Interpreting the Story of Helen and Hal Roach’s Marriage

What’s sort of story does the marriage of Helen and Hal Roach produce?

As I traced Helen Grant Duncan Woodbury Roach’s life in Los Angeles, I kept thinking of a couple of early Laurel and Hardy movies that featured James Finalyson as an irrepressible Lothario.

In “Love ’Em and Weep” and “Sugar Daddies,” Finlayson played wealthy skirt-chasers. (He’d portrayed similar characters in earlier shorts, such as “Chasing the Chaser” and “Dizzy Daddies.”)

Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, not yet a solid pair but part of a trio, had to help the man out of the predicaments his libido had gotten him into.

Imagine a gender-swapped version of that, with Helen G. Woodbury as a rich woman who’s left her husband for the sunny clime of California and can’t stop chasing young men, many of whom turn out to be after her money.

The live-in chauffeur who developed a foul mouth when he drank. The movie cowboy who dreamed of making his own films. The “awfully handsome” actor with an eye for jewelry. The pianist ready to open a big night club. And what other men did she fancy who never made the newspapers?

Helen Roach’s sudden death in 1916 raises the prospect of a different, darker scenario: a murder mystery. Which of her entanglements might have wanted her dead? And who benefited from that death?

Of course, Helen Roach’s doctor certified she suffered from bronchial pneumonia for several weeks before dying. That detail would have to change to make a whodunnit.

I’m not suggesting that the Hal Roach Studio really grew out of murder. The true origin story wasn’t that sordid, just a little seedy.

Hal Roach happened to be Helen Woodbury’s favorite in the year her husband died, leaving her free to marry—or to demand her boyfriend marry her. That was just a matter of luck, but was it good luck or bad?

Since Hal Roach never talked about this marriage publicly, we can’t say what he thought in those years. It seems pretty clear that he received the money to start Rolin in the spring of 1914 from Woodbury. But they didn’t marry until the fall. Did they both want a more committed relationship then? Was Hal hoping for more funds? It doesn’t look like he got any.

The Roaches’ marriage soured, and she filed for divorce in late 1915. She found other men to invest her time and money in. He may have found other women. And then she fell ill.

Because Helen died before that divorce became final, Hal inherited her considerable estate—undoubtedly good fortune for him and his moviemaking enterprise. He didn’t start the Rolin Film Company with an inheritance, but he undoubtedly enlarged the studio with one. 

TOMORROW: Whatever happened to all the other players?

“The estate of Mrs. Helen G. Roach, deceased”

The 9 May 1916 Los Angeles Examiner had a section on page 5 headed “The Death Roll.” The last entry was:

Helen G. Roach … 50 y. … Pneumonia … May 4

California’s death certificate added that Dr. William R. Jacobs had attended Helen Roach from 16 April until she died of bronchial pneumonia. Her profession was listed as “Housewife.” Her husband was “Harry Roach.”

Evidently Helen Roach left no will because Hal Roach became the administrator, not executor, of her estate. Since she had no children, he was probably also her sole heir. That meant that once he sorted out her investments and debts, everything left would go to him.

In July, the Orange County Register reported that Roach had brought “an amicable lawsuit to determine ownership” of the Lodge Café at Seal Beach, saying his late wife had “invested $14,500” in the enterprise before she died.

Within a couple of months, pianist Jimmie Blyler was no longer being described as one of the Lodge’s proprietors. He started to perform at other clubs instead. Dave Combs’s partner was now Hal Roach.

Another lawsuit in this period involved a Lodge Café cook named Max Benkert who drove “an automobile…used by Dave Combs in the business” into a buggy, injuring three women. One of those victims sued both Benkert and the restaurant, winning $5,700 in September 1916. That December, Roach filed an appeal on behalf of his late wife’s estate.

In November, a Seal Beach proprietor sued Combs and Roach as owners of the Lodge Café, demanding $600 in back rent under a September agreement. The proprietors either paid up or prevailed since they continued to be listed as owners.

