Tintin Forums

I bought Laurel & Hardy collection boxes (movies + classic shorts) and now I've just started watching through that material.

This is not a big deal, but one cannot avoid noticing many many little things and solutions which appear in Tintin albums too.

First the bowlers and Ollie's moustache then the conversations (between L&H), misunderstandings, mishearings of the words (to be precise I'd say...), stumblings, headbangings...

In "The Big Noise" there is a twisted inventor who has invented a costume cleaner, beds which are hidden in the wall and they appear from the wall by pushing a button. At the end of that film there is a "Black Island"-style flying show. And lot more.

I haven't heard Hergé saying to be Laurel & Hardy fan anywhere, but it would be very peculiar if L&H don't have an influence on Hergé's stories. We know very well that Hergé eagerly "stole" or borrowed things and put them in his stories (like a good artist does).

L&H is made for a tintinologist and I reckon L&H freak might like Tintin as well.

I love Laurel and Hardy too.

I agree with you that it seems highly likely that Hergé enjoyed and was influenced by Laurel and Hardy, as well as other early American comedy films, made by Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd.

Thomson and Thompson are a different double act to Laurel and Hardy, but I agree with you that there could well be some direct influence or inspiration. I think Laurel and Hardy's first films (they started in silent movies) pre-date the Thom(p)son's first appearance in Cigars of the Pharaoh, and might well have been shown in Belgium.

Or maybe Hergé was more influenced by later Laurel and Hardy films during the 1930s, since the Thom(p)sons possibly become more Laurel and Hardy-like in the 1940s Tintin books, sharing that feeling of being an argumentative old-married-couple: the argument about who's going to get out of their bed and answer the phone in Prisoners of the Sun, for instance, or the pillow squabble in Red Rackham's Treasure.