Laurel & Hardy: The Silent Years (1929) on Blu-ray from Eureka in July

Eureka Entertainment has announced the release of Laurel & Hardy: The Silent Years (1929), a landmark collection bringing together nine short films, presented in high definition for the first time in the UK. Newly restored in 2K from the finest available materials, this Blu-ray edition will be released in July as part of The Masters of Cinema Series. Strictly limited to 2,000 copies, the release will feature an exclusive O-card slipcase and collector’s booklet.

Two of the most talented comedians to ever grace the silver screen, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy had firmly established their enduring partnership by the time the age of talking pictures loomed at the end of the 1920s. As they made their final silent shorts together in 1929, they continued to build upon the double act forged in earlier films such as You’re Darn Tootin’, Should Married Men Go Home? and We Faw Down – and prepared themselves for success in the sound era.

This collection brings together the silent Laurel & Hardy shorts produced in 1929, as the boys reached new levels of fame and success: Liberty casts Stan and Ollie as fugitives on the run; in Wrong Again, the boys try to claim a reward by returning a lost horse to a bewildered millionaire seeking a stolen painting; That’s My Wife sees Ollie forced to choose between Stan and his spouse; in Big Business, the boys go door-to-door selling Christmas trees; in Unaccustomed As We Are, Ollie invites Stan over for dinner and attracts the ire of Mrs Hardy; Double Whoopee sees the boys take jobs at a fancy hotel; Berth Marks has them cause chaos on a sleeper train; in Bacon Grabbers, Stan and Ollie are bailiffs tasked with recovering a radio; and finally, in Angora Love, they try to conceal a goat that has become very, very attached to them.

The Masters of Cinema Series presents Laurel & Hardy’s final run of silent shorts, newly restored in 2K by Blackhawk Films from the finest available materials, in a special two-disc Blu-ray edition for the first time in the UK.