Mishap or No, Roach Keeps an O.C. Date

The episode that delayed Hal Roach’s arrival at Edison High School in Huntington Beach on Thursday might have come from one of his silent slapstick comedies of the 1910s, but unlike the pratfalls that dogged the resilient characters in those early years of film, the consequences this time were all too real.

Roach arrived 25 minutes late for a talk with students in a Coastline Community College cinema course after he slammed his thumb in a car door and had to be taken to an emergency room for several stitches. His hand was heavily bandaged, but the 97-year-old film pioneer seemed unconcerned as he answered questions about his work as producer of comedies starring such famous names as Laurel and Hardy, Harold Lloyd and the “Our Gang” kids.

The choir room at Edison was decorated for Roach’s arrival with huge posters (“WE YOU HAL!” read one), student drawings of Laurel and Hardy and other Roach stars, and slips of colored paper with titles from some of the many films produced by Roach in his long career.

While waiting for Roach, the crowd even practiced a standing ovation.

Roach regularly turns down requests for public appearances and speaking engagements, but he finds time each year to speak to teacher Linda Carpenter’s cinema class at Edison, which includes high-school age and older students. He has spoken there nine times in the past 13 years, the string broken only in years when the class was not offered.

Carpenter was teaching at Edison in 1976 when she asked each student to write to a film personality. One student wrote to Roach, who agreed to come and speak. When he arrived at the school, he was greeted with posters, balloons, flowers, a cake and a plaque from the students.

Roach’s wife, now deceased, wrote to Carpenter and said her husband felt quite honored by the reception, and would come out to the school anytime. Since then, he has never turned her down.

“Yesterday, it was amazing to me that he was still insisting on coming,” even after the hand injury, Carpenter said. “I can’t tell you, honestly, why he’s done this all these years. . . . I think he does it for the kids.”

Roach, looking fit, walked unassisted down a series of steps to a chair at the front of the room. In a still-strong voice aided by a microphone, he gave the young crowd a few general words of wisdom (such as “don’t do anything . . . if you don’t want to do it”) before the questions started.

Asked what motivated him to join the movie business, Roach answered: “Nothing motivated me. I was just the luckiest guy you ever saw.” When he was 21, he explained, he was working as a supervisor on a gas pipeline construction project in Lancaster when he spotted a call for men in Western attire for a film shoot. The next day he found himself shooting a saloon scene at Universal Studios, and noticed that they were using the roulette wheel incorrectly.

“They were rolling the ball and the wheel in the same direction,” Roach recalled. He pointed this out to the director, who invited Roach to join the company at the then-princely sum of $5 a day (he had been making $75 a month as a construction supervisor). “You’re an actor now,” the director told Roach.

He started as a stunt man, extra and bit player in Westerns, but before long he had worked his way up to assistant director and later to director. Within little more than a year he had started his production company with the help of a $3,000 inheritance, and by 1916 he scored a success by making a comedy star out of a fellow bit player from Universal named Harold Lloyd.

Roach struck gold when he paired Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy in a 1927 silent comedy called “Putting Pants on Philip,” still one of the producer’s favorite films. “After we made that picture,” Roach said, “we knew we had a team.” The famed duo stayed with Roach until 1940.

Roach, who lives in Bel Air, also was asked about the highly successful “Our Gang” series of comedy shorts, which ran from 1922 to 1944 (Roach sold the rights to MGM in 1938). In 1955, about 100 of the shorts were released to television as “The Little Rascals,” as MGM still had the rights to the name “Our Gang.” The high schoolers in Thursday’s audience appeared familiar with the shorts, which continue to be shown on TV.

Roach attributed the success of the series to the quality of the child actors. “Some kids are great at arithmetic, some are great at athletics,” he explained. “Some kids are just great actors.”

Approaching 100, Roach remains busy. He cut his Edison visit short after about 20 minutes so he could return to Hollywood for a meeting on a new game show he is developing.

He also hopes to produce a new movie musical similar to the “Our Gang” idea, and he is promoting a new comedy team by the name of Punch and Hooty. “They will be my next Laurel and Hardy,” he said.

He is generally dismayed, he added, with the current state of Hollywood. “Today, there’s just too much talk of money and not enough talk of quality. What the hell happened to the great producers?”