by Stephen Vagg
There were so many movie stars in Golden Era Hollywood it was hard to keep track of them all. Jon Hall was one such name. Handsome, well-built, slightly awkward and not terribly charismatic, he nonetheless managed to persevere in leading roles for two decades, half that time in “A” pictures, which isn’t too shabby by any measure, especially for someone who couldn’t really act. He had the lead role in a bona fide classic from a master director, appeared in a string of beloved cult pictures (covering camp, horror and “I can’t believe they made that”), formed one-third of a legendary on-screen team, had an exotic love life and tragic death, got involved in a Hollywood scandal and was a genuine renaissance man IRL, reinventing himself several times.
Yet, I am not sure that he’s remembered today, even by buffs.
He worked with legends high and low throughout his career – John Ford, Maria Montez, Sam Katzman, Sabu, Charles B. Griffith, Peter Lorre – but none of their iconic sheen seems to have rubbed off on Hall.
I thought it was time for a serious look at Hall’s career. Now, “serious” does not mean “uncritical” and any fans/family who come across this piece may get upset about things I’m going to write about Hall. But I hope they appreciate that I’m trying to tackle the notion of his stardom with some respect. That’s the intent anyway!
Early life
He was born Charles Locher on 23 February 1915 in Fresno California, the son of Felix Locher, district manager of an insurance firm. (NB he was not called “Jon Hall” until 1937 but I’m going to refer to him as “Hall” throughout this piece for simplicity’s sake) His father was Swiss and his mother was Tahitian and Hall enjoyed a slightly more international upbringing than was common at the time: after attending Fresno High School, he studied in Switzerland at the International University, Geneva, and at Badingham College in England, originally aiming for a diplomatic career. Post-stardom press reports alleged Hall was raised in Tahiti which I think was an exaggeration, but he did visit it and his mum was a (white) Tahitian.
Another thing that I am not sure is 100% accurate is the claim he was a cousin of Tahitian-based James Norman Hall, who wrote a series of best-selling books with Charles Nordhoff, but it came up a lot in articles and I guess the definition of “cousin” can be a little loose.
By the early 1930s, Hall had gotten the acting bug and moved to Los Angeles. His first performance – where he was billed as his real name, “Charles Locher” – was in a local theatre production of M’Lord the Duke under E.E. Clive, replacing an actor originally cast, Arlington Brough, who later signed to MGM and changed his name to Robert Taylor. Hall followed this with two stage plays at the Bliss Hayden Little Theatre in Beverly Hills: Murder on a Mountain and What? No Yacht?
His feature film debut was Women Must Dress (1935) at Monogram Pictures.
Followed by an uncredited bit in Here’s to Romance (1935).
Hall’s first big break came when cast as the romantic male lead in Charlie Chan in Shanghai (1935) at 20th Century Fox. The picture is one of the best of one of the best B-picture series – part of the appeal of these movies is spotting future stars like Rita Hayworth, Ray Milland and Hall paying their dues – and he has an amiable onscreen presence in a stock “male juvenile” part.
Hall didn’t seem to get much of a career boost from it at first, but he ploughed on, getting support roles in some Westerns – The Mysterious Avenger (1936) at Columbia and Winds of the Wasteland (1936) with John Wayne at Republic Pictures – as well as a serial, The Amazing Exploits of the Clutching Hand (1936).
Hall was a handsome, physical white male, and as such didn’t have to wait that long to get his first lead in a feature: the low-budget adventure movie, The Lion Man (1936), based on a story by Edgar Rice Burroughs. He was billed as “Charles Loucheur” but the film was later reissued as a “Jon Hall” movie to cash in on his later fame.
Hall doesn’t appear until half-way through the story but he’s not bad and handles the fight scenes well. However, The Lion Man was not widely seen – it was very cheap, and there were legal issues with the Burroughs estate.
Hall then signed a contract with Major Pictures, a company run by producer Emmanuel Cohen, who distributed through Paramount. He changed Hall’s name to “Lloyd Crane” and cast him in support parts in Mind Your Own Business (1936) and The Girl from Scotland Yard (1937). Neither did much and that was it for Lloyd Crane.
