Rondo Hatton
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Rondo Hatton
Biography
Hollywood has had its share of actors who specialized in horror films and horrific roles, but none had so horrific or tragic a personal story as Rondo Hatton. A fixture in B-movies of varying quality from 1943 until his death early in 1946, Hatton was a victim of the glandular disorder Acromegalia. Often caused by a benign brain tumor, the disease results in the pituitary gland running out of control and secreting excess growth hormone. In victims who have not yet reached adulthood, the result is giantism (as in the case of Andre Rene Roussimoff, better known as Andre the Giant); in adults, the effect is an enlarging of the forehead, mouth, jaw, fingers, joints, and feet, and a coarsening of the skin. Ironically, Hatton had been considered an extremely handsome young man in high school, according to those who knew him in his early life. Press releases in the mid-'40s claimed that his condition was partly the result of his having been gassed on a battlefield during World War I. He came to Hollywood around the time that sound came in, his features already showing some signs of distortion. His earliest known film appearance was in Hell Harbor, a South Seas action-adventure yarn filmed in 1930 by director Henry King, as a burly waterfront tavern keeper -- some of that footage later reappeared in several subsequent movies, including Wolves of the Sea. His work up until the mid-'40s was primarily in silent bit parts, although his appearance in the 1944 Bob Hope comedy The Princess and the Pirate offered a glimpse of the direction his career would soon take as he portrayed "the gorilla man." In 1944, Hatton, his features now completely distorted by his worsening disease, signed with Universal Pictures and made his first appearance for the studio in the Sherlock Holmes movie The Pearl of Death, portraying a mute, hulking back-breaker called the Hoxton Creeper working in the service of arch-villain Giles Conover (Miles Mander). His performance, mute and menacing, was the most memorable part of the movie (one of the better entries in the Basil Rathbone/Nigel Bruce Sherlock Holmes series) and over the next year and a half, Hatton repeated his role in four more Universal films. These were all prominent supporting roles except for the last of them, The Brute Man, where he was the star. Ironically, its plot, about a handsome college athlete scarred and turned into a monster by an accident, was almost a burlesque of Hatton's own life story. Alas, by the time it was completed, Hatton's health was failing and it wasn't until eight months after his death that the movie opened in theaters; by then, a nervous Universal had sold the film to the Poverty Row outfit Producers Releasing Corporation rather than issue it directly. Rondo Hatton was never more than a cult horror star in his own time, but during the 1960s and 1970s, with the booming interest in Universal's classic horror movies, he began attracting the interest of scholars and horror movie buffs. ~ Bruce Eder, RoviRelated Videos:
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Rondo Hatton
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Rondo Hatton
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Rondo Hatton
| Rondo Hatton | |
|---|---|
 Hatton's acromegalic features made him a Hollywood horror film icon. |
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| Born | April 22, 1894 Hagerstown, Maryland |
| Died | February 2, 1946 (aged 51) Beverly Hills, California |
| Occupation | Film actor |
| Years active | 1930-1946 |
| Spouse | Elizabeth Immell James (1926-1930) (divorced) Mabel Housh (1934-1946) (his death) |
Rondo Hatton (April 22, 1894 – February 2, 1946) was an American actor who had a brief, but prolific career playing thuggish bit parts in many Hollywood B-movies. He was known for his brutish facial features which were the result of acromegaly, a disorder of the pituitary gland.
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Biography
Hatton was born Rondo K. Hatton in Hagerstown, Maryland to Stewart Price and Emily Zarring Hatton, a pair of Missouri-born teachers. The Hatton family moved several times during Rondo's youth, to Hickory, North Carolina, and to Charles Town, West Virginia, and at last to Tampa, Florida, where family members owned a business. Following his father's death, Hatton, his mother, and his younger brother Stewart moved in with his maternal grandmother in Tampa. There he obtained work as a sportswriter for the local newspaper.[1] He worked as a journalist until after World War I when the symptoms of acromegaly developed.
Acromegaly distorted the shape of Hatton's head, face, and extremities in a gradual but consistent process. Hatton, who reportedly had been voted the handsomest boy in his class at Hillsborough High School, eventually became severely disfigured by the disease. Because the symptoms developed in adulthood (as is common with the disorder), the disfigurement was incorrectly attributed later by film studio publicity departments to his exposure to a German mustard gas attack during service in World War I. Whether Hatton actually served in combat is unclear, though it has been reported that he served on the Mexican border and in France.
Director Henry King noticed Hatton when he was working as a reporter with The Tampa Tribune covering the filming of Hell Harbor (1930) and hired him for a small role. After some hesitation, Hatton moved to Hollywood in 1936 to pursue a career playing similar, often uncredited, bit roles. His most notable of these were as a contestant in the "ugly man competition" (which he loses to a heavily made up Charles Laughton) in the RKO production of The Hunchback of Notre Dame and as Gabe Hart, a member of the lynch mob in the 1943 film of The Ox-Bow Incident.
