DALE HAWES

This is a brief history of the guy who produced such classics as, The Our Gang Comedies, The Laurel and Hardy Comedies and Safety Last with Harold Lloyd.  

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Hal Roach was born in New York but moved around as a child. Hal arrived in California in 1912 and first started working in motion pictures as a background extra.

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He came into an inheritance in 1915 and with his new wealth and his good friend Harold Lloyd he began making silent film shorts about a character called Lonesome Luke which Lloyd played.

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He started Hal Roach Studios in downtown Los Angeles but was unable to expand because of zoning laws so he bought a huge track of land from Harry Culver in Culver City, California. The new Hal Roach Studios was located at 8822 Washington Blvd, Culver City and it operated from 1919 - 1963. As well as Harold Lloyd, it employed The Our Gang Children, Laurel & Hardy, Max Davidson, Charlie Chase, Harry Langdon, Thelma Todd, ZaSu Pitts and Patsy Kelly. Back then actors weren't free agents like today, they were under an exclusive contract with one studio.

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In 1927 Roach struck a distribution deal with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. In 1928 he converted his silent film studio into a sound motion picture production company and by 1929 he was producing "Talking" comedy shorts. Since motion pictures were distributed around the world and not everyone on earth speaks English, Hal had to shoot a take in every language they were going to distribute to. And he had to do this for every shot. This was before dubbing and subtitles. Imagine being in the cast of The Our Gang Comedies that has barely begun school, having to read off a cue card, phonetically, in a language they don’t understand.

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Hal began to realize two reel comedies were not as profitable as features so he began producing full length features starting with, “Pardon Us” (1931) starring Laurel and Hardy.

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In 1936 the Our Gang Comedy, “General Spanky” did not do as well at the box office as expected so Roach wanted to end the franchise all together. However, MGM still wanted more Our Gang Comedies despite the less than stellar numbers. So Hal shortened the films from their former 2 reel length to 1 reel (or 10 minutes). This way they were less expensive to produce.

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In 1937 Roach got into a joint business venture with Vittorio Mussolini who was the son of the fascist director Benito Mussolini. They wanted to produce the opera, "Rigoletto". This sent MGM into a panic. Since The Hal Roach Comedies were not doing as well as they used to and this Mussolini business venture was getting bad press, MGM terminated its contract with Hal Roach. In 1938 Roach sold The Our Gang Comedies to MGM out right. That same year Roach signs a distribution deal with United Artist.

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1937 - 1940 he departs from the low brow comedies to do more sophisticated farces like Topper (1937) and The Housekeepers Daughter (1939). Roach also began producing action films like Captain Fury (1939) and One Million B.C. (1940). During this epoch of his career he also produced the most famous version of, “Of Mice and Men” (1939) with Burgess Meredith and Lon Chaney Jr. starring. By 1940 the Laurel and Hardy Comedies were the least popular property of all his work so he discontinued them. 

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In 1942 he joined the war effort for World War Two by producing military training films and government-propaganda films.

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Hal Roach died in 1992. His Laurel and Hardy Comedies can often be found on television as well as his Our Gang Comedies however the Our Gang Comedies were renamed, “The Little Rascals” for their television exhibition.

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- D. Hawes

 

1923 Roach produced “Safety Last” starring Harold Lloyd.