The Hurricane and Sam Goldwyn
It’s always darkest before the dawn and Hall’s next film ensured his immortality. Producer Sam Goldwyn wanted to make big special effects blockbuster with director John Ford called The Hurricane, based on a novel by the team of Nordhoff and Hall, who specialised in South Sea tales, including the source material for a then-current hit, Mutiny on the Bounty (1935). The Hurricane was the story of a Pacific Islander, Terangi, who is unjustly imprisoned by French colonial authorities; after much mistreatment he eventually escapes just in time to be a hero when a hurricane comes along to wipe out his home island. The role was initially earmarked for Goldwyn contract star Joel McCrea, that producer’s in-house “young hunk”.
Hall later claimed in interviews that he tried to get work on The Hurricane as a stuntman, extra or technical adviser, pushing his Tahitian background and family connection to James Norman Hall. He had no luck but then good fortune smiled on him twice: Joel McCrea decided not to play the part of Terangi, who was basically a shirtless himbo (albeit a heroic one), and John Ford happened to see the young Jon Hall sunbathing in his swim trunks next door and got him to do a screen test. Maybe the “being discovered next door” thing was PR hokum, but regardless, Hall wound up with the role, and a new screen name to go with it (presumably to reinforce the connection with James Hall).
The Hurricane would be Hall’s greatest film; certainly, he was never as well-served by a director again. As Terangi, the star is relaxed, athletic and charming; he doesn’t have too much dialogue, runs around in a loin cloth, dives off cliffs and kisses his co-star Dorothy Lamour (then at the beginning of her film career, but she’d already starred in The Jungle Princess (1936) and thus received top billing over Hall).
Hall and Lamour make a charming pair of lovers, and the excellent script skilfully stacks the sympathy cards all in Terangi’s favour: he’s shown to be kind, considerate and brave, a victim of racial prejudice and apathy, whose killing of a prison guard and eventual escape is entirely justified. The support cast was extremely strong, including Raymond Massey (as an all- too-believable self-righteous prig), Mary Astor, C. Aubrey Smith (who has a great death scene, playing the organ as a church collapses around him), Thomas Mitchell (as that old South Seas favourite, the drunken doctor) and John Carradine (the definitive evil prison guard).
The Hurricane is often dismissed by Ford fans as not as personal as the director’s other works but it is recognisably Fordian: the lyricism, the depiction of a close knit community and its rituals, the elevated roles of priests, the pain caused by martinets. The special effects remain stunning, even today.
Dorothy Lamour wrote in her memoirs that Hall “was a really nice guy” but that during filming he refused to let the on-set doctor use Hall’s dressing room as a place to store his instruments (Lamour offered up hers instead). This annoyed the crew, who engineered it so that Hall was swept into the water while filming a hurricane sequence. “He wasn’t really hurt, just scared silly,” wrote Lamour, adding “the crew had made their point”. Gotta love those bullying crews!
The Hurricane was a big box office hit and Hall was launched as a star – or at least, a very exciting new leading man. Problem… what to do next? Dorothy Lamour was under contract to Paramount, who kept her busy in a series of musicals and island romances. Hall was contracted to Goldwyn, who only made a few films a year, and more inclined to develop projects for bigger names on their roster, like Gary Cooper, McCrea and Ronald Colman.
An offer came from producer Alexander Korda in England to star in a version of Thief of Bagdad, alongside Sigrid Guthrie and Korda’s own contract star, Sabu. However, the film was postponed – it would not be made until two years later, with John Justin in the part earmarked for Hall (and June Duprez replacing Guthrie). Edward Small offered up the lead in another South Seas tale, South of Pago Pago, but that was postponed. Various other films were announced for Hall – Golden Boy, The Fleet’s In, Tahiti, Canal Zone, Black Gold, and Sun Valley – but they were either not made or filmed with someone else.
