Charlie Hall

Charlie arrived on Ellis Island in America 9th October 1912.

He left school in 1914 to assist his father as a carpenter and began supplementing his wages by doing comedy sketches in vaudeville around music halls and clubs in the Midlands and eventually was signed up with Fred Karno when he was 16.

He left England in 1920 to go to America intending to get work as a carpenter.

Hall is buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California, Eventide section, Lot 1928. along side his wife, who pre deceased him.

In the Laurel and Hardy short "Laughing Gravy" (1930) he played a dog-hating landlord who would mercilessly throw a little dog, whose real name was Laughing Gravy, out into the frigid cold. In real life, he reportedly adopted one of Laughing Gravy's puppies.

He was in the Laurel and Hardy film Oliver the Eighth (1934) but his part was cut out.

In 1937 Charlie returned to England probably hoping to get work in the British studios. This may have been due to being sacked by Hal Roach for not turning up at the studio, probably due to over socialising with Stan or to get away from his wife or to see his mother who was very ill. However things didn't turn out well for him as little filming was being done in London and with money running out he eventually moved to his family in Birmingham where the only work he was able to get was in a gas mask factory. He eventually wrote to his friend, director George Stevens, in the States, asking for a loan of $200 so that he could return to America but then he met up with his friend Edgar Kennedy, who'd come over to make 'Hey. Hey USA' with Will Hay, and who got him a few days work on the film which earned him enough for him to get back to the States.

By the mid-1950s, Hall's health was declining due to increasing liver problems as he aged and an inability to continue working as an extra and bit player. Returning to his carpentry skills, he took a job as a prop-maker at Warner Brothers.