Alan Hale
actor, director, soundtrack
- Birth name:
- Rufus Edward MacKahan
- Born:
- 1892-02-10, Washington, District of Columbia, USA
- Died:
- 1950-01-22, Hollywood, California, USA
- Professions:
- actor, director, soundtrack
Biography
When a young Alan Hale folded his opera ambitions, he pivoted to the flickering new art of film and never looked back. Cecil B. DeMille snapped him up at once: Hale’s bulky frame and booming voice decorated epics while, behind the camera, he also shouted “Action!” for DeMille on occasion. Talkies arrived; Hale fronted a handful of pictures, then cheerfully slipped into the ranks of Hollywood’s most-employed scene-stealers, logging more Warner Bros. appearances than most people make dentist visits. Across two decades he became a cornerstone of the studio’s unofficial repertory troupe, popping up in everything from gangster yarns to frontier sagas. His signature gig remained the towering outlaw Little John—first opposite Douglas Fairbanks in 1922, again swashbuckling alongside Errol Flynn’s Technicolor Robin in 1938, and finally once more in 1950’s Rogues of Sherwood Forest, book-ending a career that proved character work could be downright heroic.
