Name: Hal Roach on Letterman, November 9, 1982
Uploaded: 2015-12-07T02:42:00.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Hal Roach on Letterman, November 9, 1982' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2015-12-07. Transcript available. As aired on E! October 6, 1995.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Hal Roach on Letterman, November 9, 1982' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2015-12-07. Transcript available. As aired on E! October 6, 1995.

Hello. Welcome back to the show, ladies and gentlemen. My next guest is one of
the giants
of American movies and American comedy. He began his career in 1912, and his
studio produced the
films of The Little Rascals, Harold Lloyd, Will Rogers, Laurel and Hardy, and
other comedy greats
on television. His studio was responsible for producing My Little Margie, The Lone
Ranger,
The Life of Riley, Topper, and scores of other popular shows. We're honored
that he could be
with us tonight. Please welcome Mr. Hal Rose.
This is very nice of you to be here. I'm very excited, and the folks are
equally excited.
This is an unbelievable list of talent that you have worked with. You started
in 1912. Is it
all right to ask you your age here at this point? A little over 90. A little
over 90.
Let me read you a list of the people who started their careers with you.
Director George Stevens,
Leo McCary, Frank Capra, actors and actresses Gene Harlow, Janet Gaynor, Faye
Ray, Boris Karloff,
and Charlie Chase. Charlie Chase, I guess I don't know much about.
Well, Charlie, in the early days, came to work for me. He came to the studio.
This guy came at me. I had
never seen him before. And he says, I'm an actor. I'm a director. I'm a writer.
I'm a producer. I can do
anything you want me to do. He says, I can play anything. I can play heavies. I
can play characters.
I can play a tree. I can play a lighthouse. I said, Charlie, just a minute. You
play a lighthouse. How do
you play that? He says, very simple.
When you started in the beginning of your career, you did everything, too, didn't
you?
Oh, yes. I started as an actor and cowboy. And then I was an assistant director,
then a director.
Did some stunt work, also? My own company. What?
Did some stunt work?
Oh, yes. Big money, too. You fall off a horse for a buck.
And you'd beg the guy to let you fall off for a dollar.
And then you started your own studio.
That's right.
How did this come about? Was that with Harold Lloyd?
Oh, yes. Harold Lloyd and I were both actors together. In fact, Harold Lloyd
and I and one other
guy, there were three eunuchs at the birth of Samson. And Harold and I and this
other guy were the three eunuchs.
That's a fine credit to have on any resume, isn't it? Played a eunuch at the
birth of Samson.
Oh, yeah.
We have a clip here. I believe this is from The Little Rascals or The Our Gang
Comedies. I'm not sure of the difference, but they were both started out to be
your property, right?
Yeah.
And this is probably something that folks are most familiar with. They still
run these things all over the world, don't they?
Oh, I think so, yes. They seem to.
All right. So we're going to take a look at a scene from, I guess it's called
Schools Out, and it's an Our Gang comedy film. Watch the monitors.
Dear ladies and gentlemen, Hal Roach presents for your entertainment and
approval, His Rascals. In their latest Our Gang comedy, entitled, Schools Out.
You wasn't thinking of getting married, was it?
Married?
Yeah.
Why, would everyone put that idea into your little head?
Well, which McGillie could have done, we lost her.
We hope you don't get married until you're 80 years old.
My goodness. I want to get married sometime.
Believe me, married life is sure tough.
My granddad died.
His room has been married only 75 years, Miss Crabtree.
My mom said she didn't know what real trouble wasn't until she married pa.
I heard my pa say, my mom made you marry her.
Promise me you'll never get married, Miss Crabtree.
Oh, no.
Hmm, hmm.
I wouldn't do that.
I want to get married sometime.
Oh, gee, give us a break.
When do we like grow up?
Why, Jackie, do you want to marry me?
Maybe when I get big and grow with kids.
Why, you're sweet, darling.
Shame, shame, shame.
Sure.
Now, is it true that you originally designed that series to be about kids and
animals?
