For Laurel and Hardy Fans, a Club With Plenty of Guffaws

Anthony Lanzilote for The New York Times John Giriat, 65, setting up a projector at the Players Club in Manhattan during a meeting of a Laurel and Hardy fan club.

Associated Press Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy.

The cookies were laid out on paper plates, a 70-year-old print of “The Chimp” was threaded into the aging film projector, and the Sons of the Desert were filing into the Players Club on Gramercy Park South on a recent weeknight.

“We’re running three of the boys’ funniest films tonight,” Jack Roth, 60, told the Sons of the Desert, the name of a Laurel and Hardy fan club that has been around for nearly half a century. Mr. Roth holds the group’s top title of grand sheik.

The lights dimmed and the old movie flickered to life, animating life into “the boys,” a pair of men wearing derbies and struggling to load a cannon as part of their circus act.

The boys â€" the legendary Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy â€" engaged in their typical high jinks, and the chuckles of fan club members turned to cackles and then guffaws as they finally managed to bring down the big top, eliciting screeches and applause from an audience in a communal state of celluloid-induced bliss.

Hardy died in 1957 and Laurel eight years later, but their memory endures in the hearts of this fan club that was formed in 1965, and is named after a 1933 Laurel and Hardy film, “Sons of the Desert.” There are now 300 chapters of the Sons of Desert club around the world, Mr. Roth said.

“People can watch these movies at home now, but it’s not the same thing,” said Mr. Roth, who said that club membership had declined over the years. But, still, a core group of fans keeps paying dues and showing up at the Players Club, where the club holds its monthly meetings. And without fail, at every meeting the members say a toast and raise a glass to “the boys.’’

One member, Brian Gari, said, “There’s something about seeing the boys on real film in the dark with a group of fans â€" it’s like being back in the 1930s again in an old movie house, a bit like a time warp.”

“It’s the camaraderie and appreciation for the humor,” added Mr. Gari, whose maternal grandfather was the singer and comedian Eddie Cantor. “Even though we’ve seen these films a million times, it’s always like seeing them for the first time. You never stop noticing new things.”

Mr. Roth said he was 5 when he saw his first Laurel and Hardy film, “The Devil’s Brother,” in which the men are cast as Stanlio and Ollio in a spoof of an Italian operetta.

“I literally wet my pants, it was so funny,” he recalled, as the group mingled before the films were screened at the Players Club. “Now I own the film.”

In fact, Mr. Roth is the chapter’s Keeper of the Celluloid - that’s an official title - because he owns about 2,500 reels of old film, including nearly the entirety of Laurel and Hardy’s work, which includes over 100 films. He provides many of the films for the meetings, but “The Chimp” was provided by John Giriat, a 35-year member from City Island in the Bronx, who owns about 1,000 reels of film.

Mr. Roth, of Yonkers, a sales manager at a camera store, joined the chapter 42 years ago, making him longest-standing of the roughly 100 members, almost all of whom are men. Most members are over 50, and perhaps the youngest member at the meeting was Raymond Valinoti, 43, who wrote a book about Laurel and Hardy called “Another Nice Mess: The Laurel & Hardy Story.”

Another member, Jim Burke, is a deli manager in Freehold, N.J., whose role at the meetings is to take the floor and deliver what he calls “Believe It or Don’t,” a listing of trivia items related to early film and television.

“We come here because we have a shared childhood experience growing up with these films,” he said. “It’s a shared nostalgia.”

Speaking of nostalgia, Mr. Roth asked members to keep an eye out for reissues of some short films featuring the actor Fatty Arbuckle and discussed a new book about Charley Chase, another comedic actor.

When one member asked him about his summer, Mr. Roth said he had been on vacation for a week, but it was so hot that he wound up staying home and watching Laurel and Hardy movies.

“I could think of worse things,” the member replied.