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The iconic clock scene in Safety Last!

Harold Clayton Lloyd, Sr. (April 20, 1893 – March 8, 1971) was an American film actor and producer, most famous for his silent comedies.^[2]

Harold Lloyd ranks alongside Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton as one of the most popular and influential film comedians of the silent film era. Lloyd made nearly 200 comedy films, both silent and "talkies", between 1914 and 1947. He is best known for his "Glasses Character", a resourceful, success-seeking go-getter who was perfectly in tune with 1920s era America.

His films frequently contained "thrill sequences" of extended chase scenes and daredevil physical feats, for which he is best remembered today. Lloyd hanging from the hands of a clock high above the street in Safety Last! (1923) is one of the most enduring images in all of cinema.^{[citation needed]} Lloyd did many of these dangerous stunts himself, despite having injured himself in August, 1919 while doing publicity pictures for the Roach studio. An accident with a bomb mistaken as a prop resulted in the loss of the thumb and index finger of his right hand ^[3] (the injury was disguised on future films with the use of a special prosthetic glove, though the glove often did not go by unnoticed).

Although Lloyd's individual films were not as commercially successful as Charlie Chaplin's on average, he was far more prolific (releasing twelve feature films in the 1920s while Chaplin released just three), and made more money overall ($15.7 million to Chaplin's $10.5 million).

Early life and early roles[link]

Lloyd was born in Burchard, Nebraska to James Darsie Lloyd and Elizabeth Fraser; his paternal great-grandparents were from Wales. When he was a child, his parents divorced and Lloyd chose to stay with his father, who was always dreaming up grand get-rich-quick schemes that ended in disasters. They eventually ended up in Omaha where Lloyd had his first acting experience in a local stock company. He attended East High School and San Diego High School and received his stage training at the School of Dramatic Art (San Diego). In 1912, his father J. Darsie "Foxy" Lloyd was awarded the then-massive sum of $6,000 in a personal injury judgment (although this was split evenly between Lloyd and his lawyer) after being run over by an Omaha beer truck. Reportedly, on the toss of a coin ("Heads is New York or Nashville or where I decide!, tails is San Diego"), he and Lloyd moved west.

Lloyd had acted in theatre since boyhood, and started acting in one-reel film comedies shortly after moving to California. He soon began working with Thomas Edison's motion picture company, and eventually formed a partnership with fellow struggling actor and director Hal Roach, who had formed his own studio in 1913. The hard-working Lloyd became the most successful of Roach's comic actors between 1915 and 1919.

Lloyd hired Bebe Daniels as a supporting actress in 1914; the two of them were involved romantically and were known as "The Boy" and "The Girl." In 1919, she left Lloyd to pursue her dramatic aspirations. Lloyd replaced Daniels with Mildred Davis in 1919. Lloyd was tipped off by Hal Roach to watch Davis in a movie. Reportedly, the more Lloyd watched Davis the more he liked her. Lloyd's first reaction in seeing her was that "she looked like a big French doll!"^{[citation needed]} Davis retired from acting in 1923, and Jobyna Ralston became Lloyd's co-star.

From 1915 to 1917, Lloyd and Roach created more than 60 one-reel comedies.

Lloyd in A Sailor-Made Man (1921), his first feature.

Silent shorts and features[link]

By 1918, Lloyd and Roach had begun to develop his character beyond an imitation of his contemporaries. Harold Lloyd would move away from tragicomic personas, and portray an everyman with unwavering confidence and optimism. The "Glasses Character" (often named "Harold" in the silent films) was a much more mature comedy character with greater potential for sympathy and emotional depth, and was easy for audiences of the time to identify with. The Glasses Character is said to have been created after Roach suggested that Harold was too handsome to do comedy, without some sort of disguise; previously, he had worn a fake mustache as the Chaplinesque "Lonesome Luke". Unlike most silent comedy personas, "Harold" was never typecast to a social class, but he was always striving for success and recognition. Within the first few years of the character's debut, he had portrayed social ranks ranging from a starving vagrant in From Hand to Mouth to a wealthy socialite in Captain Kidd's Kids.

Harold Lloyd in Grandma's Boy (1922).

