H.M. Walker

WALKER HM Harley Marquis Walker started as a telegrapher tapping out the descriptions of sportswriters at boxing matches and sending them to the offices of their newspapers In 1903 he became a sportswriter himself and wrote a column The Wisdom of Blinkey Ben for the Los Angeles Examiner before joining Roach in 1917 as a parttime scenario and title writer for Harold Lloyd In 1920 he left newspaper work and joined Roach full time as head of the editorial department A brilliant title writer in the silent era Walker was less skilled at dialogue he was credited for providing these elements on more than 350 Roach comedies He usually came up with the title for each film and also wrote fairly severe critiques after each preview After leaving Roach in 1932 he wrote dialogue for some features including Son of a Sailor 1933 with Joe E Brown WC Fields The Old Fashioned Way 1934 and the ZaSu Pitts picture Affair of Susan 1935 Walker died in the home of his good friend Leroy Shield who had written scores at the Roach lot in 1930 and 31 Died June 23 1937 Chicago Illinois age 58 of a heart attack From Wikipedia the free encyclopedia 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 On Roachs 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 legalsize 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 MGM Walkers writing did not transition well to talkies and by 1931 he had left Roach studio and wrote dialogue for comedies produced by exRoach general manager Warren Doane at Universal Pictures Later he worked at Paramount Pictures where he contributed to the W C Fields picture The Old Fashioned Way 1934