The Sons of the Desert The Sons of the Desert The Sons of the Desert is an international fraternal organization devoted to the lives and films of comedians Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. The group takes its name from a fictional lodge that Laurel and Hardy belonged to in the 1933 movie "Sons of the Desert". In 1964, a few years after the book, "Mr. Laurel and Mr. Hardy," was published, author John McCabe formed a small group of Laurel and Hardy admirers, including Orson Bean, cartoonist Al Kilgore, Chuck McCann, and John Municino. McCabe created a mock-serious “constitution” that satirized the formalities of many
The Sons of the Desert social organizations. Stan Laurel endorsed and humorously revised the document; he suggested that members might wear a fez or blazer patch with the motto "Two Minds Without a Single Thought." Founding member Kilgore created a logo with the motto in Latin (in the spirit of Laurel’s dictum that the organization should have “a half-assed dignity” about it) as "Duae tabulae rasae in quibus nihil scriptum est" (literally: "Two blank slates on which nothing has been written"). The first public Sons of the Desert meeting was held in New York City in 1965, shortly after Stan Laurel's death. McCabe's group quickly