Hal Roach
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- For the Irish comedian, see Hal Roach (comedian)
Harold Eugene "Hal" Roach (January 14, 1892–November 2, 1992) was a United States film and television producer from the 1910s to the 1980s. He was born in Elmira, New York.
He began producing short comedies in 1915 with his friend Harold Lloyd, who portrayed a character known as "Lonesome Luke."
During the 1920s and 1930s, he employed Will Rogers, Max Davidson, the Our Gang kids, Charley Chase, Harry Langdon, Thelma Todd and Laurel & Hardy. During this time, his biggest rival was producer Mack Sennett. Roach released his films through Pathé until 1927, when he went to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. He would change again in 1938 to United Artists.
Starting in 1931, with the release of the Laurel & Hardy classic Pardon Us, he started producing full-length features as well as short subjects. Shorts were gradually phased out, with Roach making the final one, Our Gang's Hide and Shriek, in 1938. Roach continued to produce features, the most memorable of which were Of Mice and Men (1939) and One Million Years, B.C. (1940). In the early 1950s, he briefly established himself as a television producer, producing shows such as Amos and Andy and My Little Margie. He retired in the late 1950s and sold his studio in Culver City, California, once known as "The Lot of Fun", which was torn down in 1963. He occasionally worked on projects related to his past work for two more decades and claimed to still be writing gags into the early 1990s.
Hal Roach was 100 years old when he died in 1992. He is buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in Elmira, New York.