Oh, yes.
And this was, uh...
That was a dog.
Yeah, this was the dog.
This was Pete the pup.
And then later, you actually did an all-animal series of film shorts, right?
Yes.
It's called The Dippy Doodads.
All right?
Now, these are...
Are these...
Do we still have prints of these somewhere?
Because I...
Oh, yes.
But I don't...
They're not used very often.
Okay.
This is a scene from one of those Dippy Doodads.
Is that right?
Describe for us what we're looking at here.
Well, I can't see myself.
Oh, well, the very fine animal trainer who trained all the animals for the Yard
Gang
trained all these animals for the Dippy Doodads.
And he was originally an Italian organ grinder who had monkeys.
But his monkeys could almost talk, and he taught all these animals.
And here we have a monkey on a donkey, I guess.
That's a goat, isn't it?
Did these do pretty well?
Did people take the Dippy Doodads to their hearts?
We made them in two reelers.
They should have been made in one reel.
A two-reeler is a what?
A 30 minutes.
And a one reel would have been...
15.
I see.
Again, a magic moment from the Dippy Doodads.
All right.
We have one more here.
Okay.
There are no humans in these at all?
No.
They're all...
The Dippy Doodads were all animals.
Yeah.
Before you started producing things, was any other studio in California doing
comedies on a regular basis?
Oh, sure.
Mack Sennett.
Oh, yeah.
The big...
We were supposed to be enemies, but we were very friendly, actually.
Uh-huh.
And what was the difference between the kind of things that you were doing and
the things that they were doing?
Well, I started with Harold Lloyd in the early days.
That's in 1914.
And he had a comedy costume on, as most of the comedians did at that time.
Sennett was way ahead of me as far as the number of pictures made and the price
he got for them and so on.
I didn't pass Sennett until actually sound came in.
And the theater changed from the Nickelodeon to the Motion Picture Palace.
And they started making big, important feature pictures.
And the two-wheel comedy was very important at that time.
And I had more stories in them, a little more...
They were pretty much all slapstick, weren't they, the Senate comedies?
Well, the original, yes.
And for the first four or five or six years, I mean, Harold Lloyd, you threw
him out of every scene,
and he landed on his rear end in the next one.
I mean, you know, everything was bangity-bangity-bang as far as comedy was
concerned
for both Sennett and myself and others making comedies at that time.
Did Stan Laurel start out as a single when you first found him?
Was he working on him?
No.
Well, there's a big question.
I mean, I thought I found Stan Laurel at a vaudeville house on Main Street in
Los Angeles.
But they tell me that he made five pictures or so at my studio before that.
But at that time, his eyes were light blue, and they didn't photograph.
So he became a writer.
Then when they had panchromatic film, his eyes were able to see his, you know,
photograph all right.
And that's when Laurel and her started.
But he originally started out as a single, and then they got together?
Well, I don't know.
I don't remember those other pictures at all.
I don't know what happened.
But when they, it was after he was in vaudeville that I saw him in Main Street
and brought him to the studio.
And then for about a year, he was a writer at the studio because his eyes
wouldn't photograph.
And then panchromatic and his eyes did photograph.
We put him with Hardy, who was a heavy working at the studio.
And then two developed into a team.
All right.
We have lots more to talk about.
We'll continue with Hal Royce right after you.
Take a look at the show.
Hi there.
Hal Royce is here.
Tell me about the story of the Laurel and Hardy film.
It was a big business.
Was that the name of the film?
Yes.
Was this the one where the house came into play?
You did something to a house that you weren't supposed to do?
Well, just very quickly, they were selling Christmas trees in the summertime,
and we needed a bungalow.
And one of the boys working at the studio had a bungalow close to the studio.
The location man went over and made a picture of the house and showed it to the
director.
He okayed the house.
And we said, well, you're going to wreck your house, but we'd put it back and
pay you so much money.
Well, what actually happened on the way to the house, the director, who had the
picture in his hand, he saw the house, and he said, here it is, stop.
