Customer Reviews

A History of the Hal Roach Studios

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During the 1910s, Hal Roach started a little comedy studio. By the late 1920s, he had eclipsed rival Mack Sennett both artistically and financially. His studio built Harold Lloyd and Stan Laurel & Oliver Hardy into major comedy stars. And lots of lesser comedians like Snub Pollard, Charley Chase, Our Gang, Will Rogers, and Thelma Todd made funny films there too.

While a comprehensive artistic history of the studio has yet to be written, Mr. Ward's book goes into great detail on the inner workings of the business side of movie making. From the beginning of the studio, Roach had problems with Pathe booking his films into theaters. Pathe complained that the Roach films were not funny, and did not always pay Roach enough to make a good profit. After Roach signed a distribution agreement with M-G-M, things were much rosier, especially because Laurel & Hardy became such big stars.

Roach even secretly made a Laurel & Hardy feature film, and many more followed. Roach also made a few dramatic films too, like OF MICE AND MEN and ONE MILLION BC. Roach's studio survived into the 1950s, being run by Hal Roach, Jr. and making television programs. However, after World War II the studio's glory days were behind them.

If you are a fan of Harold Lloyd, Laurel & Hardy, Charley Chase, or Our Gang, this book is a must read. While critical assesments of films are only in a small appendix, this book will tell you everything else about the struggles that the Roach personnel had making great comedies. Although Roach certainly was successful, you will be surprised with all of the failed comedy series that he tried. And you will discover that Roach was a much better producer than director. His later directoral films were not very good.

Mr. Ward's book is extensively researched and end-noted. It belongs on the bookshelf of any silent comedy or sound comedy fan.

I debated for quite some time on whether I wanted to read what I feared would be boring background information on the inner-workings of a studio from the distant past. However, I finally decided to purchase this book, since I am a big fan of the studio's product, principally Laurel & Hardy, Our Gang, and early Harold Lloyd. Anyway, I was very pleasantly surprised. This book is a very interesting read, the author having done a remarkable job of fleshing out the story of Hal Roach Studios. If you have even a passing interest in the artists who worked at Hal Roach Studios, or are interested in the story of a tireless, risk-taking entrepreneur (i.e., Hal Roach), then I highly recommend this book. My only complaint is that I wish there had been a few more pictures. But those the author chose to include are quite interesting. My thanks to the author for writing this excellent book.

I just finished reading this book and really enjoyed it.I've really laerned a lot about what life was like behind the scenes of the films I grew up with,such as Our Gang and Laurel & Hardy.I highly recoomend this book.