Hall ended up not appearing in a film for over two years. He was on salary the whole time, so he didn’t starve, but it was frustrating. Hall later said, “at first it’s alright because you tell them what you believe to be true, that the studio is trying to find the right script. But after a year, and after a year and a half, and after two years, you start going nuts. You start ducking across the street to avoid people who will ask you what you are doing.” He also had to (successfully) fight off a claim from his former acting coach for 10% of Hall’s earnings (he got out of it because the contract was signed in 1934 when Hall was a minor).
Hall’s sanity was rescued by going on tour in a nightclub act with his wife, Frances Langford who he married in June 1938. Langford was a singer and Hall would join her on stage, joking around self-consciously, and trying to dance and sing, while not really being good at either. Still, the two of them proved a popular enough draw, audiences keen to hear Langford and see Hall in the flesh, and they would sporadically tour together over the next decade. A 1940 review in Variety of one of their performances is here.
Eventually, Goldwyn cast Hall in a medium-budget “three sailors on leave” comedy, The Sweetheart of Turret One, under the direction of Allan Dwan; Goldwyn ended up selling the project in its entirety to Fox, who renamed it Sailor’s Lady (1940). It’s not a very good movie, lacking focus and verve, and testing the patience of all but the most ardent Dwan auteurists; Hall is a little stiff but I guess it suits the part. His co-stars included Dana Andrews, another Goldwyn contract player, and Buster Crabbe.
Still, the drought had been broken and Goldwyn then loaned out Hall to producer Edward Small for two more movies in quick succession: a re-activated South of Pago Pago (1940), where Hall plays a Terangi-type islander lusted over by been-around-the-block saloon gal Frances Farmer, and Kit Carson (1940), a Western with Hall in the title role.
Both are solid adventure movies that you wish were in colour, but have decent stories, strong casts and plenty of action; Hall is comfortable in the former, and his character has a genuinely moving relationship with that played by Frances Farmer. He is less at home in the latter, but the movie is saved by its production values and support cast, including Andrews and Lyn Bari.
Commercial response for both South of Pago Pago and Kit Carson was strong, and Paramount arranged for Hall to be reunited with Dorothy Lamour in Aloma of the South Seas (1941), a South Seas tale of childhood sweethearts who grow up to marry and deal with jealous third parties. This was Hall’s first movie in colour and, if approached in the right spirit (a qualifier you need for all the star’s films), it’s great escapist entertainment, with every South Sea trope you need (treacherous island royalty, marriage ceremonies, volcanoes). The film is stolen by Philip Reed as the villain and to be honest, Hall doesn’t match Lamour in the charisma stakes: she simply has more warmth and life on screen, while Hall was a little stolid. Still, he at least moved and looked like an action hero.
Lamour later said Hall was nicknamed Casanova during filming “because he was known to disappear from the set for a romantic fling with any lovely girl who came along.” The movie was Hall’s biggest hit since The Hurricane.
RKO decided to get in on the South Seas action with their own adaptation of a Nordhoff-Hall novel, The Tuttles of Tahiti (1942)… only it’s not really a South Seas movie so much as a “wacky family” tale, with Hall as the son of paterfamilias Charles Laughton. You can see what the filmmakers are going for but despite a healthy budget and talented people involved (Charles Vidor directed), the film is marred by odd decisions (the film noir-like photography, Laughton’s make-up, the lack of a decent romance and action for Hall). It lost RKO money, which may explain why this was the last time Hall depicted a Pacific Islander on screen (in his subsequent South Seas movies he would always play a white man).
Universal and Maria Montez
Hall would have noticed how well Dana Andrews did when Goldwyn shared that actor’s contract with a busier studio (20th Century Fox), so he was likely excited when producer Walter Wanger arranged for Hall’s contract to be shared with Universal Studios. Wanger and Universal put Hall in a support role in Eagle Squadron (1942), a wartime propaganda film directed by Arthur Lubin about Americans serving in the RAF; it was a nothing part (Robert Stack got to play the lead) but at least was hugely popular.