So there were about five or six cars with trucks stopped, and there's the house.
And first, the assistant director says, the key doesn't work.
And the director says, never mind, we're going to break the door down.
Anyway, break the door down.
So they did.
Well, they completely wrecked this house in two weeks.
They broke every window.
They cut down every tree.
They cut down every bush.
They wrecked everything there was about the house.
And the last day, a man and wife and two kids drove up in front of the house.
The woman almost fainted, and we had the wrong house.
The other house was blocked away.
Now, is this the house that you used, or the house you were supposed to use?
This is the house we should not have used.
So this is the one that ended up being in your film?
Well, no, no, this is the one they used, but they shouldn't have.
Yeah, that's amazing.
And it cost me a lot of money, I would guess, huh?
Yeah, I had to pay twice.
Yeah.
Who do you like now of comedy performers that you see?
Oh, I like Letterman very much.
Oh, now, you don't need to.
That's awfully nice of you to say.
But who, when you're at home watching television, do you enjoy the work of?
Oh, if he would just get above the belt, I like Benny Hill, the Englishman.
I think that he would be funnier than Chaplin if he would stop doing all the
dirty things that he does.
But how is anybody with kids going to say, watch Benny Hill?
Yeah.
And as I say, the kids made Chaplin, and the kids could make Benny Hill, too,
if he just cleaned it up a little bit.
Is there anybody in American television that you enjoy?
Oh, yes.
Oh, yes.
Connor is very good.
And there's not, I mean, there's a lot of comedians, but there's not a lot of
very funny ones.
Yeah.
Tell me about your meeting with Mark Twain.
Well, you killed the story to start with, but I'll tell you the story.
I went to Sunday school at Park Church.
Now, this will still work all right, don't you think?
No.
I haven't ruined, I really haven't ruined.
Well, we'll find out at the end.
I guess we will.
I, as a little kid, I went to Sunday school.
Wait a minute, excuse me.
Let me, let me rephrase it.
Have you ever met any legendary literary figures?
Yes.
Okay, go ahead.
I went to the Park Church school, Sunday school at Park Church in Elmira.
And when you went to Sunday school, you went into the auditorium, and the
minister had a few words to say,
and they did a little prayer or something like that.
Then you went to rooms with a little card that you were supposed to memorize
from the week before,
and you were, somebody was to recite that to show the children.
And the teacher gave us a few instructions, and then we came back to the
auditorium.
The minister said a few things, and if we were lucky, then we were through.
But every once in a while, they had guest speakers for the children.
And believe me, they were lousy.
And, you know, the speakers would come on, and you'd sit there, and most of
them were over the heads of the children anyway.
You couldn't understand a word they said, or you weren't interested in what
they said.
And on this particular day, an elderly man with a gray mustache and regularly
gray hair broke down,
and they announced there would be a guest speaker.
And the guest speaker got up on the rostrum, and he looked the kids over, and
he said,
this is not going to be a very long speech, because I know you children don't
want to hear a very long speech.
In fact, I was in church a while back, and there was a man talking about, a
missionary talking about the poor heathen Chinese.
And I was interested, and I thought, well, I will give a dollar for the poor heathen
Chinese.
He says, the man kept talking and talking and talking about the heathen Chinese,
until finally I said, maybe 50 cents was enough for those heathen Chinese.
He said, they kept, he kept on talking and talking, and finally they passed the
plate.
He said, I reached in the plate and took out five cents for my car fare home.
That was the end of the story by Mark Twain.
Have you had any recent offers to get back into producing anything for
television?
Oh, nothing. It was very financial.
Do you remember the last time somebody brought a proposal to you and said, what
about this, Hal?
Well, I have written, and still have in my book, I mean, dozens of shows that I
think would be good on television,
but I don't think anybody's very interested.
And I'm getting a little bit too old to do it anyway.
Mm-hmm.
So, I mean, as I say, that...
Yeah.
So, you're just going to take things easy, pretty much, from here on.
Yeah, I hope so.
Is there anything else you wanted?
