Hal Roach
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Hal Roach, Sr. | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | Harold Eugene Roach January 14, 1892 Elmira, New York, United States |
| Died | November 2, 1992 (aged 100) Los Angeles, California, United States |
| Cause of death | Pneumonia |
| Resting place | Woodlawn Cemetery |
| Occupation | Director/Producer |
| Years active | 1912–92 |
| Spouse(s) | Marguerite Nichols (m.1915–41; her death) Lucille Prin (m.1942–81; her death) |
| Children | Hal Roach, Jr., Margaret Roach Elizabeth Roach (1945–1946) Maria Watkins Jeanne Roach Bridget Anderson |
Early life and career
Hal Roach was born in Elmira, New York, the grandson of Irish Immigrants.[1] A presentation by the great American humorist Mark Twain impressed Roach as a young grade school student.After an adventurous youth that took him to Alaska, Hal Roach arrived in Hollywood, California in 1912 and began working as an extra in silent films. Upon coming into an inheritance, he began producing short comedies in 1915 with his friend Harold Lloyd, who portrayed a character known as Lonesome Luke.
Also in 1915, Roach married actress Marguerite Nichols. They had two children, Hal, Jr. (June 15, 1918 – March 29, 1972) and Margaret M. Roach (March 15, 1921 – November 22, 1964). In 1941, his wife of 26 years, Marguerite, died.
After Marguerite's death Roach married a second time on September 1, 1942 to Lucille Prin (January 20, 1913 – April 4, 1981), a Los Angeles secretary.[2] They were married at the on-base home of Colonel Franklin C. Wolfe and his wife at Wright-Patterson Airfield in Dayton, Ohio where Roach was stationed at the time while serving as a Major in the US Army Air Corps.[2] They had four children, Elizabeth Carson Roach (December 26, 1945 – September 5, 1946), Maria May Roach (April 14, 1947), Jeanne Alice Roach (October 7, 1949), and Kathleen Bridget Roach (January 29, 1951).
Success as a comedy producer
Unable to expand his studios in downtown Los Angeles because of zoning, Roach purchased what became the Hal Roach Studios from Harry Culver in Culver City, California. During the 1920s and 1930s, he employed Lloyd (his top money-maker until his departure in 1923), Will Rogers, Max Davidson, the Our Gang kids, Charley Chase, Harry Langdon, Thelma Todd, ZaSu Pitts, Patsy Kelly and, most famously, Laurel and Hardy. During the 1920s Roach's biggest rival was producer Mack Sennett. In 1925 Roach hired away Sennett's supervising director, F. Richard Jones.Roach released his films through Pathé Exchange until 1927, when he went to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. He converted his silent movie studio to sound in 1928 and began releasing talking shorts early in 1929. In the days before dubbing, foreign language versions of the Roach comedies were created by re-shooting each film in the Spanish, French, and sometimes Italian and German languages. Laurel & Hardy, Charley Chase, and the Our Gang kids (some of whom had barely begun school) were required to recite the foreign dialogue phonetically, often working from blackboards hidden off camera.
In 1931, with the release of the Laurel & Hardy film Pardon Us, Roach began producing occasional full-length features alongside the short product. Short subjects became less profitable and were phased out by 1936, save for Our Gang. In 1937, Roach conceived a joint business venture partnering with Vittorio Mussolini, son of fascist Italian dictator Benito Mussolini to form a production company called "R.A.M" (Roach and Mussolini). This proposed business alliance with Mussolini caused MGM to intervene and force Roach to pay his way out of the venture. This embarrassment, coupled with the underperformance of much of Roach's new feature product (save for Laurel & Hardy films and the odd non-L&H hit such as 1937's Topper), lead to the end of Roach's relationship with MGM. [3] In May 1938, Roach ended his distribution contract with MGM, selling them the production rights to and actors' contracts for Our Gang in the process, and signed with United Artists.[3]
From 1937 to 1940, Roach concentrated on producing glossy features, abandoning low comedy almost completely. Most of his new films were either sophisticated farces (like Topper and The Housekeeper's Daughter) or rugged action fare (like Captain Fury and One Million B.C.). Roach's one venture into heavy drama was the acclaimed Of Mice and Men. The Laurel and Hardy comedies, once the Roach studio's biggest drawing cards, were now the studio's least important product and were phased out altogether in 1940.