Beginning in 1921, Roach and Lloyd moved from shorts to feature length comedies. These included the acclaimed Grandma's Boy, which, (along with Chaplin's The Kid), pioneered the combination of complex character development and film comedy, the highly popular Safety Last! (1923), which cemented Lloyd's stardom (and is the oldest film on the American Film Institute's List of 100 Most Thrilling Movies), and Why Worry? (1923).

Lloyd and Roach parted ways in 1924, and Lloyd became the independent producer of his own films. These included his most accomplished mature features Girl Shy, The Freshman (his highest-grossing silent feature), The Kid Brother, and Speedy, his final silent film. Welcome Danger was originally a silent film but Lloyd decided late in the production to remake it with dialogue. All of these films were enormously successful and profitable, and Lloyd would eventually become the highest paid film performer of the 1920s.^[4] They were also highly influential and still find many fans among modern audiences, a testament to the originality and film-making skill of Lloyd and his collaborators. From this success he became one of the wealthiest and most influential figures in early Hollywood.

Talkies and transition[link]

In 1924, Lloyd formed his own independent film production company, the Harold Lloyd Film Corporation, with his films distributed by Pathé and later Paramount and Twentieth Century-Fox. Lloyd was a founding member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Released a few weeks before the start of the Great Depression, Welcome Danger was a huge financial success, with audiences eager to hear Lloyd's voice on film. Lloyd's rate of film releases, which had been one or two a year in the 1920s, slowed to about one every two years until 1938.

The films released during this period were: Feet First, with a similar scenario to Safety Last which found him clinging to a skyscraper at the climax; Movie Crazy with Constance Cummings; The Cat's-Paw, which was a dark political comedy and a big departure for Lloyd; and The Milky Way, which was Lloyd's only attempt at the fashionable genre of the screwball comedy film.

To this point the films had been produced by Lloyd's company. However, his go-getting screen character was out of touch with Great Depression movie audiences of the 1930s. As the length of time between his film releases increased, his popularity declined, as did the fortunes of his production company. His final film of the decade, Professor Beware, was made by the Paramount staff, with Lloyd functioning only as actor and partial financier.

On March 23, 1937, Lloyd sold the land of his studio Harold Lloyd Motion Picture Company to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The location is now the site of the Los Angeles California Temple.^[5]

Lloyd produced a few comedies for RKO Radio Pictures in the early 1940s but otherwise retired from the screen until 1947. He returned for an additional starring appearance in The Sin of Harold Diddlebock, an ill-fated homage to Lloyd's career, directed by Preston Sturges and financed by Howard Hughes. This film had the inspired idea of following Harold's Jazz Age, optimistic character from The Freshman into the Great Depression years. Diddlebock opened with footage from The Freshman (for which Lloyd was paid a royalty of $50,000, matching his actor's fee) and Lloyd was sufficiently youthful-looking to match the older scenes quite well. Lloyd and Sturges had different conceptions of the material and fought frequently during the shoot; Lloyd was particularly concerned that while Sturges had spent three to four months on the script of the first third of the film, "the last two thirds of it he wrote in a week or less". The finished film was released briefly in 1947, then shelved by producer Hughes. Hughes issued a recut version of the film in 1951 through RKO under the title Mad Wednesday. Such was Lloyd's disdain that he sued Howard Hughes, the California Corporation and RKO for damages to his reputation "as an outstanding motion picture star and personality", eventually accepting a $30,000 settlement.

Marriage and home life[link]

Lloyd married his leading lady, Mildred Davis, on Saturday, February 10, 1923. Together, they had two children: Gloria Lloyd (1924–2012),^[6] and Harold Clayton Lloyd, Jr., (1931–1971).^[7] They also adopted Gloria Freeman (1924–1986) in September 1930, whom they renamed Marjorie Elizabeth Lloyd, but who was known as "Peggy" for most of her life. Lloyd, for a time, discouraged Davis from continuing her acting career. He later relented, but by that time her career momentum was lost. Davis died in 1969, two years before Lloyd's death. Lloyd's son was gay, and according to Annette D'Agostino Lloyd (no relation) in the book Harold Lloyd: Master Comedian, Harold Sr. took this in good spirit. Harold Jr. died from complications of a stroke.

Harold Lloyd and future wife: Mildred Davis in I Do in 1921.

Lloyd's Beverly Hills home, "Greenacres", was built in 1926–1929, with 44 rooms, 26 bathrooms, 12 fountains, 12 gardens, and a nine hole golf course. The estate left the possession of the Lloyd family in 1975, after a failed attempt to maintain it as a public museum.

The grounds were subsequently subdivided, but the main house and the estate's principal gardens remain and are frequently used for civic fundraising events and as a filming location, appearing in films like Westworld and The Loved One. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Radio and retirement[link]

In October 1944, Lloyd emerged as the director and host of The Old Gold Comedy Theater, an NBC radio anthology series, after Preston Sturges, who had turned the job down, recommended him for it. The show presented half-hour radio adaptations of recently successful film comedies, beginning with Palm Beach Story with Claudette Colbert and Robert Young.

Some saw The Old Gold Comedy Theater as being a lighter version of Lux Radio Theater, and it featured some of the best-known film and radio personalities of the day, including Fred Allen, June Allyson, Lucille Ball, Ralph Bellamy, Linda Darnell, Susan Hayward, Herbert Marshall, Dick Powell, Edward G. Robinson, Jane Wyman, and Alan Young, among others. But the show's half-hour format—which meant the material might have been truncated too severely—and Lloyd's sounding somewhat ill at ease on the air for much of the season (though he spent weeks training himself to speak on radio prior to the show's premiere, and seemed more relaxed toward the end of the series run) may have worked against it.

The Old Gold Comedy Theater ended in June 1945 with an adaptation of Tom, Dick and Harry, featuring June Allyson and Reginald Gardiner and was not renewed for the following season. Many years later, acetate discs of 29 of the shows were discovered in Lloyd's home, and they now circulate among old-time radio collectors.

Lloyd in 1946, when he was appointed to the Shriners' publicity committee.

Lloyd remained involved in a number of other interests, including civic and charity work. Inspired by having overcome his own serious injuries and burns, he was very active as a Shriner with the Shriners Hospital for Crippled Children. He was a Past Potentate of Al-Malaikah Shrine in Los Angeles, and was eventually selected as Imperial Potentate of the Shriners of North America for the year 1949–50.^[8]

He appeared as himself on several television shows during his retirement, first on Ed Sullivan's variety show Toast of the Town June 5, 1949 and again on July 6, 1958. He appeared as the Mystery Guest on What's My Line? on April 26, 1953, and twice on This Is Your Life: on March 10, 1954 for Mack Sennett, and again on December 14, 1955 on his own episode. During both appearances, Lloyd's hand injury can clearly be seen.^[9]

Lloyd studied colors, microscopy, and was very involved with photography, including 3D photography and color film experiments. Some of the earliest 2-color Technicolor tests were shot at his Beverly Hills home (These are included as extra material in the Harold Lloyd Comedy Collection DVD Box Set). He became known for his nude photographs of models, such as Bettie Page and stripper Dixie Evans, for a number of men's magazines. He also took photos of Marilyn Monroe lounging at his pool in a bathing suit, which were published after their deaths. In 2004, his granddaughter Suzanne produced a book of selections from his photographs, Harold Lloyd's Hollywood Nudes in 3D! (ISBN 1-57912-394-5).

Lloyd also provided encouragement and support for a number of younger actors, such as Debbie Reynolds, Robert Wagner, and particularly Jack Lemmon, whom Harold declared as his own choice to play him in a movie of his life and work.

Renewed interest[link]

Lloyd kept copyright control of most of his films and re-released them infrequently after his retirement. Lloyd did not grant cinematic release because in the main most theaters could not accommodate an organist, and Lloyd did not wish his work to be accompanied by a pianist: "I just don't like pictures played with pianos. We never intended them to be played with pianos". Similarly, his features were never shown on television as Lloyd's price was high: "I want $300,000 per picture for two showings. That's a high price, but if I don't get it, I'm not going to show it. They've come close to it, but they haven't come all the way up". As a consequence, his reputation and public recognition suffered in comparison with Chaplin and Keaton, whose work has generally been more available.

