For whatever reason, I don't find Hal Thompson (1899-1966) half as objectionable as most of the ciphers and cigar store Indians who played the male love interests in Marx Brothers' comedies. Maybe it's because as Johnny Parker in Animal Crackers (1930) he shares the "professional stiff" duties with Zeppo, and the movie is so rich in comic business that a relatively small amount of time is spent on his travails in currying favor with Margaret Dumont for the purposes of marrying Lillian Roth.
Oddly, Thompson seems nearly as absent from his own life and career, as well, at least from what can be garnered online. 18 screen credits and four Broadway ones. He's in two silent films, Who's Your Friend? (1925) with Francis X. Bushman and Jimmy Aubrey, and a western called Coming and Going (1926) with one "Buffalo Bill, Jr". In 1928 he made his Broadway debut in The Great Necker with Taylor Holmes, Blanche Ring, and Irene Purcell (soon to star opposite Buster Keaton in The Passionate Plumber (1932). His big year was 1930. he returned to Broadway in Ada Beats the Drum with Mary Boland and Natalie "Mrs. Howell" Schafer, then appeared in to films, Leave it to Lester with Lester Allen, and Animal Crackers. He returned to Broadway in 1935 for Smile at Me with Jack Osterman.
After that, a couple of British films and some TV credits, and that's really about it, aside from a Broadway show that closed after a single performance. I'm thinking that the big holes in Thompson's known credits were likely spent touring with stock companies or in theatre in the U.K. His final credit was an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents in 1959. He died in a fire in 1966. He'd been smoking in bed.
For more on show business history please see No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, and for more on classic comedy see Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube. And keep an eye peeled for The Marx Brothers Miscellany, coming this fall!
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