Oliver Hardy’s Widow Dies of Cancer at 77

Lucille Hardy Price, a studio script girl who met comedian Oliver Hardy on the set of one of the legendary Laurel and Hardy films and married him in 1939, died Wednesday at St. Joseph Medical Center in Burbank. She was 77.

In 1975, she and Ida K. Laurel, widow of Hardy’s partner, Stan, won an injunction from Hal Roach Studios enjoining the Laurel and Hardy film producers from licensing the names and likenesses of the two comics. A federal court ruled that the two women were entitled to compensation for any merchandise depicting their husbands. It was believed one of the first rulings to establish that families have rights to monies earned by dead celebrities.

Mrs. Price, who was at Hardy’s side when he died on Aug. 7, 1957, married businessman Ben Price, who died last February. Laurel died in 1965. Mrs. Price had no children by either marriage.

She died of cancer and will be cremated.