Harold Eugene "Hal" Roach Sr. was an American film and television producer, director, screenwriter, and centenarian, who was the founder of the namesake Hal Roach Studios.
Charles Joseph Parrott, known professionally as Charley Chase, was an American comedian, actor, screenwriter and film director. He worked for many pioneering comedy studios but is chiefly associated with producer Hal Roach. Chase was the elder brother of comedian/director James Parrott.
Thelma Alice Todd was an American actress and businesswoman who carried the nicknames "The Ice Cream Blonde" and "Hot Toddy". Appearing in about 120 feature films and shorts between 1926 and 1935, she is remembered for her comedic roles opposite ZaSu Pitts, and in films such as Marx Brothers' Monkey Business and Horse Feathers and a number of Charley Chase's short comedies. She co-starred with Buster Keaton and Jimmy Durante in Speak Easily. She also had roles in several Wheeler and Woolsey and Laurel and Hardy films, the last of which featured her in a part that was cut short by her sudden death in 1935 at the age of 29.
The Our Gang personnel page is a listing of the significant cast and crew from the Our Gang short subjects film series, originally created and produced by Hal Roach which ran in movie theaters from 1922 to 1944.
The following is a complete list of the 220 Our Gang short films produced by Hal Roach Studios and/or Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer between 1922 and 1944, numbered by order of release along with production order.
Rosina May Lawrence was a British-Canadian actress and singer. She had a short but memorable career in the 1920s and 1930s in Hollywood before she married in 1939 and retired from entertainment. She is best known as the schoolteacher in the Our Gang comedies of 1936-37, and as the ingenue in the Laurel and Hardy feature Way Out West.
Hal Roach Studios was an American motion picture and television production studio. Known as The Laugh Factory to the World, it was founded by producer Hal Roach and business partners Dan Linthicum and I.H. Nance as the Rolin Film Company on July 23, 1914. The studio lot, at 8822 Washington Boulevard in Culver City, California, United States, was built in 1920, at which time Rolin was renamed to Hal E. Roach Studios. The first series in Hal Roach Studios were the Willie Work comedies, with first short being A Duke For A Day.
Edward Santree Brophy was an American character actor and comedian, as well as an assistant director and second unit director during the 1920s. Small of build, balding, and raucous-voiced, he frequently portrayed dumb cops and gangsters, both serious and comic.
Patsy Kelly was an American actress. She is known for her role as the brash, wisecracking sidekick to Thelma Todd in a series of short comedy films produced by Hal Roach in the 1930s. Kelly's career continued in similar roles after Todd's death in 1935.
Charles Brown Middleton was an American stage and film actor. During a film career that began at age 46 and lasted almost 30 years, he appeared in nearly 200 films as well as numerous plays. Sometimes credited as Charles B. Middleton, he is perhaps best remembered for his role as the villainous emperor Ming the Merciless in the three Flash Gordon serials made between 1936 and 1940.
Munchies is a 1987 comedy horror film starring Harvey Korman, Charlie Stratton, and Nadine Van der Velde. Directed by Tina Hirsch, the film editor for Gremlins, the film features a similar plotline.
Gertrude Astor was an American motion picture character actress, who began her career playing trombone in a woman's band.
Dogs of War! is a 1923 silent short subject, the fourteenth entry in Hal Roach's Our Gang series. Directed by Robert F. McGowan, the two-reel short was released to theaters in July 1923 by Pathé Exchange. The short was filmed alongside Why Worry?, a feature comedy produced by Roach and starring Harold Lloyd, who makes a cameo appearance in Dogs of War as himself.
Martha Sleeper was a film actress of the 1920s–1930s and, later, a Broadway stage actress. She studied dancing for five years with Russian ballet master, Louis H. Chalif, at his New York dancing studio. Her first public exhibitions were at Carnegie Hall at his class exhibitions.
Pick a Star is a 1937 American musical comedy film starring Rosina Lawrence, Jack Haley, Patsy Kelly and Mischa Auer, directed by Edward Sedgwick, produced by Hal Roach and released through Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and filmed by Norbert Brodine. A reworking of Buster Keaton's first talkie, Free and Easy, the film is mostly remembered today for two short scenes featuring Laurel and Hardy.
The Bad Man of Brimstone is a 1937 American Western film directed by J. Walter Ruben and starring Wallace Beery, Virginia Bruce and Dennis O'Keefe. The screenplay was written by Cyril Hume and Richard Maibaum, from a story by Ruben and Maurice Rapf.
Virginia Karns was a singer and character actress at the Hal Roach Studios in the early 1930s. Fans probably remember her best from the opening scene of the Laurel and Hardy musical comedy Babes in Toyland (1934), in which she portrayed Mother Goose.
Pitts and Todd were a 1930s movie comedy duo consisting of actresses ZaSu Pitts and Thelma Todd. Assembled by Hal Roach as the female counterparts to Laurel and Hardy, the duo's members changed over the years and included actresses Patsy Kelly, Pert Kelton and Lyda Roberti.
Edward Frank Dunn was an American actor best known for his roles in comedy films, supporting many comedians such as Charley Chase, Charlie Chaplin, W. C. Fields and Laurel and Hardy.
Miss Pacific Fleet is a 1935 American comedy film directed by Ray Enright. The film stars Joan Blondell, Glenda Farrell, and Hugh Herbert. The film was based on the short story of the same name by Frederick Hazlitt Brennan in the Collier's magazine. It was released by Warner Bros. on December 14, 1935. Two stranded showgirls in California enter a beauty contest "Miss Pacific Fleet" to win the fare back home to New York City.
