Alan Hale, Sr.

Alan Hale, Sr., born Rufus Edward MacKahan on February 10, 1892, in Washington, D.C., was an American actor, film director, and Broadway performer whose career spanned four decades. He died on January 22, 1950, in Hollywood, California, at the age of 57, following a liver ailment and viral infection, and is interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.

Before entering the entertainment industry, Hale studied osteopathy at the University of Pennsylvania and worked variously as an opera singer, journalist, and inventor. His screen career began with the 1911 silent film The Cowboy and the Lady, and between 1913 and 1915 he worked as a leading man for the Biograph Company in special feature productions sponsored and controlled by Marc Klaw and Abraham Erlanger. Over time he transitioned into character roles, ultimately appearing in 235 theatrical films and directing eight pictures during the 1920s and 1930s.

Hale's Broadway career ran from 1913 to 1933 and included appearances in both musicals and plays. His stage credits encompassed the musicals A Lonely Romeo, Poor Little Ritz Girl, and Here's Howe, as well as the plays Mima and We, The People, among other productions.

On screen, Hale became particularly associated with the Golden Age of Hollywood, where he was a frequent collaborator and sidekick of Errol Flynn, appearing alongside him in 13 films. One of his most enduring screen achievements was his portrayal of Little John, a role he first played opposite Douglas Fairbanks and Wallace Beery in Robin Hood in 1922, reprised with Flynn and Basil Rathbone in The Adventures of Robin Hood in 1938, and performed a third time in Rogues of Sherwood Forest in 1950 — a span of 28 years playing the same character in theatrical films. In Dodge City (1939), he played Rusty Hart, sidekick to Flynn's Sheriff Wade Hatton, and in The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939) he portrayed Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone, in a pivotal confrontation with Flynn's Earl of Essex.

His filmography brought him into contact with many of Hollywood's most prominent performers. He appeared in The Trap (1922) with Lon Chaney, It Happened One Night (1934) with Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert, The Little Minister (1934) with Katharine Hepburn, Stella Dallas (1937) with Barbara Stanwyck, High Wide and Handsome (1937) with Irene Dunne and Dorothy Lamour, The Fighting 69th (1940) with James Cagney and Pat O'Brien, They Drive By Night (1940) with George Raft and Humphrey Bogart, Manpower (1941) with Edward G. Robinson and Marlene Dietrich, and This Is the Army (1943) with Irving Berlin, in which he played Sergeant McGee.

Outside of performing, Hale achieved recognition as an inventor. His innovations included a sliding theater chair designed to allow seated audience members to admit newcomers without standing, the hand fire extinguisher, and greaseless potato chips.

Hale was married for over 30 years to Gretchen Hartman, a former child actress and silent film player. Together they had three children, including actor Alan Hale, Jr., best known for playing the Skipper on the television series Gilligan's Island. Father and son bore a strong physical resemblance to each other, which led to occasional confusion after Hale Sr.'s death when Hale Jr. dropped the Jr. from his name. Both men also played the same character, Porthos the musketeer, in films 40 years apart — Hale Sr. in The Man in the Iron Mask in 1939 and Hale Jr. in The Fifth Musketeer in 1979. A street in San Antonio, Texas, bears Hale's name.