Hal Roach
In 1955 Roach sold his interests in the production company to his son, Hal Roach, Jr., and retired from active production. Unfortunately, the younger Roach lacked much of his father's business acumen, and soon lost the studio to creditors.
For two more decades Roach Sr. occasionally worked as a consultant on projects related to his past work, and was planning a comeback comedy at age 96. Hal Roach was a guest on Late Night with David Letterman in 1982, where he recounted experiences with such stars as Stan Laurel and Jean Harlow; he even did a brief, energetic demonstration of a hula dance.
At age 92, he was presented with an honorary Academy Award. In the spring of 1992, not long after his 100th birthday, Roach once again appeared at the Academy Awards ceremony, hosted by Billy Crystal. When Mr. Roach rose from the audience to speak during the ceremony, the sound system did not pick up his words. Crystal quipped "I think that's fitting, after all — Mr. Roach started in silent film..."
Hal Roach was two months away from his one-hundred-and-first birthday, when he died on November 2, 1992, at his home in Bel Air, California from pneumonia. He was married twice, and had a number of children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. He is buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in Elmira, New York, where he had grown up.
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Hal Roach Studios
The 14.5 acre (58680 m²) studio once known as "The Lot of Fun," containing 55 buildings, was torn down in 1963 and replaced by light industrial buildings, businesses, and an automobile dealership, where a plaque marks the studio's location. Most of the film library was bought by a Canadian company that adopted the "Hal Roach Studios" name. It primarily handled the business of keeping the library in the public eye and licensing products based upon the classic film series.
In 1983 Hal Roach Studios was one of the first studios to venture into the controversial business of film colorization, creating digitally colored versions of several Laurel and Hardy features, the Frank Capra film It's a Wonderful Life and other popular films. In the 1980s, Hal Roach Studios produced Kids Incorporated in association with old business partner MGM. From 1988 to 1990, while producing Kids Incorporated, Hal Roach Studios was known as Qintex.
In the years that followed, the Roach company changed hands several more times. Independent television producer Robert Halmi bought the company in the early 1990s, and it became RHI Entertainment. A short time later, this successor company was acquired by Hallmark Entertainment in 1994, but Halmi, Robert Halmi Jr. and affiliates of Kelso & Company reacquired the company in 2006. Hallmark Entertainment was absorbed into RHI Entertainment (with Lions Gate Home Entertainment as home video output partner).
In that same decade, a new incarnation of Hal Roach Studios (operated by the Roach Trust) was established, and today this new version of the company has released classic films on DVD, many of which are from Roach's own archival prints of his films, while others are public domain titles mastered from the best available 35 mm elements.
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References
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Further reading
- Richard Lewis Ward. A History of the Hal Roach Studios. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2005.
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External links
- Biography of Hal Roach, Sr. with list of Academy Awards
- Extensive list of Roach's work and publications about Roach
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