If Roach and Combs saw themselves as partners, however, that broke down by 16 July 1917 when the Orange County Register reported:

Dave Combs, manager of the Lodge Cafe at Seal Beach, was arrested last night on a charge of embezzling $343.43 from the estate of Mrs. Helen G. Roach, deceased. Combs has been a prominent figure at Seal Beach since its incorporation. Mrs. Roach, who lived in Los Angeles, was one of the incorporators of the Lodge Cafe. Since her death her estate has been in charge of Harry E. Roach, administrator.

The complaint against Combs was sworn to by L. T. Mayhew, a Los Angeles man, who is manager of the National Board of Credit. Mayhew stated this morning that another complaint would be sworn to charging Combs with disturbing the peace. Combs’ preliminary examination was set for 2 p.m., July 24.

Combs paid bail of $1,000 with one of his sureties being “J. H. Blagge, recalled mayor of Seal Beach.” But his name stopped appearing in connection with the Lodge Café.

Roach must have sold off the restaurant in the next few months because in April 1918 the Lodge reopened as the Seal Café, “Remodeled, Refurnished, and Under New Management.” (By the end of that year its new owners were enjoined for running a place of “ill repute.”)

Meanwhile, on 29 September 1916, or less than five months after his first wife died, Hal Roach married Marguerite O. Nichols (shown above). She was a 25-year-old movie actress, though the paperwork described her as 21 and she maintained an 1896 birth date to her death. Later press reports said Hal had directed Marguerite in some movies, but all her surviving credits are with other studios.

In February 1917 the couple visited Hal’s home town of Elmira. They would have two children in the next few years.

As of late 1917, the Roaches were living at 1624 Van Ness Avenue, the house that Helen G. Woodbury had commissioned for herself when she moved to Los Angeles.

That November, the probate court appointed a referee to take testimony “relative to an accounting filed by the administrator of the [Helen G. Roach] estate”—i.e., by Hal Roach. The Los Angeles Times commented, “The heirs and certain creditors of the $150,000 estate, it seems, cannot agree.” Presumably the referee settled the matter.

Despite starting divorce proceedings, Helen G. Roach had left her young husband assets equivalent to almost $4 million today. In March 1917 Hal Roach and Dwight Whiting each bought fourteen more shares of the Rolin Film Company, putting more capital into producing more movies.

From late 1916 into 1917, the Rolin Picture Company increased its production beyond Lonesome Luke one-reelers. It took a flyer on Harold Lloyd’s idea for a character who wore glasses instead of a funny mustache. It tried a new series starring Dee “Skinny” Lampton. It offered a costly contract to the clown Toto. It moved back into the Bradbury Building. That spending was almost certainly enabled by Helen G. Roach’s estate.

TOMORROW: Making sense of this tale.

“Owners of the Lodge Cafe and Hotel at Seal Beach”

In October 1915, developers incorporated the northwestern corner of Orange County, California—an area previously known as Motuucheyngna, Anaheim Landing, and Bayside—as the city of Seal Beach.

The new city council authorized liquor sales to make this area more attractive than Long Beach, the dry town just to the north. Investors began to build restaurants, night clubs, and an amusement park called the Joy Zone.

The 9 June 1916 Orange County Register told readers:

By far the largest building in the business section [of Seal Beach] is that housing the Lodge Cafe and Dancing Cabaret, owned and managed by Dave Combs and Jimmy [sic] Blyler, who have a reputation all their own as amusement kings. Their building is two stories, has a frontage of fifty feet and a depth of 100. Long before you reach Seal Beach you see the “Cafe” signs erected on the top of the Lodge. . . .

The lower floor contains the main cafe and dancing floor. It is open for daily matinee dancing, and continues, with added attractions, until late in the evening. . . . Just behind the main Cafe is the Grill room. It is open all day.

The second floor was a hotel, mostly rented out as apartments with housecleaning and meal services.

Of the two proprietors, David N. Combs had experience in the hospitality business. He had managed the Fashion Café in Albuquerque, New Mexico, for several years. Combs had an eventful 1913: he offered the café for sale in January, his wife Lottie died in late February, he unveiled the Hotel Combs in Albuquerque in April, he married Marie T. Riley of Texas in July, he signed over the hotel to the bank in September, and he started a restaurant in Pasadena in October.

