a job Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy can do well, you wouldn't know it from either of these films. In one, they play an inept pair of air raid wardens who elicit a less-than-patriotic response from the town they're serving, and in the other, they play a bumbling butler and chef who try to help an exiled boy king. In both, the laughs abound as they tangle with spies, hang from ledges and more. Edgar Kennedy and David Leland co-star.