ROACH, HAL

born Jan. 14, 1892, Elmira, N.Y., U.S. died Nov. 2, 1992, Bel Air, Calif. original name Harold Eugene Roach American motion-picture director, producer, and writer best known for his comedies of the 1920s and '30s featuring Harold Lloyd, Will Rogers, and the team of Laurel and Hardy. He ranks with Mack Sennett as a creator of inspired chaos in the early Hollywood comic style. He is also remembered as the producer of the shorts and features of Snub Pollard, Charlie Chase, Harry Langdon, and the Our Gang comedies. After a number of miscellaneous jobs, Roach began his film career in 1912 as a bit player in westerns. In 1915 he formed a company to produce the Willie Work comedies of Harold Lloyd, achieving his first success with Just Nuts (1915). Roach also produced Lloyd's Lonesome Luke series, and in 1919 he established the Hal Roach Studios at Culver City, Calif. He went on to produce other Lloyd films, including his famous Safety Last (1923), and in all produced some 2,000 comedy shorts and a large number of full-length features during the 1920s. These included the Will Rogers series (beginning in 1923) that often satirized the movie-making industry; the Our Gang comedies; the two-reel ethnic comedies of Max Davidson; the Dippity-Doo-Dads with an all-animal cast; and adventures featuring Rex the Wonder Horse. Roach's insistence on carefully constructed scripts with good story lines and well-worked characterizations resulted in a humour based on character and situation rather than a string of sight gags. The Laurel and Hardy series includes outstanding pictures like Leave 'em Laughing (1928) and Way Out West (1937). Laurel had been a gag writer and director for Roach, and Hardy, a bit player in Charlie Chase comedies. Two shorts produced by Hal Roach received Academy Awards, The Music Box (1932), with Laurel and Hardy, and the Our Gang short Bored of Education (1936). Roach also produced Topper (1937) and Topper Returns (1941), comedies about amiable ghosts helping a befuddled mortal. Roach also produced some serious films, notably Of Mice and Men (1939), an adaptation of the novel by John Steinbeck, directed by Lewis Milestone. After World War II he turned to television, but his production company failed in the late 1950s. In 1984 he was awarded an Academy Award for life achievement.