Jimmie Blyler (1885–1924) had been born in Des Moines. He became a professional pianist in his late teens, traveling around the west. According to a 1911 profile in his home town newspaper, he survived the Iroquois theater fire in Chicago (1903) and the great earthquake in San Francisco (1906). Blyler and his partner Fred Brown were featured in the 1911 edition of Florenz Ziegfeld’s Follies and wrote many of its songs. While waiting for the Lodge Café to open, Blyler played at the nearby Jewel City Café.

(On 22 June 1916, Dean N. Fifield’s “What’s Going On” column in the Los Angeles Times said that Blyler also “played quarterback on a big Middlewestern university team several years ago.” The Des Moines Register profile said nothing about that, and I think its reporters would know.)

When Combs and Blyler’s Lodge Café opened in April 1916, there was another, silent partner: Helen G. Roach. She reportedly invested $14,500 in the enterprise. That was far more than it appears she ever gave her young husband, Hal Roach, to start his movie production company.

And then Mrs. Roach died.

TOMORROW: How an unhappy marriage ended.

“She accused her companion of the theft”

Yesterday I quoted two news stories from 29 Jan 1916 on Helen G. Roach’s complaint that a man had stolen her jewels.

That day’s Los Angeles Daily Herald recounted the lady’s “remarkable story” with dramatic detail: “Mrs. Roache [sic] first rushed into the home of Judge [Johnson W.] Summerfield in an hysterical condition and weepingly begged the justice to issue a warrant for the arrest of the man, who she said, was named Hill.”

She didn’t recall that man’s first name, only that he was an actor.

Later this article noted that “Mrs. Roache…first reported the robbery to the police under the name of Mrs. Woodbury,” the surname of her previous husband.

The Daily Herald story continued:

Calming Mrs. Roache enough to secure her story, Judge Summerfield was told that Hill, whom Mrs. Roache described as “awfully handsome,” persuaded her to go to the beach in an automobile with him. They dined at the beach, she said, and then they started home. . . .

As they neared Mrs. Roache’s house Mr. Hill told her that he was very ill, according to the woman’s story. She took him into her house and instructed her two colored servants to put him to bed in an apartment which was connected with her own boudoir by a small dressing room.

Shortly after he had been taken up stairs, Mrs. Roache told Judge Summerfield, she heard a noise on the second floor and went up. She entered her room and discovered that her diamond rings, a pearl necklace and other jewelry aggregating $5000 were gone, and also the actor.

Soon, however, Helen Roach was telling the authorities this mysterious man had drugged her. The Daily Herald simply mentioned that accusation without any further detail, but the Los Angeles Times for 30 January related that tale:

She first went to Judge Summerfield and told him that her friend was a motion-picture actor and that she was sure he had drugged her just before starting home from the beach in his machine. On the way home, she declared, she was seized with a fainting spell and had to be helped into her home at No. 1623 [sic] Van Ness avenue.

There her colored servants assisted her to bed and it was only early this morning, on regaining consciousness, that she discovered her loss. She accused her companion of the theft.

That is, of course, a different story.

Back to the Daily Herald: The judge (shown above) issued a warrant for Hill’s arrest and sent deputy sheriffs Cleveland, Moodie, and Cooper to find him.

At the Hotel Percival, however, where Hill lives, he was not to be found. The officers visited a number of cafes, but failed to locate Hill. It was discovered that he had cashed a check last last night in one of the cafes, but no one knew where he had gone after that.

The man was still unlocated on 30 January. If anyone has leads on a handsome movie actor named Hill in 1916, they would be welcome.

TOMORROW: A new enterprise.

Divorcing, Dating, and Drugged?

At the end of January 1915, the Los Angeles Times and Los Angeles Tribune reported that Bonnie Bounce, the pet of “Mrs. Hal Roach,” had won prizes at the city’s annual dog show.

On 4 Oct 1915, however, the Santa Barbara Daily News reported that “Helen G. Woodbury” of Los Angeles had checked into the city’s Arlington Hotel.

