Sugar Daddies

Sugar Daddies is a silent comedy short film starring Jimmy Finlayson, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy prior to their official billing as the duo Laurel and Hardy. The team appeared in a total of 107 films between 1921 and 1951.

Plot

Rich oil tycoon (Finlayson) awakens one morning after a night of carousing to be told that he was married the night before. Not only does he have a new wife but also a new golddigging stepdaughter and brother-in-law who want to kill him. His lawyer (Laurel) is called in to straighten things out when a blackmail attempt is made. He decides to hide out in a hotel with his butler (Hardy) and his lawyer (Laurel). He finally escapes by climbing on Stan’s shoulders, wearing a long overcoat and pretending to be Ollie’s wife. Wild chases through a dance hall and amusement park ensue.

Cast

Sugar Daddies (play)

Sugar Daddies is a 2003 play by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn. It is about a student who forms a friendship with a rich man over three times her age, who has a sinister past, and maybe a sinister present too.

Background

Ayckbourn wrote Sugar Daddies in early 2003, shortly after concluding his family play The Jollies and shortly before starting rehearsals for Tim Firth's The Safari Party. In some respects, it can be considered a follow-on from the Damsels in Distress trilogy. It again features a young female leading character in some kind of danger, and shares the theme of East End crime that frequently arose throughout the trilogy. The original productions also shared Alison Pargeter as one of the leading roles, but this had influence far beyond making Sugar Daddies a companion piece.

Prior to acting at the Stephen Joseph Theatre, Alison Pargeter had concentrated her career on playing children and teenagers. Indeed, her first role working with Ayckbourn was as a nine-year-old girl in his new family musical Whenever in 2000. The following year, she played a 16-year-old in GamePlan, the older heroine in FlatSpin, and, finally, an ex-lapdancer in RolePlay – three roles that earned her Best Newcomer in the Critics' Circle Awards. Having seen her take on the different range of ages successfully, Ayckbourn chose to write a role specifically combining all of her traits into one character. Although Ayckbourn has previously written plays with a specific set of actors in mind (the most recent example being RolePlay, written during rehearsals for two of the Damsels in Distress plays), the practice of writing for a specific actor was very unusual, and this play is regarded as the closest Ayckbourn has come to creating a role for an individual.