"LOST" comedy clips get found - and you're told GET LOST

Every now and then, Laurel and Hardy fans (the ones who constantly tell you "you know, they really loved each other"), get excited.

Somebody finds a "LOST" film clip on Stan or Babe (as true Laurel and Hardy fans like to call Ollie).

Why, here's one that just turned up. Isn't that swell?

Funny thing. People who find and digitize lost public domain films don't really want to "share" them with the public. THEY EXPECT TO BE PAID.

Generally, I agree. But that's if it's an actual FILM, and not a CLIP.

The lost CLIP was apparently censored from a Stan Laurel solo short called "Departed." In the scene, poor Stan is sent to the gallows, but, ha ha, the rope literally stretches his neck instead of breaking it.

Some festival is making a big HOO HA over this, and the grand 10 seconds will be "premiered" with admission charges and speeches made. And then...it will most likely disappear until somebody puts out yet another DVD boxed set, and will use it to make people buy what they otherwise already have.

"This new edition has the lost Stan Laurel clip!" Anything else? "Commentary tracks from some asshole who has a blog and blabbers on and on about Laurel and Hardy, and wants to prove his speaking voice is as dull as his prose." Anything else, "Added commentary tracks from some humorless Nazi who teaches a film course in the Midwest somewhere, and has, yeah, written tedious books that have a print run of 100 and still aren't sold out."

Will the clip just turn up on YOUTUBE? Not if there's a wallet to be squeezed.

This also happened with "found" footage from "Battle of the Century," a L&H short infamous for the pie-fight scene. "Hey, great news, another minute or two from that short has been found..." "Bad news...nobody is going to actually see it. Various film professors are just going to say how important it is. Maybe TMC will run it during some tedious "Laurel and Hardy Week" and slip it in after a ponderous monologue by a film buff."

Finders keepers...

Here's another goodie. No, not The Goodies, actually. It's the oh-so-beloved team of wise Ernie Wise, and the comically obnoxious Eric Morecambe. And no, unlike Stan and Ollie, they didn't "really love each other." They did have a good working relationship, which should be enough for anyone but latent homosexuals and complete lunkheads.

What's all this then?

Somebody found a rotted reel of film, and miraculously used strange laser technology to ferret through it WITHOUT unrolling it. That's the good news.

The bad news is that the result is hardly worth looking at. It may be of historical value to somebody, but so is the Zapruder film, and neither one is very funny.

Happily, this thing IS on YouTube, because the point is not to crow about what's actually ON the film (two dead comedians flogging lifeless patter). The point is to let everyone know that if grants are made, funds set aside, and movie film and TV video tape acknowledged to be valuable, somebody might discover and restore something WORTH discovering and restoring.

But generally, if a film clip that is lost is worth seeing, you'll be told to GET LOST...or pay up.