Childhood / Early Years

Norvell Hardy was born on the 18th of January 1892, in Harlem, Georgia,USA. When he was very young his father 'Oliver Hardy ' died, in honor of his father, young Norvell adopted his father's name and became Oliver Norvell Hardy. His mother, Emily Hardy ran a hotel. Oliver would often sit in the lobby of the hotel and just watch all of the guests making mental notes of their silly little mannerism's, he would often portray these in his films. Oliver had a really good singing voice, when he was 8 he toured as a boy soprano, encouraging her son, she sent him to Atlanta for singing lessons, when she found out that Oliver wasn't attending the lessons she sent him to a military school to learn him discipline. He later attended a music college and had his first job singing to slides at a theatre at weekends.

Learning the Ropes / Early Career

.At the age of  18 he started to run a theatre in Milledgeville, Georgia, after seeing some of silent comedy films he thought he could do better and headed off to Jacksonville, Florida and started working for the Lubin Motion Picture Company. It was while he was at Lubin he aquired his nickname of " Babe ", an Italian barber rubbed powder into his cheeks saying " nice a babee ", this name was shortened to 'Babe ' by the other actors. In some of his early films he was billed as 'Babe Hardy ', but changed it back to Oliver, after a fortune teller told him he would have a bigger success with a longer name.