(I’m still creeped out at how the way daily newspapers used to print ordinary people’s comings and goings, yet grateful about how those records let me track someone’s travels over than a century later.)

Evidently Hal Roach’s wife went back to using her previous name in the middle of that year.

It’s not surprising, therefore, that the 7 Dec 1915 Los Angeles Examiner’s page 7 list of “Divorce Suits Filed” included:

Roach, Helen G. vs. Harry E.

Whatever the reality of Hal Roach and Helen G. Woodbury’s relationship, it was coming apart after less than fourteen months of marriage.

In early 1916 Los Angeles newspapers reported for the second time about Helen G. Woodbury Roach bringing charges against a man under eyebrow-raising circumstances. Dave Lord Heath discusses this event on his webpage about Helen Roach, and I’ve found some more information.

The 29 January Los Angeles Evening Post-Record’s story read:

$2600 THEFT

Jewels to the value of $2600 were stolen from the home of Mrs. Helen G. Roach, 1624 Van Ness av., last night, according to reports received today at the sheriff’s office.

Mrs. Roach discovered the loss shortly after returning from an evening’s entertainment with a friend.

What sort of “friend”? Well, as husband and wife the Roaches were on a break.

The Los Angeles Herald Examiner was a little more sensational:

Says Drugged, Robbed of Gems Worth $5000

Intimating that she had been drugged while at the beach and that while in a helpless condition she had been robbed of diamonds worth $5000, Mrs. Helen Roache [sic] of 1624 Van Ness Avenue, today asked the sheriff’s office to arrest a man named Hill.

Mrs. Roache said she accompanied the man to a beach resort yesterday and that they dined there. She said she believed she had been robbed later in the evening. She knew the man only as “Mr. Hill,” she said. Deputies are searching for the man.

TOMORROW: Two takes on a very bad date.

“We better stick at comedies and make good ones”

The Pathé company, founded in 1896 as Société Pathé Frères, was a giant in early cinema. In the first decade of the twentieth century, it was the largest producer of film equipment and films in the world.

Pathé established the system of renting prints to exhibitors instead of selling them. It invented the newsreel, distributed on its own non-flammable film stock for faster shipping through regular mail. It owned a large chain of cinemas in Europe.

In 1914 Pathé wanted a bigger presence in the US market. Its executives were already frustrated with its main American distributor, and then the World War stifled production, distribution, and attendance in Europe.

Pathé opened new studios in New Jersey. It produced the hit Perils of Pauline serial. And it invited small producers to submit their short films for distribution by its new subsidiary, Pathé Exchange.

In early 1915, Dwight Whiting traveled to the East Coast to present Pathé managers with a dozen films that the new Rolin Picture Company had made the previous year. Rolin had already seen two prospective new distributors fail before any of its movies got to theaters. The corporation was nearly dormant. Founder Hal Roach had taken a directing job at Essanay, and the acting company had dispersed.

The Pathé screening committee watched Rolin’s films and didn’t like them. According to Richard Lewis Ward’s History of the Hal Roach Studios, the company’s gatekeepers “completely dismissed the three dramas and complained that the nine comedies were crude and vulgar, full of censorable material,” “imitations and not very good ones,” poorly photographed and directed.

Whiting nonetheless convinced Pathé to accept one one-reel short for distribution: “Just Nuts.” In 1916 Roach described this movie as a “last attempt” made “With capital down to the zero point.” It featured Harold Lloyd as “Willie Work,” a blatant imitation of Charlie Chaplin, harassing people in a park. Roach admitted, “There was no story and no rhyme or reason to it.” Here’s a sample.

As quoted by Craig Calman in 100 Years of Brodies with Hal Roach, Whiting wrote to Roach from New York in March 1915 with what he’d learned from Pathé: “They seem to like the wrong party getting hit, so stick in a lot of it. [They] Say you work up to climax then fall down. Take more time and figure it out better at first and we will show them.” A few days later Whiting passed on more feedback from Pathé: “your work amateurish in all ways but we better stick at comedies and make good ones.”

Whiting then added, “I have faith in your ability. Go to it.” Whiting would have the title of production manager under Roach as studio president, but those aren’t the words of an employee to his boss. They’re the words of an investor, or a patron. Whiting was giving Roach the go-ahead to spend more money—his money.

