Creighton Hale | |
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1916
|
|
Born |
Patrick Fitzgerald 24 May 1882 County Cork, Ireland |
Died | 9 August 1965 South Pasadena, California, U.S. |
(aged 83)
Occupation | Actor |
Years active | 1914–1959 |
Spouse(s) | Victoire Lowe (1912–1926; divorced); 2 children Kathleen Bering (1931–1965) |
Children | 2 |
Creighton Hale (24 May 1882 — 9 August 1965) was an Irish-American theatre, film, and television actor whose career extended more than a half-century, from the early 1900s to the end of the 1950s.
Born Patrick Fitzgerald in County Cork, Ireland, he was educated in Dublin and London, and later attended Ardingly College in Sussex. He immigrated to America in his early twenties, traveling with a troupe of actors. While starring in Charles Frohman's Broadway production of Indian Summer, Hale was spotted by a representative of the Pathe Film Company. He eventually became known professionally as Creighton Hale, although the derivation of those names remains unknown. His first movie was The Exploits of Elaine in 1914. He starred in hit films such as Way Down East, Orphans of the Storm, and The Cat and the Canary.
It was generally thought that in 1923 Hale starred in an early pornographic "stag" film On the Beach (a.k.a. Getting His Goat and The Goat Man). In the film, three nude women agree to have sex with him, but only through a hole in the fence. However, photographs of the scene clearly show that the man in the film is not Hale, but another actor who also wore glasses.
However, when talkies came about, his career declined. He made several appearances in Hal Roach's Our Gang series (School's Out, Big Ears, Free Wheeling), and also played unbilled bits in major talking films such as Larceny, Inc., The Maltese Falcon, and Casablanca.