I know that the, well, is there anything else that we need to ever hear?
Well, as I say, I mean, I'm a little, can't sing, can't dance, you know,
but years ago, I was in Honolulu, and some people over there taught me the bashful
hulu.
And if you people wouldn't mind, if I can have a little Hawaiian music, I will
try to give them my...
Now, I have to...
I have to turn my back.
Hawaiian music.
Is it going now?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Oh, come on.
All right.
Go ahead with the music.
Thank you very much.
We're out of time.
I want to thank my guest, Mr. Hal Roach.
It was a pleasure meeting you, sir.
Thank you very much for being here.
Also, Brooke Shields.
Tomorrow night, we will have Jay Leno and From the Police Sting,
plus exclusive coverage of the Rocco Laurie Intermediate School 8th Grade
Presidential Elections.
Good night.
Thank you very much for being here.
Thank you very much for being here.
Thank you very much for being here.
Thank you very much for being here.
Thank you very much for being here.
Thank you very much for being here.
Thank you very much for being here.
Thank you very much for being here.
Thank you very much for being here.
Thank you very much for being here.
Thank you very much for being here.

Hal Roach on Letterman, November 9, 1982

Hello. Welcome back to the show, ladies and gentlemen. My next guest is one of
the giants
of American movies and American comedy. He began his career in 1912, and his
studio produced the
films of The Little Rascals, Harold Lloyd, Will Rogers, Laurel and Hardy, and
other comedy greats
on television. His studio was responsible for producing My Little Margie, The Lone
Ranger,
The Life of Riley, Topper, and scores of other popular shows. We're honored
that he could be
with us tonight. Please welcome Mr. Hal Rose.
This is very nice of you to be here. I'm very excited, and the folks are
equally excited.
This is an unbelievable list of talent that you have worked with. You started
in 1912. Is it
all right to ask you your age here at this point? A little over 90. A little
over 90.
Let me read you a list of the people who started their careers with you.
Director George Stevens,
Leo McCary, Frank Capra, actors and actresses Gene Harlow, Janet Gaynor, Faye
Ray, Boris Karloff,
and Charlie Chase. Charlie Chase, I guess I don't know much about.
Well, Charlie, in the early days, came to work for me. He came to the studio.
This guy came at me. I had
never seen him before. And he says, I'm an actor. I'm a director. I'm a writer.
I'm a producer. I can do
anything you want me to do. He says, I can play anything. I can play heavies. I
can play characters.
I can play a tree. I can play a lighthouse. I said, Charlie, just a minute. You
play a lighthouse. How do
you play that? He says, very simple.
When you started in the beginning of your career, you did everything, too, didn't
you?
Oh, yes. I started as an actor and cowboy. And then I was an assistant director,
then a director.
Did some stunt work, also? My own company. What?
Did some stunt work?
Oh, yes. Big money, too. You fall off a horse for a buck.
And you'd beg the guy to let you fall off for a dollar.
And then you started your own studio.
That's right.
How did this come about? Was that with Harold Lloyd?
Oh, yes. Harold Lloyd and I were both actors together. In fact, Harold Lloyd
and I and one other
guy, there were three eunuchs at the birth of Samson. And Harold and I and this
other guy were the three eunuchs.
That's a fine credit to have on any resume, isn't it? Played a eunuch at the
birth of Samson.
Oh, yeah.
We have a clip here. I believe this is from The Little Rascals or The Our Gang
Comedies. I'm not sure of the difference, but they were both started out to be
your property, right?
Yeah.
And this is probably something that folks are most familiar with. They still
run these things all over the world, don't they?
Oh, I think so, yes. They seem to.
All right. So we're going to take a look at a scene from, I guess it's called
Schools Out, and it's an Our Gang comedy film. Watch the monitors.
Dear ladies and gentlemen, Hal Roach presents for your entertainment and
approval, His Rascals. In their latest Our Gang comedy, entitled, Schools Out.
You wasn't thinking of getting married, was it?
Married?
Yeah.