Hall did topline The Invisible Agent (1942), a cheerful entry in Universal’s Invisible Man franchise, where Hall uses invisibility to fight the Axis. His casting was a little odd (from Claude Rains to Vincent Price to… Jon Hall?), but I guess Hall did suit the more action-orientated tale Universal had in mind. The film is silly but fun and has that Universal ‘40s polish which is so enjoyable to watch today.
Wanger then put Hall in Arabian Nights (1942), a lush, healthily-budgeted Technicolor fantasy very much inspired by Thief of Bagdad, complete with Sabu in a key supporting role; the leading lady was Maria Montez, a contract starlet Universal wanted to turn into their in-house Dorothy Lamour, and the movie, directed by John Rawlins, was packed with every possible Orientalist trope the studio could think of: dancing girls, comic relief bandits, uprisings, abductions, fights, swims, romance. It was hugely successful at the box office and kicked off a cycle of “Easterns” that lasted in Hollywood for over a decade.
Universal knew from the rushes it had struck a gold mine, and even before Arabian Nights was released announced the team of Hall, Montez and Sabu would be reunited in two more efforts: White Savage (1943) and Cobra Woman (1943). Both were even better than Arabian Nights – Arthur Lubin directed White Savage, Richard Siodmak Cobra Woman and Richard Brooks worked on the scripts for both – and hold up today as fast-paced, enjoyably campy adventures that look gorgeous. Most critical writing on these pictures has tended to focus on Montez – her beauty, stiff demeanour, acting (especially the dual role and dancing in Cobra Woman, so beloved by Kenneth Anger). She did team well with Hall who leapt around, fighting baddies and swimming in lagoons. Neither were as warm and personable on-screen as Sabu, but the three of them together (plus Technicolor) made an effective team.
Jon Hall’s Hollywood profile was at its peak, helped by the fact that the war was on and Hall didn’t enlist, meaning (a) Hollywood was booming and (b) he had less competition for leading men roles.
Paramount borrowed him a second time to play the false love interest for Ginger Rogers in Lady in the Dark (1943), an expensive adaptation of the hit stage musical that had starred Gertrude Lawrence.
Hall’s part was the “beautiful hunk of man”, film star Randy Curtis – a role originated on stage by Victor Mature (incidentally, the original Lady in the Dark Broadway production launched a few careers: MacDonald Carey and Danny Kaye were also in the cast and got film contracts out of it.).
Hall is adequate in the part – very objectified by director Mitchell Leisen – though he lacks the warmth of a Mature. I saw this film only a few days ago, expressly because I am writing this piece on Hall – and while I have no trouble recalling Rogers, Ray Milland (leading man) and even Barry Sullivan (who plays a creepy shrink), I have struggle remembering Hall. There is something more disposable about him as an actor – he does not command the screen in the way the others do.
Mind you, Hall could be effective with a showier role, as provided when Universal put him in another Invisible Man movie, The Invisible Man’s Revenge (1944), playing a different part to The Invisible Agent. He was no nice Nazi fighter in this one, but an escaped psychiatric patient whose invisibility allows him to take revenge on the relatives who betrayed him. Watching the film today, you do wish Hall’s part was played by someone like Claude Rains, Boris Karloff or Vincent Price, but Hall is fine, helped by a moustache (which always gave him extra personality) and it is a highly entertaining film, with brisk handling and support players like John Carradine.
Universal wanted three more Hall-Montez-Sabu movies but ran into a snag when Sabu was called into the army. So, a suave Turkish-Czech actor under contract to Universal, Turban Bey (who had impressed with flashy support parts in Arabian Nights and White Savage), replaced Sabu for Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves (1944), directed by Lubin.
Bey’s casting slightly unbalanced the dynamics of the trio – he is more of an obvious romantic rival for Montez, and his authority pulls focus from Hall (I also think Lubin had a bit of a male gaze crush on Bey, as could be seen in their other collaborations like White Savage, The Climax (1943) and A Night in Paradise (1946)). Still, there is plenty of action, colour, comedy and dancing, which Hall, as usual, handles quite well. (Random trivia: the role of Hall as a boy was played by future-tragic child star Scotty Beckett, who had performed the same function in Aloma of the South Seas.)
