Laurel and Hardy "nutty burglar" or as a Charlie Chaplin imitator. Oliver Hardy (January 18, 1892 – August 7, 1957) was born Norvell Hardy in Harlem, Georgia. By his late teens, Hardy was a popular stage singer and he operated a movie house in Milledgeville, Georgia, the Palace Theater, financed in part by his mother. For his stage name, he took his father's first name calling himself "Oliver Norvell Hardy" while offscreen his nicknames were "Ollie" and "Babe". The nickname "Babe" originated from an Italian barber near the Lubin Studios in Jacksonville, Florida who would rub Hardy's face with talcum powder and say
William Hardy (actor) William Hardy (actor) William Hardy was an American actor and theatre director with a lifelong career on both the stage and screen. William Hardy's first professional job was at Bob Bartel's Houston Melodrama Theatre while still in college. He graduated from the University of Houston with a double major in theater and languages and joined Houston's then-new Alley Theatre. He was a company member for twenty years, appearing in a diversity of roles in such plays as "Camino Real", "A Flea in Her Ear", "Hadrian VII", "The Taming of the Shrew", and "The Hostage", along with roles at other Texas