Hal Roach was the man who owned and ran the silent (later, sound) motion picture studio that made the best Laurel and Hardy comedies, as well as Our Gang and many others. No human being ever had his name on so many funny movies. Around 1983, I got to spend one afternoon talking with Mr. Roach in the home you'll see in this video. He died in 1992, about two months before what would have been his 101st birthday.
He was, at least during our time together, a sweet, funny man who loved to talk about his accomplishments. He also loved to tell dirty jokes and he asked me a lot of questions about "these girls today" and what it was like for a guy my age (31) in the entertainment business. I'll phrase this as nicely as I can: He wanted to know if it was possible to have sex with actresses without giving them a job or marrying them. He didn't suggest he had done either in his day but as we spoke of that and of the kind of opportunities a young man had in today's industry for financial advancement, he did start a lot of sentences with, "Boy, if I was your age today…"
I wish I could tell you that I learned a lot about his studio and my two favorite performers (Stan and Ollie) but the visit was largely useless for that purpose. Without any prompting from me — because, I guess, it was among the first questions everyone asked him — he launched into a story of how Laurel and Hardy teamed up. In his life, Mr. Roach told at least six different versions of this, none of which match up to the films themselves or the truth as established through interviews with others. The story he tells in this clip is as wrong as any of them.
This is something I discovered meeting folks of his era in the movie and cartoon businesses. They develop little stories — witty little anecdotes to tell people and especially reporters. Mel Blanc, for instance, long told a story about how, when asked to come up with a voice for Porky Pig, he decided to give Porky a stutter. It worked fine for years because there was so little history written down that he could tell it in a roomful of people and no one would say, "Uh, Mr. Blanc, weren't you the second voice of Porky Pig, replacing a comedian who'd been hired because he actually stuttered?" I don't think Mel was exactly lying. He'd just simplified the truth down to make it into a shorter, more entertaining anecdote.
Roach had done the same thing with a lot of what he said. He could embellish or rearrange the truth because there were few sources around for better info…and who's going to argue with Hal Roach about how things worked on the Hal Roach lot, anyway? Still, I enjoyed the time we spent together. He was his most forthcoming and realistic when I asked him about the Our Gang comedies and about a great, great comedian who worked for him as a performer and sometimes a director, Charley Chase.
This is a 20 minute conversation with him that ends abruptly in mid-sentence. It's a bit outta-sync but it'll give you an idea about the way he was when I met him, minus the dirty jokes and sex talk. Do not believe most of what he says about how Laurel and Hardy got together…
