From: L-Bueno@cup.portal.com (Louis Alberto Bueno)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies
Subject: MOVIE PIONEER HAL ROACH DIES AT AGE 100
Date: Wed,  4 Nov 92 23:13:52 PDT
Organization: The Portal System (TM)
Distribution: world

MOVIE PIONEER HAL ROACH DIES AT AGE 100
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By Dennis McLellan
(c) 1992, Los Angeles Times 11/02

           HOLLYWOOD _ Movie producer Hal Roach, who teamed Laurel with
Hardy and turned a talented yet unaffected group of child actors into ``Our
Gang'' during a career that spanned silent one-reelers and television
situation comedies, died Monday at his home in Los Angeles.
           His 100th birthday in January, celebrated at the Motion Picture
and Television Home, produced what proved a final outpouring of sentiment
and public attention to the film industry's oldest pioneer.
           He had been in relatively good health despite his age, said
Richard Bann, his biographer. ``Through most of his 90s, he drove a car, he
smoked, he drank, he dated, he went hunting. He did everything that any man
can do _ and with a vengeance,'' said Bann, co-author of ``The Little
Rascals: the Life and Times of Our Gang.'' Roach developed pneumonia about
a week ago, Bann added.
           A self-made man who worked his way up from a $5-a-day cowboy
extra to millionaire head of his own studio, Roach was renowned as the
producer of some of Hollywood's finest short comedies.
           At various times during the 1920s, the comedy roster at Hal
Roach Studios in Culver City, Calif., included Harold Lloyd, Will Rogers,
Charley Chase, Harry Langdon, Mabel Normand, Snub Pollard, Zasu Pitts,
Thelma Todd, Patsy Kelly and Irvin S. Cobb.
           But it was Roach's creation of ``Our Gang'' and the teaming of
Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy that gave the small, independent studio its
biggest successes and created an enduring comedy legacy.
           Those joinings also earned Roach two Academy Awards for best
short subjects: Laurel and Hardy's ``The Music Box'' in 1932; and Our
Gang's ``Boredof Education'' in 1936.
           One of his last public appearances was last summer in Las Vegas,
Nev., for a convention of the Sons of the Desert, the international Laurel
and Hardy appreciation society. Roach's vigor and forward-looking nature
were constants throughout his life and career.
           Born in Elmira, N.Y., Roach left home at 17 and spent the next
three years working as a mule skinner and prospector in Alaska and as a
truck driver in Seattle.
           It was while working for a construction outfit in California's
Mojave Desert in 1912 that the 20-year-old Roach paid a fateful visit to
Los Angeles.
           He discovered that movie extras worked only from 8 a.m. to 4
p.m. _ when the sun was shining _ and received car fare and lunch. They
also earned $5 a day, which, Roach later recalled, ``was a whole lot of
money in those days.''
           An expert horseman, Roach became a cowboy extra for Universal,
one of the many fledgling companies in Hollywood, at that time so rural
that a sign on the back of a streetcar warned passengers: ``Don't shoot
rabbits from the rear platform.''
           Roach's lack of experience did not prevent him from rising
quickly through the ranks to assistant director and director. Indeed, in
that primitive era of hand-cranked movie cameras and open-air sets, Roach
once said, ``nobody knew much about what they were doing.''
           In 1914, using an inheritance of several hundred dollars, Roach
formed the Rolin Film Co. His first picture, a one-reel Western, featured
his actor-friend Harold Lloyd, who became Roach's first star. Beginning
with the ``Lonesome Luke'' comedy series, and later donning horn-rimmed
glasses, Lloyd went on to become one of the top comedians of the silent
era.
           In 1919, Roach and company moved to new quarters in Culver City.
A publicist later dubbed the 14-acre studio ``the Lot of Fun.''
           The idea for the perennially popular Our Gang series was born by
accident. ''
           One day in 1922, Roach watched a handful of children playing in
a lumber yard. When the amused Roach looked at his watch, he realized he
had been at the window 15 minutes. ``I said, `Why am I watching them?
They're just regular kids doing things regular kids do.' ''
           Then it dawned on him that audiences might be just as fascinated
watching ``regular'' kids doing ``regular'' things on the screen. He
assembled a group of child actors for a movie to test his theory.
           Originally, he said, they were to be called the Hal Roach
Rascals. But because the first picture, ``Our Gang,'' gained so much
publicity, ``Our Gang'' remained as the name of the long-running series.
           In 1926, another movie tradition was born when contract players
Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy appeared for the first time in the same movie.
           ``The other people (on the lot) thought that they complemented
each other,'' Roach recalled in interviews years later. ``So we gave them a
little more in a second picture and then (director) Leo McCarey made
`Putting Pants on Philip,' which is considered their first team comedy.
           Roach believed the basic formula for comedy was simple.
           ``It's portraying things a child does,'' he once said. ``But it
takes a great artist to do it _ like Stan Laurel crying or scratching his
head, or Oliver Hardy playing with his tie. They were adults playing
children. The reverse was the `Our Gang' series with children playing
grown-ups.''
           Roach, who kept a hand in all phases of the studio's operation,
was also an amateur pilot and an avid sportsman, with a particular passion
for polo. When Will Rogers worked at the studio, he and Roach would often
skip lunch and play polo on a nearby field.
           In 1934, Roach was one of the three leading founders of one of
the nation's major racing venues, Santa Anita Park, and he served as the
first president of the Los Angeles Turf Club, which operates the track.
           In the '30s, when the demand for short subjects began to wane
with the advent of feature double bills, Roach turned to production of
feature-length movies, including the sophisticated ``Topper'' series, ``One
Billion B.C.'' and, most notably, the screen version of John Steinbeck's
``Of Mice and Men.''
           In 1942, Roach, then 50 and a major in the Army Signal Corps
Reserve, was ordered to report for duty in the corps' photographic
division. He was stationed in England and saw action in the Normandy
invasion.
           Roach's studio also went to war. Rented to the government, it
became headquarters for the Air Corps' first Motion Picture Unit. Fort
Roach, as it was dubbed, is where Lt. Ronald Reagan spent the war narrating
training and propaganda films.
            After the war, Roach became the first major Hollywood producer
to switch completely to TV production. By 1951, after three years, Hal
Roach Studios was producing 1500 hours of TV films a year.
           Among the many early series produced by Roach or filmed at his
studio were ``The Life of Riley,'' ``Amos and Andy,'' ``My Little Margie,''
``Racket Squad,'' ``Trouble with Father'' and ``Topper.''
           In 1955, Roach sold the studio to his son, Hal Roach Jr. It
became part of an industrial combine that collapsed and, in 1959, the
studio declared bankruptcy. When the studio emerged from those proceedings,
all that was left was its extensive film library.
           The studio was sold in 1962, and a year later all the props,
equipment and furnishings were sold at public auction and the studio was
razed.
           Roach's first wife, actress Margaret Nichols, died in 1940;
their daughter Margaret died in 1964, and their son Hal Roach Jr. died in
1972.
           Roach's second wife, Lucille, died in 1981. They had four
daughters, one of whom, Elizabeth, died in 1946. His surviving daughters
are Maria Watkins, Jeanne Roach and Bridget Anderson and eight
grandchildren.