In March 1915 Hal Roach went back to running Rolin. There was still no solid distribution—he would make more movies on spec for Pathé to evaluate in hopes that it would offer a contract. But with Whiting’s support he had the resources to resume filming.

Roach leased studio space in Edendale from the Norbig company. Pathé thought three Rolin actors had shown potential, but Roach could hire back only one: Harold Lloyd. With his father’s help, Lloyd designed a less obvious Chaplin imitation eventually dubbed “Lonesome Luke.”

In October 1915, Pathé Exchange looked at the first Lonesome Luke one-reelers and offered Rolin a distribution deal—though it would still reject any movies not up to its standards.

At last Rolin had audiences for its productions and money coming in. Whiting could offer the older films to minor distributors on fire-sale terms (and even then most of them didn’t sell).

Meanwhile, Hal Roach’s marriage to Helen G. Woodbury was on the rocks.

TOMORROW: Can this marriage be saved?

(Lonesome Luke’s Lively Life by Steve Massa, published in 2025, is the first study and probably the last word on the comedy series that established Harold Lloyd and Hal Roach in the movie business.)

The Fortunes of Dwight Whiting

Helen G. Woodbury’s financial support helped Hal Roach to set up the Rolin Film Company, but it didn’t keep the new enterprise going.

In 1915 Rolin was rescued by the work and the money of board member and production manager Dwight A. Whiting (1891–1974).

For background on Whiting, I’m indebted to the articles of Janet Whitcomb, chronicler of Lake Forest, California.

Dwight A. Whiting grew up in a wealthy Los Angeles family. His father, also named Dwight, had come out from Massachusetts and founded the town of Del Toro, which became Lake Forest. The patriarch was known for planting eucalyptus trees. He met his wife Emily at the Hotel del Coronado, where L. Frank Baum later spent some winters during his period of celebrity and wealth.

In the spring of 1907, when Dwight was fifteen years old, his father died suddenly. In this article Whitcomb quotes from a death notice in the 1 May 1907 Los Angeles Times:

Death resulted from injuries received on a Santa Fe train while Mr. and Mrs. Whiting were returning from Los Angeles from the El Toro ranch with a party of friends. Mr. Whiting was walking down the aisle of the car when the train gave a lurch and he was thrown against the corner of one of the seats, the impact causing internal hemorrhages. The accident at first was not considered a serious one, and a day or so after it occurred the injured man was able to make a trip to Santa Barbara, but while there he became much worse and returned to his home, where he soon died.

The same news story said the older man had left instructions about his son’s future: the boy “is to receive an education in this country especially fitting him as a specialist in forestry, and then is to receive a special course in the University of Leipzig, Germany.” In fact, the son attended Stanford University from 1910 to 1912.

Dwight Whiting came of age in 1912 and probably gained control of his inheritance then. There’s no sign that he went into forestry. Instead, two years later he was running an automobile dealership. In later life he was involved in ranching, banking, insurance, and oil. But in 1914 and 1915 Whiting was interested in the Rolin Film Company.

In this article, Whitcomb quotes from a 1989 newspaper clipping (which I can’t find elsewhere) based on an interview with Hal Roach—who wasn’t always exact when telling stories about events over half a century earlier. Roach said that as a trucker he was once “unloading logs at a ranch owned by Dwight Whiting” and thought it was “an ideal shooting area for cowboy films.” He said of Whiting:

He loaned me the $200 to produce my first film, a 30-minute western, and let me shoot it all on his property.

As Whitcomb notes, Roach didn’t recall accurate information about Whiting and Del Toro. This “cowboy film” can’t be identified. Was it indeed Roach’s first film? Was the $200 a loan or an investment, and was it actually $200? Details aside, Roach’s basic memory was that Dwight Whiting was an early backer of his moviemaking enterprise.

Whiting’s mother had remarried in 1911, and he and his brother worked to keep her hefty inheritance out of the hands of her new husband by setting up trusts and corporations. An IRS ruling about those entities contains the information that in 1917 Dwight Whiting was worth about $176,000. That was the equivalent of more than $4 million today. Whiting didn’t need his job at the Rolin Film Company. The company needed him.