In 1940, Roach experimented with medium-length featurettes, running 40 to 50 minutes each. He contended that these "streamliners", as he called them, would be useful in double-feature situations where the main attraction was a longer-length epic. Exhibitors agreed with him, and used Roach's mini-features to balance top-heavy double bills. United Artists continued to release Roach's streamliners through 1943. By this time Roach no longer had a resident company of comedy stars, and cast his films with familiar featured players (William Tracy and Joe Sawyer, Johnny Downs, Jean Porter, Frank Faylen, William Bendix, George E. Stone, etc.).
World War II and television
Hal Roach, Sr. was called to active military duty in June 1942, at age 50, and the studio output he oversaw in uniform was converted from entertainment featurettes to military training films. The studios were leased to the U.S. Army Air Forces, and the First Motion Picture Unit made 400 training, morale and propaganda films at "Fort Roach." Members of the unit included Ronald W. Reagan and Alan Ladd.In 1947, Hal Roach resumed production for theaters, with former Harold Lloyd co-star Bebe Daniels as an associate producer. Roach was the first Hollywood producer to go to an all-color production schedule, making four streamliners in Cinecolor, although the increased production costs did not result in increased revenue. In 1948, with his studio deeply in debt, Roach re-established his studio for television production, with Hal Roach, Jr., producing shows such as The Stu Erwin Show, Steve Donovan, Western Marshal, Racket Squad, The Public Defender, The Gale Storm Show, and My Little Margie, and independent producers leasing the facilities for such programs as Amos 'n' Andy, The Life of Riley, and The Abbott and Costello Show. By 1951, the studio was producing 1,500 hours of television programs a year, nearly three times Hollywood's annual output of feature movies.[4]
The visionary Roach also recognized the value of his film library. Beginning in 1943 he licensed revivals of his sound-era productions for theatrical and home-movie distribution. Roach's films were also early arrivals on television; the Laurel & Hardy comedies in particular were a smashing success in television syndication.
Later years
In 1955, Roach sold his interests in the production company to his son, Hal Roach, Jr., and retired from active production. Unfortunately, the younger Roach lacked much of his father's business acumen, and soon lost the studio to creditors. It was finally shut down in 1961.For two more decades Roach Sr. occasionally worked as a consultant on projects related to his past work. Extremely vigorous into an advanced age, Roach contemplated a comedy comeback at 96. He was a guest on Late Night with David Letterman in 1982, where he recounted experiences with such stars as Stan Laurel and Jean Harlow; he even did a brief, energetic demonstration of a hula dance.
In 1984, 92-year old Roach was presented with an honorary Academy Award. Former Our Gang members Jackie Cooper and George "Spanky" McFarland made the presentation to a flattered Roach, with McFarland thanking the producer for hiring him 53 years prior.
In the spring of 1992, not long after his 100th birthday, Roach once again appeared at the Academy Awards ceremony, hosted by Billy Crystal. When Mr. Roach rose from the audience to speak during the ceremony, the sound system did not pick up his words. Crystal quipped "I think that's fitting, after all — Mr. Roach started in silent film..." At the 42nd Berlin International Film Festival, Roach was given the honorary award of the Berlinale Camera.[5]
Death
Hal Roach died from pneumonia on November 2, 1992, two months short of his 101st birthday, at his home in Bel Air, California. He was married twice, and had four children (two of whom he outlived by more than twenty years) and a number of grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Roach is buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in Elmira, New York, where he grew up. Roach outlived many of the Our Gang children who starred in his pictures.Hal Roach Studios
The 14.5 acre (58,680 m²) studio once known as "The Lot of Fun," containing 55 buildings, was torn down in 1963 (despite tentative plans to reopen the facilities as "Landmark Studios") and replaced by light industrial buildings, businesses, and an automobile dealership. Today, Culver City's "Landmark Street" runs down what was the middle of the old studio lot, with the two original sound stages having been located on the north side of Landmark Street, and the backlot/city street sets had been located at the eastern end of Landmark Street. A plaque sits in a small park across from the studio's location, placed there by The Sons of the Desert.[6]Most of the film library was bought in 1971 by a Canadian company that adopted the "Hal Roach Studios" name. It primarily handled the business of keeping the library in the public eye and licensing products based upon the classic film series.
In 1983, Hal Roach Studios was one of the first studios to venture into the controversial business of film colorization, creating digitally colored versions of several Laurel and Hardy features, the Frank Capra film It's a Wonderful Life, Night of the Living Dead, and other popular films. In the 1980s, Hal Roach Studios produced Kids Incorporated in association with old business partner MGM. During the 1980s, Hal Roach Studios distributed its classic film library, as well as films in the public domain, on home video. From 1988 to 1990, while producing Kids Incorporated, Hal Roach Studios was known as Qintex.