Universal Studios attempted to exploit Hatton's unusual features to promote him as a horror star after he played the part of the Hoxton Creeper in its sixth Sherlock Holmes film, The Pearl of Death (1944). He made a half dozen minor films playing variations of the Creeper character, including The Brute Man (1946). Hatton died of a heart attack (a direct result of his acromegalic condition) in 1946.
Legacy
Hatton's name - and simple but brutish face - have become recurring motifs in popular culture. In an episode[which?] of the 1970s television series, The Rockford Files, Jim Rockford, exasperated at a friend who dismisses himself as unattractive, exclaims "you're no Rondo Hatton!" Hatton's physical likeness appears as the Lothar character in Dave Stevens' 1980s Rocketeer Adventure Magazine stories, as well as Disney's 1991 film version, The Rocketeer, where the character is played by actor Tiny Ron in "Hatton" make-up.
The 2000 AD comic book character Judge Dredd, who is rarely seen without his helmet on, used "face-changing technology" to make himself look like Rondo Hatton in a 1977 issue - the first time the character's face was shown. As the artist Brian Bolland revealed in an interview with David Bishop: "The picture of Dredd’s face – that was a 1940s actor called Rondo Hatton. I've only seen him in one film."[2] Additionally, the character "The Creep" in the Dark Horse Presents comic-book series strongly resembled Hatton.
Hatton is regularly name-checked in the novels of Robert Rankin, (often referred to as "the now-legendary Rondo Hatton") and credited as appearing in films which are either fictional, or which he clearly had no part in, such as the Carry On films. Rankin's references to Hatton routinely occur in the form of "he had a Rondo Hatton" (hat on). Another namecheck occurs in Rafi Zabor's PEN/Faulkner-award winning 1998 novel The Bear Comes Home, where the name is used as a nickname for good-natured but unrefined minor character Tommy Talmo. In the 2004 Stephen King novel, The Dark Tower VII, a character is described as looking "like Rondo Hatton, a film actor from the 30's, who suffered from acromegaly and got work playing monsters and psychopaths..." The episode of Doctor Who entitled "The Wedding of River Song" features Mark Gatiss as a character whose appearance (achieved through prosthetics) is based on Hatton's, credited under the pseudonym "Rondo Haxton" for his performance.[3]
The play with music entitled "The Return of Dr. X" written by Welsh playwright Chris Amos contains a dedication to Rondo Hatton and the story (of a horror star named Gabriel Hayton) is loosely based on the life of Rondo Hatton. The show has been produced in several UK regional theatres and was nominated for the Cameron MackIntosh Award in 2000.
Since 2002, The Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Awards represent Hatton in both name as well as his likeness. The physical award is a representation of Hatton, and is based on the bust of "The Hoxton Creeper," portrayed by Hatton in the 1946 Universal Pictures film House of Horrors.
Filmography
Because of the numerous uncredited extra roles in Hatton's career, compiling a complete and accurate filmography is problematic. The following list is incomplete.
- 1927 Uncle Tom's Cabin (uncredited - in same scene with Dick Sutherland)
- 1930 Hell Harbor (uncredited)
- 1937 In Old Chicago
- 1938 Alexander's Rag Time Band (uncredited)
- 1939 Captain Fury (uncredited)
- 1939 The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939 film) (uncredited)
- 1939 The Big Guy (uncredited)
- 1939 Union Pacific (film) (uncredited)
- 1939 Gun Cargo (uncredited)
- 1940 Chad Hanna
- 1940 Moon Over Burma
- 1942 The Cyclone Kid (uncredited)
- 1942 The Black Swan (uncredited)
- 1942 Tales of Manhattan (uncredited)
- 1942 Sin Town (uncredited)
- 1942 Moon and Sixpence (uncredited)
- 1943 Sleepy Lagoon (film)|Sleepy Lagoon
- 1943 The Ox-Bow Incident (uncredited)
- 1944 The Princess and the Pirate (uncredited)
- 1944 The Lodger (uncredited)
- 1944 Raiders of Ghost City (uncredited)
- 1944 Johnny Doesn't Live Here Any More (uncredited)
- 1944 The Pearl of Death
- 1945 The Royal Mounted Rides Again (uncredited)
- 1945 The Jungle Captive
- 1946 Spider Woman Strikes Back
- 1946 House of Horrors
- 1946 The Brute Man
References
- ^ U.S. Census for 1900, 1910, 1920, 1930
- ^ Vicious Imagery: 28 Days of 2000 AD #24: Brian Bolland Pt. 1
- ^ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ttNqpueD-U
External links
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