Hal Roach Studios

Humble Beginnings

People say laughter will always be the best medicine . Laughter is a medicine that no mere doctor can prescribe yet a comedian can . Hal Roach was among the pioneers of the American film industry . Roach spent most of his youth in Alaska and was greatly influenced by Mark Twain . Roach was a muleskinner and gold rusher in Alaska . He began his career as a humble stunt man in some films at Universal , upon arriving in 1912 in Hollywood . By the time he received his inheritance , He started producing films with

his friend Harold Lloyd . Roach aspired to expand his studios in downtown Los Angeles yet was not successful because of zoning ' at that time ( John Brennan , Biography of Hal Roach ,2002 . The Culver city was purchased instead . It became the flagship studio of Roach Studios Roach had a penchant for humor . Whenever the audience did not laugh sadness engulfed him . It was this trait that lead to Harold Lloyd 's first extended film , the four-reel A , considered to be Lloyd 's first feature film . The success of the film convinced Roach and Lloyd to move Lloyd 's character limited to features only . Roach and Lloyd made some of the best full-length comedy features of the era , including the comedian 's best-known film , Safety Last . An intriguing disagreement developed over Lloyd 's feature Grandma 's Boy ' a disagreement that sheds some light on Roach 's working methods . Although there were friends , the two clashed with their own artistic preferences and differences as well . In the film , a comedy , of course , there was a lengthy Civil War flashback sequence . The sequence , important as exposition , was filmed straight without gags . Roach thought that it stopped the picture cold and wanted it cut , while Lloyd thought it was essential to the film 's story . Roach felt that audiences would stop laughing during the flashback sequence then it would take too long for them to warm up to the comedy scenes that followed . Lloyd was adamant that the sequence was crucial for the picture . Both men were correct but rather than pull rank as producer and have the sequence ejected over Lloyd 's objections , Roach and his star worked out a compromise . The duo would film little gag scenes that could be spliced into the sequences without disrupting the flow of the story , Such compromise was exactly what the film needed . Eventually , it went on to be a huge success . Roach released his films through HYPERLINK "http /en .wikipedia .org /wiki /Pathy " Pathy until 1927 , when he went to HYPERLINK "http /en .wikipedia .org /wiki /Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer . He would transfer to United Artists in 1938 . I He transformed his silent movie studio to a sound one in 1928 and started producing talking shorts early in 1929

Bringing the Roach Comedies to the World

In the days before dubbing , foreign language versions of the Roach comedies were created by re-shooting each film to create Spanish French , and sometimes Italian and German dialogue phonetically ( John...