BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. -- Legendary filmmaker Hal Roach, who discovered the comedy team of Laurel and Hardy and went on to produce the 'Our Gang' comedies, died Monday at his Beverly Hills home. He was 100.
Roach's son-in-law, Michael Watkins, said Roach had been suffering from pneumonia for some time, but his death was unexpected.
The well-known director and producer had been under the care of doctors from the Motion Picture Country Home and Hospital.
He was the last surviving founder of the Motion Picture Relief Fund which offers assistance to people in all aspects of the entertainment industry, from carpenters and electricians to major stars and directors.
Roach, a onetime trucking firm owner and silent screen cowboy, built Hal Roach Studios, known as the laugh factory for a string of successful slapstick comedies.
Considered an innovator, Roach encouraged improvisation of dialogue and action in many of his pictures of the 1920s and '30s, starring the bespectacled Harold Lloyd, cowboy philosopher Will Rogers, Thelma Todd, ZaSu Pitts and others.
He collected three Oscars: a 1931-32 award for his short subject 'The Music Box,' a 1936 statuette for his one-reeler 'Bored of Education,' and a special honorary Academy Award in 1984 for his 'unparelleled record of distinguished contributions to the motion picture art form.'
One of his greatest contributions to Hollywood film history was the pairing of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, often hailed as one of the greatest film comedy teams of all time.
Roach had Laurel under contract as a single player when he decided the slender, long-faced Laurel and the round-faced, heavyset Hardy would make a great team.
'You see, what is great about them is that they were two very fine actors, and therefore every time you did a funny thing, you could cut to one of them or the other for a reaction, or maybe to both so you'd get two more laughs than you expected,' he said in a Los Angeles Times interview earlier this year.
'What was important was that Laurel never cried when he was hurt, never cried when he was scared. He only cried because he was confused and didn't know what to do, and then he cried.'
Roach, born Jan. 14, 1892, had a colorful array of occupations, from driving horse teams at Alaska construction sites and an ice cream delivery truck, before drifting to California in 1912 and learning of a job as a movie extra.
Roach, working at a Mojave Desert construction site, already had the cowboy hat, the boots and the kerchief, looked authentic enough to get the $5 a day job. He was hooked.
Roach continued in a number of bit roles until he and his fellow extra, Lloyd, started making short subjects together in 1914.
Within one year, Roach owned half of a production company named Rolin, for Roach and his partner, Dan Linthicum. Two years later the studio was all his and by 1920 he and Lloyd had earned enough on their short films to build Roach Studios in Culver City.
The studio became known as Fort Roach in the 1940s, when it made training films for the Army Air Corps. The studio is gone now, marked by a plaque.
In the early '20s, Roach's friends began bringing their children to his studio, begging for auditions. He would endure the song-and-dance routines from countless stage children, but found he had greater pleasure watching them play after auditions, doing things normal kids do.
From those experiences came the 'Our Gang' comedies, a series of shorts begun in 1922 and sold to MGM in 1938 as 'The Little Rascals.'
One of the 'Our Gang' regulars, George 'Spanky' McFarland, 64, now lives in Fort Worth, Texas. He spoke Monday of the impact Roach had on his later life.
'I did consider him a very good friend, but only the past 6 or 7 years,' McFarland said. 'I was too young to know the man when I worked for him. He would come out on the stage once in a while, and he was always good to the kids, especially on their birthdays.
'I presented him with the honorary Academy Award in 1984, but it's been just in the past six or seven years that I really grew close to him, enough to call him a good friend.
'My wife and I visited him at his home in September of this year. He was very alert, very lucid. His mind was marvelous for a man of his age.
'It's only now that I appreciate the impact he had on my life. Even at my age, I looked at him like a father figure.
'He was very kind to me. I developed an emotional tie with him.
'I'm sorry he's gone, but glad he's not hurting any more.'
Among Roach's long list of titles were 'Another Fine Mess,' 'Babes in Toyland,' 'Way Out West,' 'Topper,' 'Of Mice and Men' and 'Topper Returns.'
The Roach Studios folded in the 1950s, but Roach came out of retirement briefly in the late '60s to produce 'The Crazy World of Laurel and Hardy,' a compilation film.
One of Roach's last public appearances was in January, when he celebrated his 100th birthday with a lavish party at the Motion Picture Country Home.
Roach's survivors include his daughter, Maria Watkins. His son, HalRoach Jr., a film producer who went bankrupt trying to keep his father's studio afloat, died of pneumonia in 1972 at age 52.
Watkins said funeral arrangements were pending. Roach was expected to be buried in Elmira, N.Y., his birthplace.