Why, would everyone put that idea into your little head?
Well, which McGillie could have done, we lost her.
We hope you don't get married until you're 80 years old.
My goodness. I want to get married sometime.
Believe me, married life is sure tough.
My granddad died.
His room has been married only 75 years, Miss Crabtree.
My mom said she didn't know what real trouble wasn't until she married pa.
I heard my pa say, my mom made you marry her.
Promise me you'll never get married, Miss Crabtree.
Oh, no.
Hmm, hmm.
I wouldn't do that.
I want to get married sometime.
Oh, gee, give us a break.
When do we like grow up?
Why, Jackie, do you want to marry me?
Maybe when I get big and grow with kids.
Why, you're sweet, darling.
Shame, shame, shame.
Sure.
Now, is it true that you originally designed that series to be about kids and
animals?
Oh, yes.
And this was, uh...
That was a dog.
Yeah, this was the dog.
This was Pete the pup.
And then later, you actually did an all-animal series of film shorts, right?
Yes.
It's called The Dippy Doodads.
All right?
Now, these are...
Are these...
Do we still have prints of these somewhere?
Because I...
Oh, yes.
But I don't...
They're not used very often.
Okay.
This is a scene from one of those Dippy Doodads.
Is that right?
Describe for us what we're looking at here.
Well, I can't see myself.
Oh, well, the very fine animal trainer who trained all the animals for the Yard
Gang
trained all these animals for the Dippy Doodads.
And he was originally an Italian organ grinder who had monkeys.
But his monkeys could almost talk, and he taught all these animals.
And here we have a monkey on a donkey, I guess.
That's a goat, isn't it?
Did these do pretty well?
Did people take the Dippy Doodads to their hearts?
We made them in two reelers.
They should have been made in one reel.
A two-reeler is a what?
A 30 minutes.
And a one reel would have been...
15.
I see.
Again, a magic moment from the Dippy Doodads.
All right.
We have one more here.
Okay.
There are no humans in these at all?
No.
They're all...
The Dippy Doodads were all animals.
Yeah.
Before you started producing things, was any other studio in California doing
comedies on a regular basis?
Oh, sure.
Mack Sennett.
Oh, yeah.
The big...
We were supposed to be enemies, but we were very friendly, actually.
Uh-huh.
And what was the difference between the kind of things that you were doing and
the things that they were doing?
Well, I started with Harold Lloyd in the early days.
That's in 1914.
And he had a comedy costume on, as most of the comedians did at that time.
Sennett was way ahead of me as far as the number of pictures made and the price
he got for them and so on.
I didn't pass Sennett until actually sound came in.
And the theater changed from the Nickelodeon to the Motion Picture Palace.
And they started making big, important feature pictures.
And the two-wheel comedy was very important at that time.
And I had more stories in them, a little more...
They were pretty much all slapstick, weren't they, the Senate comedies?
Well, the original, yes.
And for the first four or five or six years, I mean, Harold Lloyd, you threw
him out of every scene,
and he landed on his rear end in the next one.
I mean, you know, everything was bangity-bangity-bang as far as comedy was
concerned
for both Sennett and myself and others making comedies at that time.
Did Stan Laurel start out as a single when you first found him?
Was he working on him?
No.
Well, there's a big question.
I mean, I thought I found Stan Laurel at a vaudeville house on Main Street in
Los Angeles.
But they tell me that he made five pictures or so at my studio before that.
But at that time, his eyes were light blue, and they didn't photograph.
So he became a writer.
Then when they had panchromatic film, his eyes were able to see his, you know,
photograph all right.
And that's when Laurel and her started.
But he originally started out as a single, and then they got together?
Well, I don't know.
I don't remember those other pictures at all.
I don't know what happened.
But when they, it was after he was in vaudeville that I saw him in Main Street
and brought him to the studio.
And then for about a year, he was a writer at the studio because his eyes
wouldn't photograph.
And then panchromatic and his eyes did photograph.
We put him with Hardy, who was a heavy working at the studio.