Also, Lloyd's film character was so intimately associated with the 1920s era that attempts at revivals in 1940s and 1950s were poorly received, when audiences viewed the 1920s (and silent film in particular) as old-fashioned.

In the early 1960s, Lloyd produced two compilation films, featuring scenes from his old comedies, Harold Lloyd's World of Comedy and The Funny Side of Life. The first film was premiered at the 1962 Cannes Film Festival, where Lloyd was feted as a major rediscovery. The renewed interest in Lloyd helped restore his status among film historians. Throughout his later years he screened his films for audiences at special charity and educational events, to great acclaim, and found a particularly receptive audience among college audiences: "Their whole response was tremendous because they didn't miss a gag; anything that was even a little subtle, they got it right away".

Following his death, and after extensive negotiations, most of his feature films were leased to Time-Life Films in 1974. As Tom Dardis confirms: "Time-Life prepared horrendously edited musical-sound-track versions of the silent films, which are intended to be shown on TV at sound speed, and which represent everything that Harold feared would happen to his best films".

Through the efforts of Kevin Brownlow and David Gill and the support of granddaughter Suzanne Lloyd Hayes, the British Thames Silents series re-released some of the feature films in the early 1990s on home video, at corrected projection speeds and with new orchestral scores by Carl Davis. More recently, the remainder of Lloyd's great silent features and many shorts were fully restored, with new orchestral scores by Robert Israel. These are now frequently shown on the Turner Classic Movies (TCM) cable channel. An acclaimed 1990 documentary (Harold Lloyd: The Third Genius) by Brownlow and Gill, which was shown as part of the PBS series American Masters, also created a renewed interest in Lloyd's work in the early 1990s. A DVD Collection of restored versions of most of his feature films (and his more important shorts) was released by New Line Cinema in partnership with the Harold Lloyd Trust in November 2005, along with limited theatrical screenings in New York and other cities in the US, Canada and Europe. Annette Lloyd has also said that if there is a large-enough show of support by fans, a second collection may be released in the future^{[citation needed]}.

Academy Award[link]

In 1953, Lloyd received a special Academy Award for being a "master comedian and good citizen." The second citation was a snub to Chaplin, who at that point had fallen foul of McCarthyism and who had had his entry visa to the United States revoked. Regardless of the political overtones, Lloyd accepted the award in good spirit.

Death[link]

Lloyd died at age 77 from prostate cancer on March 8, 1971, in Beverly Hills, California.^[4][10][11] He was interred in a crypt in the Great Mausoleum at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.

Walk of Fame[link]

Harold Lloyd has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. His was only the fourth ceremony preserving his handprints, footprints, autograph, and outline of his famed glasses (which were actually a pair of sunglasses with the lenses removed), at Grauman's Chinese Theatre, in 1927. In 1994, he was honored with his image on a United States postage stamp designed by caricaturist Al Hirschfeld.

Filmography[link]

Further reading[link]

