William Hilton Terhune (1899-1940) directed half a dozen shorts for Hal Roach in the 1930s, but was predominantly an editor, starting at the studio as a cutter in 1926.
Terhune was the editor on Topper (1937) and its first sequel, Topper Takes a Trip (1938). He also worked on the Joan Crawford picture Susan and God (1940) for MGM.
William Terhune edited the four Laurel and Hardy musicals, The Devil’s Brother, Babes in Toyland, The Bohemian Girl and Swiss Miss, as well as the Marx Brothers’ At the Circus.
Albert Adrian Jordan (1887-1983) worked in the British film industry in the 1910s before emigrating to America, where he found work as a cutter at Vitagraph.
Jordan moved to the Hal Roach Studios in 1921, where he stayed for the bulk of his career. Stan Laurel, who was the creative force behind the Laurel and Hardy films, admired Jordan’s work to the extent of insisting that he edit all of their pictures, if he was available.
This meant that Jordan worked on virtually all of the Laurel and Hardy features, including their four musicals, The Devil’s Brother, Babes in Toyland, The Bohemian Girl and Swiss Miss.
Jordan also edited one of the Roach studio’s most prestigious productions, Lewis Milestone’s Of Mice and Men (1939).
After leaving Hal Roach, Jordan worked mostly in television until he retired, aged 75.
Arthur Raymond Lloyd (1897-1954) was a journeyman cinematographer who shot all of his 200 shorts (plus a handful of features) for the Hal Roach Studios.
Lloyd was a regular on both Laurel and Hardy and the Our Gang pictures. He shot such classics as Laughing Gravy (1931), County Hospital, Towed in a Hole (both 1932) and Block-Heads (1938).
He also shot all four of Laurel and Hardy’s operettas: The Devil’s Brother (with Hap Depew), Babes in Toyland, The Bohemian Girl and Swiss Miss.
Composer Thomas Marvin Hatley (1905-86) achieved a form of immortality when he wrote a piece called ‘Dance of the Cuckoos’ (sometimes known as ‘Ku-Ku’). In 1930, this became the theme music for Laurel and Hardy’s sound shorts after it was heard on the radio. According to Laurel, Hal Roach gave the composer “about fifty bucks’ for the rights to the music.
But Hatley did also find a job at the Roach studio as musical director, in which capacity he wrote and arranged probably hundreds of scores. Two Laurel and Hardy features, Way Out West (1937) and Block-Heads (1938) earned him nominations for the Best Original Score Oscar.
Hatley also enjoyed appearing in front of the camera whenever a musician or conductor was required. And he provided the piano sounds for The Music Box (1932).
He was musical director of The Devil’s Brother, which also utilized ‘Dance of the Cuckoos’, and he composed for The Bohemian Girl and Swiss Miss.
Hatley was deemed surplus to requirements when Roach restructured his studio in 1939, though Laurel insisted he be brought back to work on Saps at Sea (1940). Hatley became a lounge pianist, often remarking that he was earning more than Hal Roach ever paid him.
Charles Rogers (1887-1956) is generally known as Charley and, like his namesake Charlie Chaplin and his close friend Stan Laurel, he started out working in British music halls, before emigrating to the United States in 1912.
In the same year, Rogers played the Artful Dodger in Oliver Twist, one of the earliest multi-reel features, produced by a New York studio. He continued to work in the East Coast film industry for several years, before finally making his way to Hollywood.
In 1927, Rogers appeared uncredited in Love ‘em and Feed ‘em, and stayed at the Hal Roach Studios for many years, quickly moving into writing and directing.
Rogers has been described as, in creative terms, second only to Stan Laurel on the Roach lot, and he worked on a number of Laurel and Hardy’s best shorts and features. These included, as a gag writer, We Faw Down, Two Tars (both 1928), Hog Wild and Laughing Gravy (both 1930). Rogers contributed the original stories and screenplays for Block-Heads (1938), A Chump at Oxford and Saps at Sea (both 1940).
Rogers directed or co-directed, and also contributed to the writing of, three of Laurel and Hardy’s operettas: The Devil’s Brother, Babes in Toyland (in which he also played Simple Simon) and The Bohemian Girl. He also wrote gags for Swiss Miss.
