Here’s an interview with Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy that I’ve never seen before–perhaps it was recently unearthed since the relatively small amount of interview stuff with them available has long been well known to all serious L&H fans. It’s part of either a newsreel or TV short program called ‘Ship’s Reporter’, in which an unctuous man named Jack Mangan apparently traps celebrities who are on ocean liners and interviews them. The year is 1952 and Stan and Ollie are on the Queen Mary which is apparently docking in New York Harbor. Stan sits on the left, smoking a cigarette and Ollie’s jammed into the right side of the frame in three-quarter profile. It’s Jack Mangan who winds up in the center of things with the best angle on him. It’s a pretty good interview actually, though Mangan gets a little hard to take as it goes along. Anyway, it’s lovely to see L&H as off-screen presences. And I always enjoy seeing Stan smoke.