And then two developed into a team.
All right.
We have lots more to talk about.
We'll continue with Hal Royce right after you.
Take a look at the show.
Hi there.
Hal Royce is here.
Tell me about the story of the Laurel and Hardy film.
It was a big business.
Was that the name of the film?
Yes.
Was this the one where the house came into play?
You did something to a house that you weren't supposed to do?
Well, just very quickly, they were selling Christmas trees in the summertime,
and we needed a bungalow.
And one of the boys working at the studio had a bungalow close to the studio.
The location man went over and made a picture of the house and showed it to the
director.
He okayed the house.
And we said, well, you're going to wreck your house, but we'd put it back and
pay you so much money.
Well, what actually happened on the way to the house, the director, who had the
picture in his hand, he saw the house, and he said, here it is, stop.
So there were about five or six cars with trucks stopped, and there's the house.
And first, the assistant director says, the key doesn't work.
And the director says, never mind, we're going to break the door down.
Anyway, break the door down.
So they did.
Well, they completely wrecked this house in two weeks.
They broke every window.
They cut down every tree.
They cut down every bush.
They wrecked everything there was about the house.
And the last day, a man and wife and two kids drove up in front of the house.
The woman almost fainted, and we had the wrong house.
The other house was blocked away.
Now, is this the house that you used, or the house you were supposed to use?
This is the house we should not have used.
So this is the one that ended up being in your film?
Well, no, no, this is the one they used, but they shouldn't have.
Yeah, that's amazing.
And it cost me a lot of money, I would guess, huh?
Yeah, I had to pay twice.
Yeah.
Who do you like now of comedy performers that you see?
Oh, I like Letterman very much.
Oh, now, you don't need to.
That's awfully nice of you to say.
But who, when you're at home watching television, do you enjoy the work of?
Oh, if he would just get above the belt, I like Benny Hill, the Englishman.
I think that he would be funnier than Chaplin if he would stop doing all the
dirty things that he does.
But how is anybody with kids going to say, watch Benny Hill?
Yeah.
And as I say, the kids made Chaplin, and the kids could make Benny Hill, too,
if he just cleaned it up a little bit.
Is there anybody in American television that you enjoy?
Oh, yes.
Oh, yes.
Connor is very good.
And there's not, I mean, there's a lot of comedians, but there's not a lot of
very funny ones.
Yeah.
Tell me about your meeting with Mark Twain.
Well, you killed the story to start with, but I'll tell you the story.
I went to Sunday school at Park Church.
Now, this will still work all right, don't you think?
No.
I haven't ruined, I really haven't ruined.
Well, we'll find out at the end.
I guess we will.
I, as a little kid, I went to Sunday school.
Wait a minute, excuse me.
Let me, let me rephrase it.
Have you ever met any legendary literary figures?
Yes.
Okay, go ahead.
I went to the Park Church school, Sunday school at Park Church in Elmira.
And when you went to Sunday school, you went into the auditorium, and the
minister had a few words to say,
and they did a little prayer or something like that.
Then you went to rooms with a little card that you were supposed to memorize
from the week before,
and you were, somebody was to recite that to show the children.
And the teacher gave us a few instructions, and then we came back to the
auditorium.
The minister said a few things, and if we were lucky, then we were through.
But every once in a while, they had guest speakers for the children.
And believe me, they were lousy.
And, you know, the speakers would come on, and you'd sit there, and most of
them were over the heads of the children anyway.
You couldn't understand a word they said, or you weren't interested in what
they said.
And on this particular day, an elderly man with a gray mustache and regularly
gray hair broke down,
and they announced there would be a guest speaker.
And the guest speaker got up on the rostrum, and he looked the kids over, and
he said,
this is not going to be a very long speech, because I know you children don't
want to hear a very long speech.
In fact, I was in church a while back, and there was a man talking about, a
missionary talking about the poor heathen Chinese.
And I was interested, and I thought, well, I will give a dollar for the poor heathen
Chinese.
He says, the man kept ta