H. M. Walker

Harley Marquis Walker (June 27, 1878 – June 23, 1937) was a member of the Hal Roach Studios production company from 1916 until his resignation in 1932. The title cards he wrote for Harold Lloyd, Charley Chase, Our Gang and Laurel and Hardy comedies "have entered legend, both for silent films, and as opening remarks for the earlier talkies." He was also an officer of the Roach Studio corporation.

Background Like many screenwriters of the time such as Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, Walker came to the screen trade from the freewheeling world of newspaper journalism. He was a sports writer for the Los Angeles Examiner before joining Roach.

On Roach's "Lot of Fun", script development usually started with meetings among the gag men, who would develop what was known as an "action script": the outline of the story and a description of the scenes and some of the sight gags, which generally would run three to six legal-size pages. This document would then pass to Walker, the head of the editorial department, which oversaw not only script editing, but film editing as well. Walker usually came up with the title of each film, wrote "brilliantly witty" title cards which would be produced and inserted into the film, Film editor Richard Currier recounted that Walker never drove a car, so his wife had to drive him to work every day. But Currier was fond of Walker, calling him "a prince of a guy," and remembered the present of a dictionary with a note that read like one of Walker's title cards: "Having listened for years to your astonishing, and, at times, highly-charged vocabulary, I hasten to add to your voltage." who would go on to win two Oscars for Best Director. Among the next was Beanie Walker, who resigned after sixteen years over disputes with Ginsburg's cost-cutting edicts.

After leaving the Roach studio, Walker wrote dialogue for comedies produced by ex-Roach general manager Warren Doane at Universal Pictures. Later, he worked at Paramount Pictures, where he contributed to the W. C. Fields picture The Old Fashioned Way (1934).

Death Walker died of a heart attack on June 23, 1937, four days short of his 59th birthday, while dining in the Chicago apartment of Leroy Shield, his friend and composer of much of the Roach Studio's music.