He also recruited two of the unbilled kids from Ernie's movie, Penrod (1921), namely Jackie Condon and Peggy Cartwright into the first short. This idea was created and developed up around Ernie "Sunshine Sammy" Morrison Jr., already a talented youth in the shorts of Harold Lloyd and Snub Pollard. Like an anthropologist studying a new culture, he watched these kids, observed them and saw something that was real, honest and truthful, the potential for what became one of the longest running most successful comedy series of all time, even over Laurel & Hardy, The Three Stooges and Abbott & Costello. Roach had been tirelessly inundated with overly made-up and over-rehearsed child actors auditioning for him for years.
That year, child actor Jackie Coogan had practically stolen the movie out from under British comic legend Charlie Chaplin in The Kid (1921), and that film must have been lurking through his mind as he glanced out the window to the lumberyard across the street and noticed a group of kids in a world of their own. In 1921, he was one of the topmost regarded men in his field when he was searching for a brand new idea to develop. He used much of the Los Angeles area as his backdrop in his films and short subjects. He created Hal Roach Studios on an inheritance, but he hardly stayed there.
He had an eye for what was funny, a creative mind and a vision for something special. Through his studios passed some of the greatest silent film stars of his generation: Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, Harold Lloyd, James Finlayson and Charley Chase.Ī native of Elmira, New York, Roach had been an aimless drifter who began work in Hollywood as an extra and graduated into becoming a producer. Our Gang was the brain-child of Hal Roach, the creator and producer of the most successful shorts through the Twenties and Thirties.