100 Years of Brodies with Hal Roach

Little could the author have imagined, drawing a pencil sketch of The Boys as a mere teenager, that a few years later he’d actually be meeting Laurel & Hardy’s boss-that Genial Purveyor of Joy and Laughter-HAL ROACH-and even less could he have imagined all the adventures and Brodies that were yet to unspool. The author, a former comedy-crazed kid from San Diego, made a Laurel & Hardy style comedy on 8mm film at the age of 15. He first met Hal Roach in 1973 as a 20-year-old undergraduate of the UCLA Motion Picture/Television Department and interviewed him extensively for his term paper on American Film Comedy. Years later, Mr. Calman was invited by Mr. Roach to stay in his home and help the 96-year-old prepare the script for his “come back comedy.” This book contains personal anecdotes of the author’s friendship with this pioneer producer, and presents a complete and detailed overview of Hal Roach’s career, from the adventurous youth’s arrival in Hollywood in 1912 during the earliest days of movie making, to the creation of a studio dedicated to the production of world-wide popular film comedies, to his pioneering work at the birth of the talkies and his virtual launching of the television industry in Hollywood twenty years after that, and on through the 100th year of his exuberantly productive life.