Charlie Hall

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Charlie Hall (born August 19, 1899 in Birmingham , England , † December 7, 1959 in Hollywood , Los Angeles , California ) was a British film actor . Hall gained notoriety primarily through his appearances as the adversary of Laurel and Hardy , whose most frequent supporting actor he was in almost 50 films.

Life

Charlie Hall grew up in a poor family. The qualified carpenter came even as a teenager of vaudeville troupe to Fred Karno at in which even Charles Chaplin , Stan Laurel and Will Hay had begun their careers. In 1920 Hall visited his sister in New York City and settled permanently in the United States . He found work as a stage worker, but then tried acting again. Hall made his film debut in Hollywood in 1921, while the movie was still silent . From the mid-1920s, Hall was one of the many comedy actors used by producer Hal Roach in his films. When he fell out with his studio bosses around 1938, he had to work in an English gas mask factory for a monthly salary of just over three US dollars. He asked director George Stevens for $ 200 so that he could return to Hollywood. Ultimately, he made the comeback .

Though Hall often shot with other Roach comedians like Charley Chase and the Little Rascals , he is best known today for his role as the constant adversary of Laurel and Hardy . He played in 44 of the comedian duo's 106 films, making him their most frequent supporting actor, ahead of James Finlayson and Mae Busch . Because of his small stature (1.64 meters), the dark-haired actor was mostly seen in the role of the angry "poison dwarf" and was often referred to as the "little nemesis " of Laurel and Hardy. His appearances with the comedian duo varied in size: while he can only be seen for a few seconds in some films, he almost plays leading roles alongside the comedian duo in others. Among other things, he embodied the strict innkeeper in Laurel and Hardy: All dogs love Stan , who at the end of the film commits suicide because of Stan and Ollie. At one point he even had a two-film feud with Laurel and Hardy: in those distant mountains they accidentally get Hall's wife Mae Busch drunk, and in the second film, The Tainted Honor , Stan and Ollie move in next to his grocery store. He recognizes the two immediately and destroys the business of the comedian duo because he suspects an affair between Ollie and his wife. One of his few friendly roles with Stan and Ollie was his brief appearance as a helpful postman in The Grueling Piano Transport . When he was over 40, he played a student in Oxford , where he wanted to get revenge on Stan and Ollie again.

In addition to his work with Laurel and Hardy, he has also appeared in other films, such as Buster Keaton's College , King Kong and the white woman , I dance my way into your heart and the devil is loose in hell! . However, outside of Laurel and Hardy, he mostly only played extras roles . After the end of the Hal Roach films, Hall took on many minor roles in the major Hollywood studios in the 1940s and 1950s and occasionally also played on television. He appeared in several RKO short films by his former Roach colleague Edgar Kennedy , played in the limelight with Charlie Chaplin and was seen in an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents . After nearly 300 films, he retired from the acting business in 1956.

Charlie Hall died in 1959 at the age of 60. He was married twice, to Dolly Gray until her death in 1937 and Wilda George. Charlie Hall is buried in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale . Near Birmingham there is a museum called The Charlie Hall as a tribute to the comedy actresses, and two books have been published in recent years about him.

Filmography (selection)

literature

  • Dean McKeown: The Charlie Hall Picture Archive. The Nutty Nut News Network Press. (2009)
  • John Ullah: This Is More Than I Can Stand: A Biography of Charlie Hall (2012)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Charlie Hall at Nutty Networks
  2. ↑ Article in the Birmingham Mail
  3. ↑ Charlie Hall at Laurel and Hardy.com

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Hall, Charlie
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English actor
DATE OF BIRTH August 19, 1899
PLACE OF BIRTH Birmingham , England
DATE OF DEATH 7th December 1959
Place of death Hollywood , Los Angeles , California, USA