Jon Hall (actor)

Jon Hall (born Charles Felix Locher, February 23, 1915 – December 13, 1979) was an American film actor known for playing a variety of adventurous roles, as in 1937's The Hurricane, and later when contracted to Universal Pictures, including Invisible Agent and The Invisible Man's Revenge and six films he made with Maria Montez.

Born in Fresno, California, and raised in Tahiti by his father, the Swiss-born actor Felix Maurice Locher, Hall was a nephew of writer James Norman Hall, co-author (with Charles Nordhoff) of the novel Mutiny on the Bounty (1932).

Hall originally intended to go into the diplomatic service and was educated in England and Switzerland.

A friend from Tahiti, writer Gouvernor Morris, suggested that he try acting.

Hall began his career using the name "Charles Locher".

His first performance was in a local theatre production of M'Lord the Duke, replacing Robert Taylor; Taylor had just signed with MGM.

His appearance on stage in Murder on a Mountain at the Bliss Hayden Little Theatre in Beverly Hills earned him a contract at Warner Bros.

He followed it with ''What?

No Yacht?'' at the Bliss Hayden.

Nothing seems to have happened with the Warners contract: His first film was Women Must Dress (1935) at Monogram Pictures.

In April 1935, he signed with 20th Century Fox for a role in Charlie Chan Goes To Egypt.

He did not appear in that movie, but he did have an uncredited bit in Here's to Romance and he played the romantic male lead in Charlie Chan in Shanghai (1935).

After that, the studio released him from his contract.

Hall recalled, "for the next three years I took whatever jobs in pictures they'd give me."

He had supporting roles in Westerns: The Mysterious Avenger (1936), at Columbia; Winds of the Wasteland (1936), with John Wayne at Republic Pictures, and in the serial The Clutching Hand (1936).

He had the lead in a low-budget adventure movie, The Lion Man (1936), based on a novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs.

He was rejected for the lead of the Flash Gordon serial.

He changed his screen name to "Lloyd Crane" and in 1936 signed a contract with Major Pictures, a company run by producer Emmanuel Cohen, who distributed through Paramount.

Other actors who had deals with Cohen included Bing Crosby, Mae West, and Gary Cooper.

He made two pictures for Cohen, Mind Your Own Business (1936) and The Girl from Scotland Yard (1937).

Then Cohen dropped him.

Samuel Goldwyn was preparing a big budget spectacular, The Hurricane (1937), based on a novel by Nordhoff and Hall and directed by John Ford.

They were having trouble finding someone to play the native whose wrongful imprisonment is the focus of the drama.

Then Ford introduced Hall to Goldwyn: Goldwyn signed Hall to a long-term contract and cast him as Terangi: Hurricane was a big success.

Goldwyn paid Hall $150 a week, which eventually rose to $200 a week.

Hall spent the next two and a half years idle under his contract while Goldwyn—who made only a few movies each year—contemplated what to do with him.

There was some talk of a sequel to The Hurricane; of playing the lead in Golden Boy; of Black Gold, a film about firefighters in Oklahoma; of The Fleet's In; of Tahiti, based on a book by Somerset Maugham.

Alexander Korda wanted Hall for The Thief of Bagdad.

These films were either not made at all or were made without Hall.

Discussing the hiatus, Hall said "At first it's alright because you tell [people]... what you believe to be true, that the studio is trying to find you a right script. But after a year, after a year and a half, after two years, you start to go nuts. You find yourself ducking across the street to avoid people who will ask you what you are doing."

After two and a half years of inactivity, Hall made three films in quick succession: Sailor's Lady (1940), a comedy with Nancy Kelly that was developed by Goldwyn and sold to 20th Century Fox; South of Pago Pago (1940), a South Seas adventure for producer Edward Small; and Kit Carson (1940), in the title role, again for Edward Small.

Dorothy Lamour had gone to Paramount, and they reunited her with Hall in the South Seas tale, Aloma of the South Seas (1941).

He stayed in that genre for The Tuttles of Tahiti (1942) with Charles Laughton at RKO, from a novel by Nordhoff and Hall.

Goldwyn agreed to share Hall's contract with Universal Pictures, which put him in a supporting role in Eagle Squadron (1942), produced by Walter Wanger and directed by Arthur Lubin.

It was a huge hit.

They gave him the lead in Invisible Agent (1942), the fourth in their "Invisible Man" series.

He was also known to 1950s fans as the creator and star of the Ramar of the Jungle television series which ran from 1952 to 1954.

Hall directed and starred in two 1960s sci-fi films in his later years, The Beach Girls and the Monster (1965) and The Navy vs. the Night Monsters (1966).

One critical appraisal described Hall as follows:

"Handsome, well-built, slightly awkward and not terribly charismatic, he nonetheless managed to persevere in leading roles for two decades, half that time in “A” pictures, which isn’t too shabby by any measure, especially for someone who couldn’t really act. He had the lead role in a bona fide classic from a master director, appeared in a string of beloved cult pictures (covering camp, horror and “I can’t believe they made that”), formed one-third of a legendary on-screen team, had an exotic love life and tragic death, got involved in a Hollywood scandal and was a genuine renaissance man IRL, reinventing himself several times."