Rolin

Rolin is the earlier Hal Roach company, before the Culver City lot. The two Wikipedia sentences below give 23 July 1914, the partners Dan Linthicum and I.H. Nance, and the brand name Rolin as a combination of Roach and Linthicum.

Silent Era lists The Rolin Film Company as a United States production company: incorporated July 1914, active from 1915. Its years line carries question marks, “through 1921?” and “Dissolved 1921?”. Principals on that list are Hal Roach, president (1914–1921); Daniel A. Linthicum (1914–1921); I.N. Nance (1914); and Dwight Whiting, treasurer and general manager (1915 through circa 1918). Silent Era spells that partner I.N. Nance; the Wikipedia sentences spell I.H. Nance.

For circa 1916, Silent Era lists company studios at 5817 Santa Monica Boulevard, Los Angeles, and a company office at 520 West 7th Street, Room 907, Los Angeles. Those lines are not a street address for the July 1914 incorporation. The same list says the films were distributed through Pathé Exchange, Incorporated.

The Hal Roach chronology at The Lucky Corner says that on 23 July 1914 Roach was elected president, and that the company hired Harold Lloyd for a one-reel series called Willie Work, with Jane Novak as leading lady and Roy Stewart as the heavy, besides two-reel dramas with Stewart in the lead. That chronology dates Dwight Whiting’s replacement of I. H. Nance to 17 August 1914. Silent Era’s years for Whiting begin in 1915.

The same chronology says that in 1915 Dwight Whiting interested Pathé Exchange in the Rolin films, that Pathé released only one Willie Work short, Just Nuts, and that in July 1915 Bebe Daniels and Snub Pollard joined Lloyd’s Lonesome Luke character. It also lists a summer 1915 lease of facilities owned by the Norbig Film Manufacturing Company at 1745-51 Alessandro Street in Edendale. That is a 1915 workplace in the chronology, not a street address for the July 1914 incorporation.

For 1916, The Lucky Corner says production moved in March to Pacific Laboratories on Santa Monica Boulevard, that the Lonesome Luke series went to two reels in August, and that by the end of the year the main operation was at the Bradbury mansion, 406 Court Street. Silent Era’s circa-1916 studio line remains 5817 Santa Monica Boulevard. This page does not treat those two Santa Monica mentions as one street number.

The San Francisco Silent Film Festival note on For Heaven’s Sake says that, after an inheritance, Roach established the Rolin Film Company at the Pathé Studio, that Lloyd joined, left in 1915 over pay, and that Roach brought him back by doubling his salary. The same note says that after nine years with Roach, Lloyd left in 1924 and formed the Harold Lloyd Corporation.

The Lucky Corner chronology dates an April 1919 change of the Harold Lloyd series to two reels, Bebe Daniels’s departure in June 1919, and Mildred Davis as the new leading lady. It says Lloyd injured his right hand on 24 August 1919 while posing with a prop bomb, and that a one-reel series called Rolin Comedies began on 26 August 1919, at first starring Snub Pollard, with Ernie “Sunshine Sammy” Morrison as his sidekick in those first comedies.

That chronology says production units began using a new Culver City studio in February 1920, before the building was finished, and that the Roach studio in Culver City was officially completed on 20 April 1920. It does not give a street number for that date.

Silent Era states that in 1921 the partnership of Hal Roach and Dan Linthicum was dissolved and the assets of The Rolin Film Company were acquired by Hal Roach Studios, Incorporated. The same source lists that company as formed in 1921 from The Rolin Film Company when Hal Roach bought out Daniel A. Linthicum, with studios at 8822 Washington Boulevard, Culver City, circa 1923.

The National Film Preservation Foundation note on the 1920 short Run ’Em Ragged lists Pathé as distributor, Rolin as the production company, Hal Roach as producer, and Alfred Goulding as director, with Snub Pollard in the cast. The note says Pollard became Harold Lloyd’s sidekick at the Rolin Film Company in 1915, and that he stayed on when Lloyd moved to the glasses character.

The later Culver City lot on this site: Hal Roach Studios.