• Lloyd, Harold and Stout, W.W. (1928, revised 1971). An American Comedy. Dover. 
• Agee, James (1958, 2000). "Comedy's Greatest Era" from Life magazine (9/5/1949), reprinted in Agee on Film. McDowell, Obolensky, Modern Library. 
• Cahn, William (1964). Harold Lloyd's World of Comedy. Duell, Sloane & Pearce. 
• Lahue, Kalton C. (1966). World of Laughter: The Motion Picture Comedy Short, 1910–1930. University of Oklahoma Press. 
• Brownlow, Kevin (1968, revised 1976). "Harold Lloyd" from The Parade's Gone By. Alfred A. Knopf, University of California Press. 
• McCaffrey, Donald W. (1968). 4 Great Comedians: Chaplin, Lloyd, Keaton, Langdon. A.S. Barnes. 
• Robinson, David (1969). The Great Funnies: A History of Film Comedy. E.P. Dutton. 
• Durgnat, Raymond (1970). "Self-Help with a Smile" from The Crazy Mirror: Hollywood Comedy and the American Image. Dell. 
• Lacourbe, Roland (1970). Harold Lloyd. Paris: Editions Seghers. 
• Gilliatt, Penelope (1973). "Physicists" from Unholy Fools: Wits, Comics, Disturbers of the Peace. Viking. 
• Mast, Gerald (1973, revised 1979). The Comic Mind: Comedy and the Movies. University of Chicago Press. 
• Schickel, Richard (1974). Harold Lloyd: The Shape of Laughter. New York Graphic Society. ISBN 0-8212-0595-1. 
• Kerr, Walter (1975, 1990). The Silent Clowns. Alfred A. Knopf, Da Capo Press. 
• McCaffrey, Donald W. (1976). Three Classic Silent Screen Comedies Starring Harold Lloyd. Associated University Presses. ISBN 0-8386-1455-8. 
• Byron, Stuart and Weis, Elizabeth (1977). The National Society of Film Critics on Movie Comedy. Grossman/Viking. 
• Reilly, Adam (1977). Harold Lloyd: The King of Daredevil Comedy. Macmillan. ISBN 0-02-601940-X. 
• Everson, William K. (1978). American Silent Film. Oxford University Press. 
• Maltin, Leonard (1978). The Great Movie Comedians. Crown Publishers. 
• Dardis, Tom (1983). Harold Lloyd: The Man on the Clock. Viking. ISBN 0-14-007555-0. 
• Hayes, Suzanne Lloyd (ed.), (1992). 3-D Hollywood with Photography by Harold Lloyd. Simon & Schuster. 
• D'Agostino, Annette M. (1994). Harold Lloyd: A Bio-Bibliography. Greenwood Press. ISBN 0-313-28986-7. 
• Dale, Alan (2002). Comedy is a Man in Trouble: Slapstick In American Movies. University of Minnesota Press. 
• Vance, Jeffrey, and Lloyd, Suzanne (2002). Harold Lloyd: Master Comedian. Harry N Abrams. ISBN 0-8109-1674-6. 
• Lloyd, Annette D'Agostino (2003). The Harold Lloyd Encyclopedia. McFarland & Company. ISBN 0-7864-1514-2. 
• Mitchell, Glenn (2003). A-Z of Silent Film Comedy. B.T. Batsford Ltd.. 
• Lloyd, Suzanne (2004). Harold Lloyd's Hollywood Nudes in 3-D. Black Dog & Leventhal. ISBN 978-1-57912-394-9. 
• Lloyd, Annette D'Agostino (2009). Harold Lloyd: Magic in a Pair of Horn-Rimmed Glasses. BearManor Media. ISBN 978-1-59393-332-6. 

See also[link]

• List of United States comedy films

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Harold Lloyd

• Harold Lloyd at the Internet Movie Database
• Official site – the official site of Harold Lloyd
• HaroldLloyd.us — a site with articles and information, maintained by Annette D'Agostino Lloyd
• Harold Lloyd Forum part of ComedyClassics.org
• Harold Lloyd Photos at Silent Ladies & Gents
• BBC Radio Interview with Suzanne Lloyd (2002)
• Harold Lloyd in The Sin Of Harold Diddlebock at The Internet Archive

• Photographs and bibliography

Harold Eugene "Hal" Roach, Sr. (January 14, 1892 - November 2, 1992) was an American film and television producer and director, and actor from the 1910s to the 1990s.

Early life and career[link]

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. (1918–1972) and Margaret (1921–1964).

Success as a comedy producer[link]

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. It was in the 1930s that Roach conceived of a joint business venture partnering with the Italian government. This proposed business alliance with Benito Mussolini and his Fascist regime so disconcerted the reigning Hollywood movie moguls that Roach was forced to sever his relationship with MGM and defect to United Artists in 1937.^[2] 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 out of camera range.

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. The Our Gang series continued until 1938, when Roach sold the contracts of the Our Gang cast members and the series name to MGM.

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.).

In 1941, his wife of 26 years, Marguerite, died.

World War II and television[link]

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.^[3]

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[link]

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.^[4]

Death[link]

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 two children (both 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[link]

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.^[5]

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[link]

Further reading[link]

• Richard Lewis Ward. A History of the Hal Roach Studios. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2005.

External links[link]

• Hal Roach at the Internet Movie Database
• Hal Roach
• Biography of Hal Roach, Sr. with list of Academy Awards
• Extensive list of Roach's work and publications about Roach
• The Charlie Hall Picture Archive
• 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

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