Hall, Montez and Bey were meant to be reunited in Gypsy Wildcat (1944), but then Bey was borrowed by MGM for Dragon Seed (1944) and he was replaced by someone called Peter Coe. This is probably the weakest in the series due to Coe, a classic Hollywood 4F leading man, and the poor quality of colour, but there is plenty of action and silliness (and James M. Cain co-wrote the script!).
Bey was back for the sixth Hall-Montez collaboration, originally called Queen of the Nile and then Sudan (1945) – and for the first time, Montez went off into the sunset with someone other than Hall, namely Bey (whose fan mail was apparently off the charts).
If you’re a fan of the first five movies, this is a little stressful to watch: it feels like cheating, especially as Hall’s character is seriously into Montez. Bey could be very effective as an actor but struggles to do the physical stuff as well as Hall. I wonder why this change was made – I think it was driven by Montez, who was getting sick of the formula and her leading man.
Yvonne de Carlo wrote in her memoirs that Montez turned down the lead in Frontier Gal (1945) because she did not want to appear opposite Rod Cameron or Jon Hall – so de Carlo took the role (opposite Cameron). In time, de Carlo supplanted Montez as Universal’s Queen of Technicolor before being supplanted in turn by Maureen O’Hara.
Hall would be supplanted as Universal’s leading action man by younger contract players such as Tony Curtis, Rock Hudson and Jeff Chandler – incidentally, Hudson said it was seeing Hall dive off the top of the ship in The Hurricane that made him want to become an actor (only to find out years later that it was a stuntman who did the dive).
During the filming of Sudan, Jon Hall took part in his most famous Hollywood scandal, The “Battle of the Balcony”. On the evening of 5 August 1944, he was at a party at the apartment of band leader Tommy Dorsey when Hall put his arm around Dorsey’s wife; Dorsey didn’t take it well, and started punching Hall with the help of Arthur Smiley, a friend of Bugsy Siegel, which resulted in Hall being seriously injured. The actor didn’t want to press charges but Dorsey was put on trial anyway, although he got off (everyone was too tanked/terrified/shifty to give decent evidence). The incident didn’t seem to particularly hurt or help Hall’s career but it did get a lot of press attention at the time.
Universal put Hall to work in some other non-Montez films. He was the straight man in a charming screwball comedy, San Diego I Love You (1945), directed by Reginald Le Borg, who later said it was his favourite film. It was, deservedly, a surprise hit – a bright, peppy combination of Cinderella, accommodation shortages and wacky families, with Buster Keaton thrown in; Hall had to react and be normal and handsome and while he was not in the class of a, say, Robert Cummings, he was fine. Universal reunited him with his San Diego star Louise Albritton in another comedy, Men in Her Diary (1945), which seemed to do less well.
Hall had managed to avoid army service for most of the war, but in March 1945 he was ruled IA and was inducted into the army. He did some basic training but then fell ill due to a gall bladder ailment and was discharged in October. Hall missed a final Montez-Sabu collaboration: Tangier (1946), which had Robert Paige playing the Jon Hall role; it was in black-and-white and isn’t bad, just not as fun as the Hall-Montez movies.
When Montez made Pirates of Monterey (1947) for Universal (in colour), her leading man was Rod Cameron. I don’t know if she insisted on not appearing opposite Hall; if so, it was a mistake – Cameron isn’t as well matched with her. Neither was, come to think of it, Paige or Montez’s real-life husband, Jean Pierre Aumont who made Sirens of Atlantis (1948) with her. For all his limitations, Hall was simply better suited to Montez than anyone else.
Universal put Hall into two low-budget Westerns, The Michigan Kid (1946) and The Vigilantes Return (1946). Hall was never that comfortable in the saddle and neither movie did too well in what was already an over-saturated market.
