The studio that paired Laurel with Hardy and made Lloyd a star

Hal Roach Studios was a Hollywood comedy studio founded in 1914, and it paired Stan Laurel with Oliver Hardy, turned Harold Lloyd into a star and created Our Gang, the children's series later shown on television as The Little Rascals. Its founder, Hal Roach, won two Academy Awards, both for short subjects, a short being a film much shorter than a feature. One of them, for The Music Box with Laurel and Hardy, was the first Oscar given for a live action comedy short.

Relay has at least 6 Roach productions, released from 1922 to 1941. They cover silent features, a Laurel and Hardy musical and a run of ghost and carnival comedies.

How did a gold miner start a comedy studio?

Roach was born in 1892 in Elmira, New York. He worked as a gold miner and mule-train driver in Alaska, then reached Hollywood as an extra. On July 23, 1914 he incorporated the Rolin Film Company with two partners, Dan Linthicum and I.H. Nance. The name combined Roach and Linthicum. By 1920 it was the Hal E. Roach Studios, working from a lot in Culver City, California.

Its early star was Lloyd, the silent-film comedian. Roach rehired him for the Lonesome Luke comedies, then developed the bespectacled, all-American boy character that made Lloyd a star. In 1927 Roach teamed Laurel and Hardy, the comedy duo, and their first comedy as a team under his banner was Duck Soup. Laurel and Hardy and Our Gang then carried the studio through the arrival of sound and the Great Depression, and reissues later earned Roach money on television and home video.

What did the studio do when shorts stopped paying?

Theaters moved to double features, two films on one ticket. Roach answered with the streamliner, a 40 to 50 minute comedy that a theater could book as its second film instead of a longer B feature, a cheap film made to fill the bottom of the bill. United Artists released them through 1943, and 20 of the 29 features Roach made for United Artists were streamliners.

During the Second World War the lot was leased to the Army Air Forces, whose film unit made training films there, and it was nicknamed Fort Roach. The studio went bankrupt in 1959 under Roach's son, Hal Roach Jr., and the lot was demolished in 1963. Roach lived to 100.

Which Roach films are on Relay?

Dr. Jack (1922)

A reel of film ran about ten minutes, so a five-reel feature ran about an hour. Dr. Jack was Lloyd's first intentional five-reeler. It cost $113,440 and grossed $1,275,423, one of the ten most profitable releases of 1922. Lloyd plays a doctor whose old-fashioned methods help a girl that a quack's sanitarium had treated unsuccessfully for years.

Comedy

Grandma's Boy (1922)

An advertisement in 1922 called it Lloyd's first five-reel feature comedy. It cost $94,412 and earned about $1.1 million in the United States and Canada. Critics have credited it with helping pioneer feature-length comedies that mixed gags with character development. A timid young man must find courage when a tramp threatens his town.

Comedy

The Bohemian Girl (1936)

Laurel and Hardy star in a comedy based on an opera, released by MGM in 1936. Thelma Todd, a co-star, died on December 16, 1935 while it was being made, and it was her last film. Roach ordered retakes to reduce the importance of her character, and Zeffie Tilbury was added as the Gypsy Queen. Hardy plays a husband whose wife, played by Mae Busch, deceives him about a child's parentage.

Comedy

Topper Returns (1941)

Roy Del Ruth directed this third film of the original Topper series. Roland Young plays Cosmo Topper, a banker who can see and speak with ghosts, and a murdered woman's ghost asks him to find her killer. It earned two Oscar nominations, Best Special Effects and Best Sound Recording, and UCLA's film archive showed it at its 2022 Festival of Preservation.

Comedy

Road Show (1941)

Roach directed and produced it for United Artists. It is based on a 1934 novel by Eric S. Hatch, and Adolphe Menjou and Carole Landis star. A wealthy heir fakes madness to escape a gold digger, lands in a sanitarium and joins a carnival.

Comedy

Miss Polly (1941)

A streamliner released on November 14, 1941. A town's rigid morality has gone two years without a wedding, and Miss Polly helps a couple around the meddling do-gooders. It runs about 45 minutes, which is the format Roach built for double features.

Comedy

Where to go next

• For a studio that lived on cheap films, see Monogram Pictures.
• For the company Chaplin and Pickford founded, see United Artists.