Indeed, Richard Lewis Ward’s History of the Hal Roach Studios says that in its first few years “the company was chronically short of general operating funds, necessitating frequent requests for advances from Pathé and occasional excursions into Dwight Whiting’s personal resources.”

The same study quotes Whiting’s assistant manager Warren Doane writing to H. M. “Beanie” Walker (then a freelancer) about late payment in early 1918, “Should worst come to worst, Mr. Whiting will come to bat again and liquidate all that is against the Company”—i.e., pay off the bills from his personal funds.

But first, Whiting needed to find Rolin a distributor, any distributor.

TOMORROW: A pathetic situation.

(In the absence of any photograph of Dwight Whiting, I’m illustrating this post with a photo of 542 Lorraine Boulevard in LA. As explained here, this house was commissioned by Dwight’s younger brother George in 1920. After George’s marriage broke up, he sold it to Dwight in 1925. Then Dwight’s first marriage broke up, and he sold it in 1931.)

The Rolin Film Company Seed Money and When It Ran Out

On 21 Oct 1914 the Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Morning Tribune, and Los Angeles Evening Express all reported that a marriage license had just been issued to Harry E. Roach and Helen G. Woodbury.

City records say the marriage took place on 19 October.

The marriage certificate and newspapers described Roach as aged 22 and working in motion pictures.

The documents also said Woodbury was 37. Helen was in fact 47 years old.

The couple were reported to be living in Helen’s home on Van Ness Avenue.

We thus have this timeline:

• 14 Jan 1914: Frederick Woodbury died suddenly in a mine accident.
• 26 May: Frederick’s widow Helen Woodbury, having received $10,000 in life insurance money, was suing for more.
• 23 July: Hal Roach co-founded the Rolin Film Company, stunning his friend Harold Lloyd by having about $2,000 to invest.
• 21 October: Helen Woodbury and Hal Roach married.

Also in that period, on 24 September a “wealthy society woman…walked into the side” of Helen Woodbury’s automobile outside the Mason Opera House (shown above). The Oakland Tribune reported that the woman had suffered “a severe concussion” but was expected to recover. So it was a busy time for Helen.

By the first half of 1915, however, Rolin was coming apart. The company had made several short films, mostly comedies, but couldn’t sell them to any distributor. Its most promising leads, Sawyer and United Film Service, both went out of business that year.

Harold Lloyd got sick of the low wages and went to act for Mack Sennett instead, starting in April. Rolin’s other lead performers also signed elsewhere.

One of the company co-founders, Daniel Linthicum, backed away without investing the additional money he had promised.

The company’s lease on space in the Bradbury Mansion lapsed.

Even Hal Roach himself put Rolin on the back burner, joining the Essanay company as a director. He spent his lunch hours talking about how to make movies with that studio’s star, Charlie Chaplin. As of 21 May 1915, the Los Angeles Record was quoting praise for its “Movie Edition” from “Harry Roach, Director, Essanay Film Mfg. Co.”

TOMORROW: The turnaround.

“We have already paid $10,000 on a policy”

On 26 May 1914, the Milwaukee newspapers reported a new development in the story of Frederick E. Woodbury, the mining executive killed in January.

The most detailed article was in the Milwaukee Journal:

ASSIGNMENTS HALT THE PAYMENT OF INSURANCE.

Helen G. Woodbury, administratrix of the estate of Frederick Woodbury, sues the New England Mutual Life Insurance Co. to collect seven life insurance policies aggregating $40,000. She avers that Frederick Woodbury died Jan. 21, 1914, and the company refused to pay.

“The fact of the matter is that we have the money here now, ready to settle the claims, providing the question of the legality of certain assignments made by Mr. Woodbury is definitely cleared up,” says A. L. Saltzstein. “We have no record of these assignments. The original sum was $50,000, and we have already paid $10,000 on a policy that was entirely clear.”

I haven’t found anything further in the newspapers. It’s possible that court filings could offer more information about that dispute and how it was resolved.