Columbia Pictures and Sam Katzman
Hall was still under contract to Sam Goldwyn, who loaned him to Sam Katzman, a prolific producer of B-movies at Columbia. Katzman cast Hall in Last of the Redmen (1947), a colourful adaptation of Last of the Mohicans with Michael O’Shea as Hawkeye and Hall (top-billed) as Major Duncan Heyward, the British soldier! The movie was energetic and fun, and Hall had a decent presence: while not the first actor you think of to play a redcoat, he’s more effective than when he played a traditional cowboy. Admittedly, he was overshadowed by O’Shea and Buster Crabbe, who is superb as Magua.
In August 1946, Hall terminated his contract held jointly by Universal and Samuel Goldwyn, and signed a one-picture deal with Katzman, who put him in Prince of Thieves (1948), a bright version of the Robin Hood story with Hall as Robin. It was popular and Hall clearly suited the world of Columbia B-pictures, with their expert colour photography, fast pace, and fondness for ageing stars (others used by Katzman include George Montgomery and Paul Henreid). Hall’s third for the producer was The Mutineers (1949), an adventure tale with George Reeves.
Hall then did three films in a row for director William Berke, a low-budget specialist, each for different companies. Deputy Marshall (1949) was a run-of-the-mill Western for producer Robert Lippert, co-starring Langford (who sings a few tunes). Zamba (1949) was a “boy and gorilla” tale for Eagle Lion, Hall’s first film set in Africa, with a young Beau Bridges as the boy.
On the Isle of Samoa (1950) was a South Seas tale at Columbia, co-starring a very young Susan Cabot. It is surprisingly interesting, especially for Aussies, since it starts in Sydney, with Hall in a rare anti-hero role killing some conspirators while committing a robbery, then trying to escape in a plane (he crashes on an island and gets redeemed via the love of island girl Cabot). Hall does look out of shape in a lagoon scene (you can see him suck in his gut and he seems to be trying to hide his torso in some shadows) but it’s also one of his best performances in part because he had something meaty to play.
Hall’s next five films were also at Columbia, all but one for Katzman. The non-Katzman effort was the best: China Corsair (1951), a terrific action tale set in the South China Seas, with Hall essentially a leading man to lady pirate Lisa Ferraday; Ernest Borgnine plays Chinese and Australia’s own Ron Randell is a villain.
The Katzman movies are most notable for the way they gleefully raided and distorted rarely-filmed periods of history: in When the Redskins Rode (1951), Hall is an Indian helping George Washington fight The Battle of Fort Necessity in the French Indian War; for Hurricane Island (1951), he is a Spanish Conquistador (!) helping Ponce de Leon fight Indians and search for the Fountain of Youth in soon-to-be Florida, and romancing a female pirate (Marie Windsor); in Brave Warrior (1952), he is an Indian agent helping Tecumseh (Jay Silverheels, excellent) and William Henry Harrison fight the Prophet (Michael Ansara) at Battle of Tippecanoe in the War of 1812; Last Train to Bombay (1952) is set in modern day India with Hall trying to stop a war between India and Pakistan.
Katzman made a lot of serials, and the films have a serial “feel” about them – every ten minutes there’s a new action/suspense sequence. In all of them, Hall is overshadowed by his co-stars, which actually doesn’t matter when they are driving the action but more problematic when he’s the man in charge; Hall was a decent leading man, just not a good star. And to be blunt, by now he was packing on the pounds; in some scenes in Last Train to Bombay he seems to be puffing. Still, the pictures are unpretentious and (on the whole) entertaining, if you can get past the dodgy racial politics inherent in all of them.
Later Career
Hall decided to shift into television, and he created, starred in and produced the adventure series Ramar of the Jungle (1952-54), where he played a research scientist in darkest backlot Africa. Pure hokum, cheap AF, and by this stage Hall clearly wasn’t holding back at the buffet table (a trait he seemed to share with another actor around this time who originally leapt to fame because of his body, Johnny Weissmuller)… but they made 52 eps, kids loved it and it screened widely. Indeed, when Hall eventually died, a lot of baby boomer-written obituaries placed as much emphasis on this as The Hurricane and the Montez pictures. You can see some episodes here.
