Rondo Hatton

Rondo Hatton
Rondo Hatton's acromegalic features made him a Hollywood horror film icon.
Born	April 22, 1894(1894-04-22) Hagerstown, Maryland
Died	February 2, 1946 (aged 51) Beverly Hills, California
Occupation	Film actor
Years active	1930-1946

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.

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. Hatton died of a heart attack (a direct result of his acromegalic condition) in 1946.

In popular culture

The Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Awards represent Hatton in both name as well as his likeness. The physical award is a representation of character actor Rondo Hatton, and is based on the bust of The Creeper, portrayed by Hatton in the 1946 film House of Horrors released by Universal Pictures.

His famous face has become an icon of Hollywood cinema. His legacy lives on through such tributes as a character in Disney's The Rocketeer (1991)

The 2000 AD character Judge Dredd is rarely seen without his helmet on and the first time this happened he had used face-changing technology to make himself look like Rondo Hatton. 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]

Rondo Hatton is also 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 Carry On films. The main joke is along the lines of 'he had a Rondo Hatton' (hat on).

The character "The Creep" in the Dark Horse Presents comic-book series strongly resembled Hatton.

Filmography

Because of the numerous uncredited extra roles in Hatton's career, compiling a complete and accurate filmography is a difficult endeavor. The titles here reflect as thorough and accurate an attempt as possible but it is by no means comprehensive.

• 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 (uncredited)
• 1939 The Big Guy (uncredited)
• 1939 Union Pacific (uncredited)
• 1939 Gun Cargo (uncredited)
• 1940 Chad Hanna
• 1940 Moon Over Burma
• 1942 The Cyclone Kid (uncredited)
• 1942 Black Swan (uncredited)
• 1942 Tales of Manhattan (uncredited)
• 1942 Sin Town (uncredited)
• 1942 Moon and Sixpence (uncredited)
• 1943 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 Anymore (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

External links

• Rondo Hatton at the Internet Movie Database
• Rondo Hatton at Allmovie
• The Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Awards
• The Human Marvels biography, J. Tithonus Pednaud
• Rondo Hatton as The Creeper in House of Horrors (TCM's Movie Morlocks)