The Battle of the Century

Lore & Background

The film's plot involves a boxing match and a pie fight. Facing financial hardship, Ollie orchestrates a boxing match between Stan and Thunderclap Callahan, offering a cash prize of $500 to the victor. Stan, fighting under the alias 'Canvasback Clump,' inadvertently knocks out Callahan in the initial round. However, Stan's refusal to return to his corner prevents the referee from completing the ten-count, allowing Callahan to recover and retaliate, ultimately overpowering Stan. Following the match's chaotic conclusion, a disillusioned Ollie encounters an insurance salesman who convinces him to invest the meager winnings in an insurance policy on Stan, with the stipulation that Stan must sustain an injury for Ollie to profit. In a misguided attempt to fulfill this requirement, Ollie orchestrates a scenario involving a banana peel on a sidewalk. However, the plan backfires when a pastry chef becomes the unintended victim of the slippery hazard, leading to a comical altercation involving pies that quickly escalates into a neighborhood-wide skirmish.

In Their Own Story

The April sun hung low over Wembley, painting the terraces in amber. The crowd was a single breathing thing—seventy thousand voices from the North-East, from the factories and the terraced streets, all arriving as one tide. You could smell the wet grass, the wool of the coats, the cheap cigarettes. A boy of nine sat on his father's shoulders, watching the black-and-white shirts line up, and he did not yet know that what he was about to see would be the story his grandfather told, and his son would inherit.

The first goal came early, a rip from the edge of the box that the City keeper could only watch. The second was a header, a thing of geometry and timing. The third, the one that made the terraces erupt into a sound like a storm breaking, was the kind of goal that makes a city hold its breath and then scream. And when the final whistle blew, the players did not celebrate so much as collapse, exhausted, onto the turf, while the noise above them simply did not stop. It did not stop for a very long time.

Reader's Guide

The Battle of the Century is renowned for its extensive use of cream pies, with estimates ranging from over 3,000 to potentially 10,000 pies utilized in the climactic pie fight. Initially, only a three-minute segment containing the pie fight was believed to have survived, as it had been incorporated into Robert Youngson's 1950s film documentaries. However, the complete second reel, including the pie fight scene, was rediscovered in 2015 and subsequently released to the public on DVD and Blu-ray disc as part of the Laurel & Hardy: The Definitive Restorations compilation in 2020. In recognition of its cultural significance, The Battle of the Century was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress in 2020 as being 'culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.' Although officially billed as a Laurel and Hardy film, the characters had yet to fully embody their iconic personas; they are not referred to as Stan and Ollie, with Laurel portraying Canvasback Clump and Hardy's manager character remaining unnamed. A young Lou Costello can be spotted among the prizefight crowd early in the film, adding to its historical significance. The comically long count in the film intentionally exaggerates the real-life 'Long Count Fight' between Jack Dempsey and Gene Tunney on September 22, 1927.

Did You Know?

• Stan Laurel expressed his intention to inundate the film with so many pies that it would surpass any future pie-related cinema endeavors, saying 'Let’s give them so many pies that there never will be room for any more pi
• The film was rediscovered in 2015 from a 16mm print sourced from the original 35mm negative, found in the film collection of Gordon Berkow.
• The restoration process was initiated by Lobster Films, with subsequent restoration efforts led by Jeff Joseph in collaboration with the UCLA Film and Television Archive.