To all my Laurel and Hardy friends, fellow Sons, and those who have been so supportive over my 26 year quest to make Laurel and Hardy available in the way the films were seen when they were first released–from 35mm and, hopefully, from the original camera negatives: First, a “This Is Your Life” moment, if you don’t mind. As many of you know, I began my work on the Hal Roach films back in October of 1984 when I brought my dearest friend and, in many ways, “second father”, Frank Capra, from his home in La Quinta, California to a meeting he had asked me to arrange with the Chairman of the Board at Hal Roach Studios in Hollywood. I had casually mentioned to Frank that I had seen an incredible bit of HRS footage on CNN–footage from Helpmates, appropriately enough (Rob Lewis!)–footage which had been Colorized! And I was knocked away by it. Frank had thought about it for a few days and called me back. Could I get an appointment with those guys to talk about Colorizing It’s A Wonderful Life and Meet John Doe? That’s why we were at HRS (despite later declarations Frank was pressured to make by John Huston’s agent, Herman Citron. Frank told me “You do it with my blessing. I’m just too old to fight them anymore”).

A half hour into the meeting, it became clear to the Chairman of HRS that I knew more about his company than he did. And he ultimately asked me to come to work for him right then and there. (Frank told me “Hey, Kid–I’m 87 years old–you have a hell of a lot longer future with him than you’ve got with me”, so I took it.) January 1, I replaced the legendary Herb Gelbspan and began assembling HRS Film Classics, an in-house home video company of which I was founding President. When I started, Roach stock was seventy-five cents. Sixteen months later, it was $17.50! A new crowd came into Roach in 1986 and I was asked to prepare L&H masters for a new TV show, being promised I had six months to perform the work. (King World had examined the materials and declared the library “gone”, canceling a $15 million dollar, ten year deal to which I was violently opposed--especially in light of the Our Gang sale back in the 1960's for a lousy $30,000!.) I called the director of the Motion Picture Division at the Library of Congress who, as a personal favor to me, shipped almost three million feet of nitrate film to me at the studio office. He told me it was the largest shipment ever made in the history of LOC. I went through every frame of it by hand, breathing in all the fumes, and requested certain items based on the first-ever inventory we had ever received of the 1968 deposit by HRS at LOC that had been arranged by Richard Feiner. (Roach was then in one of its many bankruptcies, and the very survival of the film was in serious question................. ~ Read On ~