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Harry 'Snub' Pollard

Harry 'Snub' Pollard

Actor · 1889 – 1962 · Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

Snub Pollard (9 November 1889 – 19 January 1962) was an Australian-born vaudevillian, who became a silent film comedian in Hollywood, popular in the 1920s. Born Harold Fraser, in Melbourne, Australia on 9 November 1889, he began performing with Pollard's Lilliputian Opera Company at a young age. Like many of the actors in the popular juvenile company, he adopted Pollard as his stage name. The company ran several highly successful professional children's troupes that traveled Australia and New Zealand in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. In 1908, Harry Pollard joined the company tour to North America. After the completion of the tour, he returned to the US. By 1915 he was regularly appearing in uncredited roles in movies, for example Charles Epting notes that Pollard can clearly be seen in Chaplin's 1915 short By the Sea. In later years, Pollard claimed Hal Roach had discovered him while he was performing on stage in Los Angeles. Pollard played supporting roles in the early films of Harold Lloyd and Bebe Daniels. The long-faced Pollard sported a Kaiser Wilhelm mustache turned upside-down; this became his trademark. Lloyd's producer, Hal Roach, gave Pollard his own starring series of one- and two-reel shorts. The most famous is 1923's It's a Gift, in which he plays an inventor of many Rube Goldberg-like contraptions, including a car that runs by magnet power. In early 1923, shortly after his second marriage, Pollard returned with his wife Elizabeth to see his relations in Australia. His visit attracted considerable attention, and he appeared again in several theatres to speak about the motion picture business. On his return to the US, he left Roach and joined the low-budget Weiss Brothers studio in 1926. There he co-starred with Marvin Loback as a poor man's version of Laurel and Hardy, copying that team's plots and gags. In later years, Pollard claimed the Great Depression wiped out his investments, and he had been unable to "adjust to the talkies." However, in the 1930s, he played small parts in talking comedies, and was featured as comic relief in "B" westerns. Pollard's silent-comedy credentials guaranteed him work in slapstick revivals. He appeared with other film veterans in Hollywood Cavalcade (1939), The Perils of Pauline (1947), and Man of a Thousand Faces (1957). He also appeared regularly as a supporting player in Columbia Pictures' two-reel comedies of the mid-1940s. Forsaking his familiar mustache in his later years, he landed much steadier work in films as a mostly uncredited bit player. He played incidental roles in scores of Hollywood features and shorts, almost always as a mousy, nondescript fellow, usually with no dialogue. Snub Pollard died of cancer on 19 January 1962, aged 72, after nearly 50 years in the movie business. His interment was at Forest Lawn Memorial Park (Hollywood Hills). For his contributions to motion pictures, Pollard has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6415½ Hollywood Boulevard.

Movies24

  • Movie8.1

    Singin' in the Rain

    1952 · 3.6K votes

  • Movie7.8
  • Movie7.4

    Miracle on 34th Street

    1947 · 871 votes

  • Movie7.1
  • Movie6.6

    Friendly Persuasion

    1956 · 146 votes

  • Movie6.8

    One-Eyed Jacks

    1961 · 262 votes

  • Movie7.9

    Limelight

    1952 · 616 votes

  • Movie7.1

    Adam's Rib

    1949 · 347 votes

  • Movie7.0

    The Tin Star

    1957 · 150 votes

  • Movie6.2

    The Paradine Case

    1947 · 271 votes

  • Movie7.7

    Inherit the Wind

    1960 · 490 votes

  • Movie7.0

    Scaramouche

    1952 · 108 votes

  • Movie7.3

    Red River

    1948 · 617 votes

  • Movie7.0

    The Country Girl

    1954 · 96 votes

  • Movie7.1

    Julius Caesar

    1953 · 243 votes

  • Movie7.4

    The Gunfighter

    1950 · 216 votes

  • Movie7.2

    Where the Sidewalk Ends

    1950 · 212 votes

  • Movie6.4

    Who Was That Lady?

    1960 · 31 votes

  • Movie6.0

    Master of the World

    1961 · 86 votes

  • Movie7.3

    Pocketful of Miracles

    1961 · 189 votes

  • Movie5.8

    Till the Clouds Roll By

    1946 · 30 votes

  • Movie6.8

    Teacher's Pet

    1958 · 108 votes

  • Movie5.6

    A Woman's Secret

    1949 · 49 votes

  • Movie6.1

    The Lady Gambles

    1949 · 34 votes

Series3

  • TV7.8

    Alfred Hitchcock Presents

    1955 · 266 votes

  • TV6.3

    Public Defender

    1954 · 4 votes

  • TV6.5

    Racket Squad

    1951 · 4 votes