In the years that followed, the Roach company changed hands several more times. Independent television producer Robert Halmi bought the company in the early 1990s, and it became RHI Entertainment. A short time later, this successor company was acquired by Hallmark Entertainment in 1994, but Halmi, Robert Halmi Jr. and affiliates of Kelso & Company reacquired the company in 2006. Hallmark Entertainment was absorbed into RHI Entertainment (with Vivendi as the current home video output partner).
In that same decade, a new incarnation of Hal Roach Studios (operated by the Roach Trust) was established, and today this new version of the company has released classic films on DVD, many of which are from Roach's own archival prints of his films, while others are public domain titles mastered from the best available 35 mm elements.
References
- ^ "Hal Roach". Laurelandhardycentral.com. Retrieved 2012-06-13.
- ^ a b "Movie Producer Married At 50 To Secretary, 29". Coshocton, Ohio: The Coshocton Tribune. September 1, 1942. p. 5.
- ^ a b Ward, Richard Lewis (2005). A History of Hal Roach Studios. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press. Pg. 97-102, 116, 225. ISBN 0-8093-2637-X.
- ^ "Hollywood Is Humming", Time, October 29, 1951.
- ^ "Berlinale: 1992 Prize Winners". berlinale.de. Retrieved 2011-03-27.
- ^ Culver City History: Hal Roach Studios, culvercity.org. Retrieved August 23, 2008
Further reading
- Richard Lewis Ward. A History of the Hal Roach Studios. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2005.
External links
 | Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Hal Roach |
- Hal Roach at the Internet Movie Database
- Extensive list of Roach's work and publications about Roach
- The Charlie Hall Picture Archive
- Hal Roach at theluckycorner.com - Detailed listing of all films that Hal Roach worked on, including those not made by his studio, plus all films made by Hal E. Roach Studios, whether or not Roach himself was involved
* * *
It was the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini who wanted Roach to come to Italy to make movies. The project was cancelled due to pressure from MGM, but after Rosina Lawrence had left for Italy, where she ended up making a different movie, COMPAGNE E CADUTA UNA STELLA (released in the United States in 1947 as IN THE COUNTRY FELL A STAR ). War broke out in Europe after the film was completed and nobody had anything good to say about Mussolini after that, Roach included.
Roach's being called back into the army during the war and the use of his studio by the army to make training films interrupted his film career, but it also helped to confirm his place in history as someone who was on the side of the allies in the fight against the Axis.
Roach was successful in producing television programs after the war, and a number of fondly remembered series were filmed there, including THE ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN and THE ABBOTT AND COSTELLO SHOW. Thelma Todd's old teammate Zasu Pitts returned for a series with Gale Storm, MY LITTLE MARGIE. There were plans to make a new series of Laurel and Hardy films for television, but Hardy's worsening health interfered and the series was never made.
Hal Roach lived to see the revival of interest in his old films on television and outlived most of his contemporaries at the age of a hundred. In his later years he attended meetings of "The Sons Of The Desert" when they gathered in Los Angeles to screen Laurel and Hardy films.
Hal Roach studios stationary.
Thelma Todd and friends in a 1931 publicity photo.
"Miss Crabtree" ( June Marlowe ) and the Our Gang kids.
June Marlowe was later replaced by Rosina Lawrence )
Hal Roach and the gang.
Roach with Laurel and Hardy.
With Laurel and Hardy and Thelma Todd at Roach's 20th Anniversary celebration in 1933.
Cary Grant, Sally Eilers, Hal Roach, and Elizabeth Jenns
In 1937 Hal Roach, left, was photographed with Vittorio Mussolini, the son of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. In this picture Mussolini strikes up a pose characteristic of his father, which was supposed to be a gag.
Vittorio had been a participant in his father's war against Ethiopia, then called Abyssinia. There were protests in Hollywood over Roach's proposed alliance with someone who had waged a war of conquest against an African nation.
ONE MILLION BC made Carole Landis a star.
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The remake made Raquel Welch a star,
it was made in England, but Hal Roach was listed as "associate producer".
Hal Roach interview on youtube
THE DEVIL WITH HITLER:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Devil_with_Hitler
Benito Mussolini:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benito_Mussolini
Vittorio Mussolini:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vittorio_Mussolini
Hal Roach:
http://www.hal-roach.com/
http://www.silentsaregolden.com/articles/halroacharticle.html
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0730018/
Hal Roach Back Lot:
http://www.lordheath.com/index.php?p=1_1240_The-Hal-Roach-Backlot
Hal Roach filmography:
http://theluckycorner.com/crew/roach.html
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