Away from Laurel and Hardy, Rogers played Josef Goebbels in the studio’s bizarre wartime semi-feature That Nazty Nuisance (1943). One of his last jobs was an uncredited appearance in Chaplin’s Limelight (1952).
Lawrence Young Hill (1887-1963) made his uncredited screen debut in Shiver and Shake (1922), the first of many appearances for the Hal Roach Studios, where he also worked as an occasional stunt performer.
Hill was a regular in Laurel and Hardy pictures right from the beginning, working as an extra in their first screen pairing, Putting Pants on Philip (1927). In Two Tars (1928) he knocked Stan over with a mattress, while in Below Zero (1930) he helped throw the pair out of the restaurant. In Bonnie Scotland (1935), Hill had three different roles.
Inevitably, Jack Hill made appearances in three of MGM’s Laurel and Hardy musicals: The Devil’s Brother, The Bohemian Girl and Swiss Miss.
Richard Gilbert (1889-1960), popularly known as ‘Fighting Dick’, started out as a boxer in 1907. He had some success, but was also described as a “punching bag” when facing superior opponents. Online claims that he once beat Jack Dempsey appear to have no substance.
After retiring from the ring, Gilbert found steady work as a heavy in silent comedies, frequently working for the Hal Roach Studios. He was usually uncredited, but did secure the occasional substantial role, for example in the western The Man from the West (1926).
Gilbert featured in many Laurel and Hardy shorts, and also in two of their feature-length musicals, The Devil’s Brother and The Bohemian Girl.
Six feet five inch, 300 pound Stanley John Sandford (1894-1961) was fated to be given the nickname ‘Tiny’. With over 150 appearances, Sandford is best known for his work in comedies, usually cast as the heavy.
Sandford made his screen debut for Metro Pictures in 1919, and in the same year played a bit part in Erich von Stroheim’s Blind Husbands. He later worked regularly for Chaplin, including in The Gold Rush (1925), The Circus (1928) and, most prominently, as Big Bill in Modern Times (1936).
Sandford was also a regular collaborator with Laurel and Hardy, including in three of their musical features, The Devil’s Brother, Babes in Toyland and The Bohemian Girl. He was the police officer who attempts to restore peace in the classic Big Business (1929).
James Carmody Lankton (1884-1942) was a character actor who made over 200 films, often playing angry authority figures, and frequently making comedy out of his baldness. He appeared often in support of the Three Stooges and Laurel and Hardy.
Following a period in vaudeville and burlesque shows, Morton made his first film in 1912, while also working as a stage actor in Los Angeles. But his screen career really began after the introduction of sound, when he did a lot of work at the Hal Roach studios.
As well as comedy shorts, Morton made appearances, often uncredited, in features, including Modern Times (1936)Alexander’s Ragtime Band (1938) and The Return of Frank James (1940).
Morton was in four Metro musicals: The Devil’s Brother, Naughty Marietta, A Night at the Opera and The Bohemian Girl.
Shortly before his death, Morton went on tour with The Laurel and Hardy Revue (1940).
Robert Clinton Oakes (1899-1972) made close to 400 film and television appearances in a career that lasted over forty years. The son of a Montana horse rancher, it was fitting that a huge proportion of his roles were in westerns.
Chandler made his first, uncredited, appearance in a Paramount western in 1927, but was starring opposite Betty Bronson in his second, Open Range (1927). Sound posed no problem for him, and he had a featured role in The Forward Pass (1929). But the status of his roles on non-westerns and ‘A’ pictures started to decline. Eventually, he settled into a long series of credited and uncredited character parts.
Chandler had small parts in ten Cecil B DeMille pictures, took orders from Ming the Merciless in the Flash Gordon serials, and showed up in films as diverse as Roman Scandals (1933), Marie Antionette (1938), They Died with Their Boots On (1941), Laura (1944), The Dark Mirror (1946), Red River (1948) and Rancho Notorious (1952).
For MGM, Chandler appeared in The Devil’s Brother and, uncredited, in The Merry Widow, The Bohemian Girl, The Firefly, Rosalie and Born to Sing.
