H. M. Walker
| H. M. Walker | |
|---|---|
1920 photo
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| Born |
June 27, 1885 Logan County, Ohio |
| Died | June 23, 1937 (aged 51) Chicago, Illinois |
| Other names | H.W. Walker |
| Years active | 1917-1935 |
Harley M. "Beanie" Walker (June 27, 1878 – June 23, 1937) was a member of the Hal Roach movie production company from 1916 until his resignation in 1932. The title cards he wrote for Harold Lloyd, Charley Chase, Our Gang and Laurel and Hardy comedies "have entered legend, both for silent films, and as opening remarks for the earlier talkies." He was also an officer of the Roach Studio corporation.
Like many screenwriters of his time, notably Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, Walker came to the screen trade from the freewheeling world of newspaper journalism. He was a sports writer for the Los Angeles Examiner before joining Roach.
On Roach's "Lot of Fun", script development usually started with meetings among the gag men, who would develop what was known as an "action script": the outline of the story and a description of the scenes and some of the sight gags, which generally would run three to six legal-size pages. This document would then pass to Walker, the head of the editorial department, which oversaw not only script editing, but film editing as well. Walker usually came up with the title of each film, wrote "brilliantly witty" title cards which would be produced and inserted into the film, and wrote a critique before the picture went out to the distributors, Pathé Exchange, or later, M-G-M.
Walker was a chain-smoking eccentric, a cat fanatic whose office always had a few tabbies in residence. His exterior was gruff and he was often difficult to get along with. Director Tay Garnett had an early-career one-day trial as an assistant writer to Walker, whose only reaction to Garnett's efforts was a guttural "yeah." Then, Garnett, "who soon discovered Walker's 'yeah's to be the equivalent to a round of applause, was told 'Come back tomorrow—on salary.'" Film Editor Richard Currier recounted that Walker never drove a car, so his wife had to drive him to work every day. But Currier was fond of Walker, calling him "a prince of a guy," and remembered the present of a dictionary with a note that read like one of Waker's title cards: "Having listened for years to your astonishing, and, at times, highly-charged vocabulary, I hasten to add to your voltage."
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