When Ramar ended, Hall tried to finance another series, Knight of the South Seas, the story of an adventurer sailing the Pacific. He made two half-hour pilots and couldn’t sell them as a series – despite it being basically the same idea as the later hit Adventures in the Islands (1961-63) – but the episodes were cobbled together to make a film, Hell Ship Mutiny (1957). Peter Lorre and John Carradine appear as guest stars and steal the show, giving it some class; the “film” also marked the acting debut of Hall’s father, Felix Locher, who decided to spend his retirement working as an actor until his death, which is just too cute.
Hall had one last crack at leading man status when cast in Forbidden Island (1959), one of two low-budget films Charles B. Griffith wrote and produced for Columbia in Hawaii. Griffith penned some genius scripts for Roger Corman, most famously Little Shop of Horrors (1960), but that talent is not on display in this film, which is sluggish and full of stock island drama tropes. Griffith called Forbidden Island “terrible”, saying “I got chicken and started to write very safely within a formula to please the major studios, and of course, you cannot do that.”
Hall could have hung on to acting in the way his contemporaries did like, say, Buster Crabbe, Dick Foran and Dana Andrews – shifting down the cast list, touring in summer stock, doing guest shots on television. And he did guest star in an episode of Matinee Theatre and two eps of Perry Mason.
But generally, Hall was busy doing other things. He divorced Langford in 1955 and remarried (actor Raquel Torres) in 1959, then divorced her, and married a psychiatrist who he also later divorced. He operated citrus orchards, ran a resort hotel in Florida, headed a film library renting footage to producers, developed an underwater camera for the Navy, invented both a shark-killing weapon and a distortion free lens for cameras and projector called Optivision, created a sensor used for filming the space shuttle Enterprise during Testing by NASA, designed an underwater filming device known as the Scumpa, and developed and patented Fantascope, a lens that can be adapted to any camera to provide a wider view of the subject.
“He was a dreamer and an inventor,” said Herb Klein, a business associate. “He was always thinking up new things.”
Not that Hall ever entirely finished with cinema. Some enterprising low-budget producers had the idea of cashing in on AIP’s success with horror and beach party movies by combining them both in Beach Girls and the Monster (1965). I’m not sure how Jon Hall got involved with this el cheapo product – maybe they wanted to borrow his camera equipment, and/or use his name – but he wound up not only starring in the film, but directing it too, and loaning his house for filming. The movie is a fascinating car crash: gloomily shot, moody, with ripe Tennessee Williams-esque melodrama mixed in amongst the beach babes and a hilariously unconvincing creature – plus a music score written by Frank Sinatra Jr.
Hall looks heavy and his performance is, to be honest, terrible… but his involvement is part of this cult classic’s appeal. If you like trashy movies, this one is worth a watch.
Hall was then called in to shoot additional sequences for another low budget horror, The Navy vs the Night Monster (1966), much to the annoyance of the original director. The film has also developed a cult and is quite fun if approached in the right mood.
He photographed and co-produced the motorcycle film Five the Hard Way (1969), also known as The Sidehackers.
And he did underwater photography on the eco-documentary Survival of Spaceship Earth (1972).
Hall managed to outlive both Sabu (who died of a heart attack in 1963 aged 39) and Montez (died of a heart attack in the bath in 1951 aged 39) but his ending was, unfortunately, rough. He was diagnosed with bladder cancer which caused him crippling pain – so much pain that on 13 December 1979 Hall shot himself in the head in his bedroom of the house he shared with his sister.
Obituaries paid tribute to his genuine classic (The Hurricane, which looked even better after its rotten 1979 Mia Farrow remake) and cult classics (the Montez films, the Universal horrors) plus his interesting business activities.
Jon Hall was not one of the great Hollywood stars, or even an average one – he was more a leading man who could be very effective if protected with action and a co-star. He did seem at home in South Sea adventure tales – harder than in looks (who could do it now?) – and was a surprisingly effective comedy straight man. He had some bad luck towards the end of his life but a lot of good luck before then.
A fine crit on Jon hall. Thank you.