Likewise, the county probate court might have more information on Frederick Woodbury’s estate and heirs. The fact that his widow was appointed administratrix instead of executrix indicates there was no will. That further suggests all or most of the estate would have gone to her as his legal wife.

That news story tells us that by May 1914 Helen G. Woodbury had received at least $10,000 after the sudden death of her husband, with the prospect of considerably more.

Some of that money, it appears, went into the founding of the Rolin Picture Company in Los Angeles.

We can make that link because, on 19 October, Helen Woodbury married Hal Roach.

TOMORROW: A marriage in movieland.

(The photo above, courtesy of the Tufts Digital Library, shows the Boston headquarters of the New England Mutual Life Insurance Company at the start of the 20th century. It’s been replaced by another building that opened in 1941.)

“Comedies Filmed by Rolin Players”

There’s a fair amount of contradiction around the founding of the Rolin Film Company, the corporation that became the Hal Roach Studio, in 1914.

Some claims arose at the time, when Rolin needed to look more stable and well financed than it really was. Others came later as Roach burnished his legend with rags-to-riches details.

Richard Lewis Ward examined the legal papers for his History of the Hal Roach Studio. Those records show that Hal Roach, Dan Linthicum (1878–1952), and I. H. Nance incorporated the Rolin Film Company on 23 July 1914. Each man bought one share for $100 and had a seat on the board.

In August, at the first board meeting, Roach said he had the cash to pay for nineteen more shares, which would be a total of $2,000. Linthicum said he would buy more later. Nance resigned; he appears to have been involved only because the law required three incorporators. An automobile dealer named Dwight Whiting (1891–1974) enthusiastically took his place.

From the auto dealership Whiting brought along his assistant, Warren Doane (1890–1964), who was also put on the board, though he was still a junior manager at most and didn’t own stock.

Roach’s friend and fellow actor Harold Lloyd recalled in his 1928 autobiography:

Roach had an idea that there would be novelty and money in kid pictures—a conviction which he vindicated eventually with the Our Gang comedies. He hired two boys and built his first picture, a one-reel comedy, around their boisterous day at the beach. I was the adult lead—the chauffeur who chaperoned them and bore the brunt of their boyish mischief, the little dears.

If that was indeed the first Rolin movie, it has entirely vanished. As have several more movies the company made in its first year.

But the company was definitely filming. On 28 September, the Morning Tribune of Los Angeles carried an article headlined: “Comedies Filmed by Rolin Players / H. E. Roach Is Directing Work of Latest Company Entering Silent Drama.”

That article stated that the Rolin Film Company had “incorporated under the laws of California, with a capital of $10,000, all of which has been paid in.” It had “rented offices at the Los Angeles Film Corporation studio, 406 Court Street,” better known as the Bradbury Mansion.

The article went on to say that Rolin had a distribution deal with the Sawyer outfit in New York, that in the previous week Roach had directed a one-reeler called “A Barber for a Day,” and that the acting company included Harold Lloyd. The last statement was reliable.

Sawyer was in business only from May 1914 to January 1915, never getting around to issuing a Rolin film. The movie about “a correspondence school woman barber” has disappeared.

As for the money behind the company, it wasn’t close to $10,000, even if the Moving Picture World repeated that figure in June 1915. Working from company files, Craig Calman has written: “Frick, Martin & Co., an Investment Securities firm, affirmed in an October 1, 1928 document that Rolin ‘was started with a paid up capital of $7,500’,” but that number seems inflated as well. The August 1914 board meeting discussed only $6,000 of shares, and not all of those were sold.

Other sources understate the working capital, going as low as $200 or $300. The 10 Jan 1937 Los Angeles Times reported that Roach had started production with $850 in January 1914, which was months before incorporation and less than he proffered at the time. That story appears to have been shaped with hindsight to make the company’s rise look even more remarkable. 

Whatever the exact figures, by the summer of 1914 the Rolin Picture Company was renting space, buying film, and paying wages. Hal Roach, previously a movie player and occasional assistant director hustling to earn $5 per day, suddenly had a couple thousand dollars to fund his own production company.

TOMORROW: Where did that money come from?