Hal Roach

From Freepedia

For the Irish comedian, see Hal Roach (comedian)

Harold Eugene "Hal" Roach (January 14, 1892–November 2, 1992) was a United States film and television producer from the 1910s to the 1980s.

Contents 1 Biography 1.1 Early life and career 1.2 Success as a comedy producer 1.3 Later years

Biography

Early life and career

He was born in Elmira, New York to a family of Irish Catholic extraction. It was at his grade school in Elmira that a very young Hal Roach was impressed by a speech presented by another great American humorist, Mark Twain.

After an adventurous youth that took him to Alaska, Hal Roach arrived in Hollywood in 1912 and began working as an extra in silent movies. When he came into an inheritance he began producing short comedies in 1915 with his friend Harold Lloyd, who portrayed a character known as "Lonesome Luke."

Success as a comedy producer

During the 1920s and 1930s, he employed Will Rogers, Max Davidson, the Our Gang kids, Charley Chase, Harry Langdon, Thelma Todd, ZaSu Pitts, Patsy Kelly and Laurel & Hardy. During the '20s his biggest rival was producer Mack Sennett and in 1925 he lured F. Richard Jones away from Keystone, hiring him as a supervising director/producer. Roach released his films through Pathé until 1927, when he went to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. He would change again in 1938 to United Artists. He converted his silent movie studio to sound in 1928 and began releasing talking shorts early in 1929. In those days before dubbing, foriegn language versions of the Roach comedies were created by re-shooting each film to create Spanish, French, and sometimes Italian and German dialogue phonetically. Laurel & Hardy, Charley Chase, and the Our Gang kids (some of whom had barely begun school) were required to learned the foriegn dialogue phonetically, often working from blackboards hidden out of camera range.

Starting in 1931, with the release of the Laurel & Hardy film Pardon Us, Roach started producing full-length features, including Topper, as well as short subjects. Shorts were gradually phased out, with Roach making the final one, Our Gang's Hide and Shriek, in 1938. Roach continued to produce features, the most memorable of which were Of Mice and Men (1939) and One Million Years, B.C. (1940). In 1948, he established himself as a television producer, producing shows such as Amos and Andy and My Little Margie.

Later years

Roach retired in the late 1950s having turned his studio in Culver City, California, over to his son, Hal Roach, Jr. who after a few short years lost it in a bad business deal. The studio, once known as "The Lot of Fun", was torn down in 1963. His son passed away in 1972. Hal Roach, Sr. resumed producing, occasionally worked on projects related to his past work for two more decades and was still planning a "come back" comedy when he was 96 years of age.

Hal Roach Studios was bought by a Canadian company and primarily handled the business of keeping its library in the public's eye, and licsensing products based upon their classic film series. In the early 1980s, Hal Roach Studios was one of the first studios to venture into the controversial business of film colorization, creating digitaly colored versions of several Laurel & Hardy features and other popular Roach films. In the 1980s, Hal Roach Studios produced Kids Incorporated in association with old business partner MGM. From 1988-1990, while producing Kids Incorporated, Hal Roach Studios changed its name to Qintex (not to be confused with the Australian company of the same name).

Hal Roach was a guest on Late Show with David Letterman in 1982 at the age of 90, and was presented with an honorary Academy Award in 1984. In the spring of 1992, at the age of 100, he appeared at the 1992 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 "What do you expect? He started in the silent era!"

Hal Roach was two months shy of his 101st birthday when he died on November 2, 1992 at his home in Bel Air, California. He was married twice, and had a number of children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. He is buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in Elmira, New York where he had grown up.