The Roach That Conquered Hollywood

Today, January 14, marks the birth date of one of filmdom’s true forgotten visionaries.

Hal Roach was born this day in Elmira, New York. As a boy, he saw a live presentation by humorist Mark Twain, and a lifelong appreciation of comedy took root. He led an adventurous youth, even visiting Alaska, before finding himself in Hollywood in 1912, where he began work as a film extra, striking up a friendship with an up-and-coming comic named Harold Lloyd. When he fell into some money in 1915, Roach thought he’d try producing short comedies.

He had a golden touch, jump-starting the careers of such notable silent film stars as Harold Lloyd, Charley Chase and Harry Langdon. But his most inspired stroke was pairing a thin, struggling British comic named Arthur Stanley Jefferson (aka Stan Laurel) with a portly film heavy, Oliver Hardy. Thus was born arguably the most successful and beloved comedy team of all time.

Roach continued producing Laurel & Hardy shorts and features, and, if he’s remembered today at all, that’s what most people recall. But he was more adventuresome and ambitious, producing features as diverse as ‘One Million Years B.C.’, ‘Topper’ and more.

But Roach’s finest – and most atypical film – is 1939’s ‘Of Mice and Men’, directed by Lewis Milestone, and starring Burgess Meredith and Lon Chaney, Jr. as the ill-fated George and Lennie, two itinerant farm workers in California’s Salinas Valley. The two mismatched friends share a dream of better days, and come close to seeing it to fruition. Poetic, sober, heartbreaking, ‘Of Mice and Men’ became a classic. It also launched the career of young Chaney, who up until that point had been struggling in walk-ons in B Westerns.

Click here to see a clip. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXOXlPBjNSM