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Clifford Porter Hall (September 19, 1888 – October 6, 1953) was an American character actor known for appearing in a number of films in the 1930s and 1940s. Hall played movie villains or comedic incompetent characters. Hall was born in Cincinnati, Ohio and began his career touring as a stage actor with roles in productions of The Great Gatsby and Naked in 1926. Hall made his film debut in the 1931 drama Secrets of a Secretary. He made his last onscreen appearance in the 1954 film Return to Treasure Island, which was released after his death.
He was probably best remembered for four roles: a senator in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, an atheist in Going My Way, the nervous, ill-tempered Granville Sawyer, who administers a psychological test to Kris Kringle in Miracle on 34th Street, and a train passenger who encounters a man (Fred MacMurray) who has just committed a murder in Double Indemnity.
On October 6, 1953, Hall died of a heart attack in Los Angeles, California at the age of 65. His interment was at Forest Lawn – Hollywood Hills Cemetery. Hall had two children, David and Sarah Jane.
Porter Hall Biography / Wiki
| Name | Porter Hall |
| Also Know | |
| Gender | Male |
| Known For | Acting |
| Place of Birth | Cincinnati, Ohio, USA |
| Date of Birth | 1888-09-19 |
| Age(as in 2022) | 65 |
| Deathday | 1953-10-06 |
Porter Hall Acting Movies
| Movie Name | Character | Release Date | Overview |
| The Mark of the Whistler | Joe Sorsby | 1944-10-09 | A drifter claims the money in an old bank account. Soon he finds himself the target of two men who turn out to be the sons of the man’s old partner, w… |
| Blood on the Sun | Arthur Bickett | 1945-04-26 | Nick Condon, an American journalist in 1945 Tokyo, publishes the Japanese master plan for world domination. Reaction from the understandably upset Jap… |
| Return to Treasure Island | Maximillian ‘Maxie’ Harris | 1954-06-30 | There’s something to be said for finishing what you’ve started. That’s why the gentile Captain Long John Silver is heading back to Treasure Island to … |
| Too Many Parents | Mrs. Saunders | 1936-03-19 | A story of the boys who are sent to military school in order to get them out of the way of their too-busy-to-bother parents or guardians. Lonely young… |
| Tom Sawyer, Detective | Uncle Silas Phelps | 1938-12-24 | The further adventures of Twain’s most beloved fictional characters of Tom Sawyer and his friend, Huckleberry Finn…. |
| Let’s Make a Million | Spencer | 1936-09-01 | A wealthy mama’s boy finds himself the victim of con artists involved in an oil stocks racket…. |
| Double Indemnity | Mr. Jackson | 1944-06-14 | A rich woman and a calculating insurance agent plot to kill her unsuspecting husband after he signs a double indemnity policy. Against a backdrop of d… |
| Ace in the Hole | Jacob Q. Boot | 1951-06-29 | An arrogant reporter exploits a story about a man trapped in a cave to revitalize his career…. |
| Intruder in the Dust | Nub Gowrie | 1949-11-22 | Rural Mississippi in the 1940s: Lucas Beauchamp, a local black man with a reputation of not kowtowing to whites, is found standing over the body of a … |
| Vice Squad | Jack Hartrampf | 1953-07-31 | A Los Angeles police captain (Edward G. Robinson) ties the case of a slain policeman to a bank robbery, all in a day…. |
| A Stranger in Town | Judge Austin Harkley | 1943-04-01 | In the small town of Crownport local attorney Bill Adams is trying to break up the ring of corrupt town officials by running for mayor. The cards seem… |
| Arizona | Lazarus Ward | 1940-12-25 | Phoebe Titus is a tough, swaggering pioneer woman, but her ways become decidedly more feminine when she falls for California bound Peter Muncie. But P… |
| Scandal Street | James Wilson | 1938-02-11 | Joe McKnight temporarily leaves his fiancée, Nora Langdon, for an expedition in a South American jungle. Nora gets a position as librarian in the sma… |
| Make Way for Tomorrow | Harvey Chase | 1937-05-09 | At a family reunion, the Cooper clan find that their parents’ home is being foreclosed. “Temporarily,” Ma moves in with son George’s family, Pa with d… |
| The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek | Jacob Woodson, Justice of the Peace | 1944-09-18 | A small-town girl with a soft spot for American soldiers wakes up the morning after a wild farewell party for the troops to find that she married some… |
| Bulldog Drummond Escapes | Norman Merridew | 1937-01-22 | Drummond manages to save a woman from jumping in front of his car but she runs away with his car. He traces her and she asks him to help her out of a … |
| Murder, He Says | Mr. Johnson | 1945-01-01 | Pete Marshall is sent as a replacement to the mountain district town of Plainville when a public opinion surveyor who went there goes missing. Visitin… |
| The General Died at Dawn | Peter Perrie | 1936-11-17 | China, 1930s, during the ravaging civil war. General Pen entrusts O’Hara, an intrepid American adventurer, with the mission of providing a large sum o… |
| True Confession | Mr. Hartman, Prosecutor | 1937-12-24 | A writer takes a job as a secretary because her scrupulous husband isn’t bringing in the dough as an attorney. When her new employer is murdered, she … |
| Stolen Heaven | ‘Von’ Offer | 1938-05-11 | Two attractive jewel thieves, one female (Olympe Bradna), one male (Gene Raymond) escape together after their latest escapade and hide out in the home… |
| Murder in the Private Car | Murray | 1934-06-29 | Ruth Raymond works on the switchboard and her boyfriend is John Blake. It has taken 14 years, but a detective named Murray has found her and confirmed… |
| Pony Express | Jim Bridger | 1953-01-01 | Buffalo Bill and Wild Bill Hickok join forces to establish a mail route that can get mail from St. Joseph, Missouri, to Sacramento, California, in ten… |
| Prison Farm | Chiston R. Bradby | 1938-06-17 | Shirley Ross plays an innocent young girl convicted for complicity in a crime committed by her boy friend (Lloyd Nolan). The male crook is sentence to… |
| The Beautiful Blonde from Bashful Bend | Judge O’Toole | 1949-05-27 | Saloon-bar singer Freddie gets very angry whenever boyfriend Blackie seems to be playing around. She always packs a six-shooter, so this is bad news f… |
| The Parson of Panamint | Jonathan Randall | 1941-07-25 | As he looks over the dusty, deserted remains of the western “boom town” of Panamint, grizzled old prospector Chuckawalla Bill Redfield (Ruggles) recal… |
| His Girl Friday | Murphy | 1940-01-18 | Hildy, the journalist former wife of newspaper editor Walter Burns, visits his office to inform him that she’s engaged and will be getting remarried t… |
| The Thin Man | Herbert MacCaulay | 1934-05-25 | A husband and wife detective team takes on the search for a missing inventor and almost get killed for their efforts…. |
| Miracle on 34th Street | Granville Sawyer | 1947-06-04 | Kris Kringle, seemingly the embodiment of Santa Claus, is asked to portray the jolly old fellow at Macy’s following his performance in the Thanksgivin… |
| Dark Command | Angus McCloud | 1940-04-15 | When transplanted Texan Bob Seton arrives in Lawrence, Kansas he finds much to like about the place, especially Mary McCloud, daughter of the local ba… |
| Sullivan’s Travels | Mr. Hadrian | 1941-11-30 | Successful movie director John L. Sullivan, convinced he won’t be able to film his ambitious masterpiece until he has suffered, dons a hobo disguise a… |
| The Petrified Forest | Jason Maple | 1936-02-08 | Gabby, the waitress in an isolated Arizona diner, dreams of a bigger and better life. One day penniless intellectual Alan drifts into the joint and th… |
| Bulldog Drummond’s Peril | Dr. Botulian | 1938-03-18 | Drummond’s wedding with Phyllis is interrupted when the inspector guarding their gifts is killed. He tries to trace the killers and uncovers the myste… |
| Men with Wings | Hiram F. Jenkins | 1938-07-16 | Reporter Nicholas Ranson is jubilant when, on 17 Dec 1903, in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, Orville and Wilbur Wright take their first airplane flight. … |
| Kiss and Tell | Bill Franklin | 1945-10-04 | Film adaptation of the Broadway hit, about the comic mayhem that erupts in a small town when a 15-year old high-schooler (Shirley Temple) is wrongly s… |
| The Plainsman | Jack McCall | 1936-11-16 | Wild Bill Hickok (Gary Cooper), Calamity Jane (Jean Arthur) and Buffalo Bill (James Ellison) go up against Indians and a gunrunner…. |
| Wild Money | Bill Court | 1937-07-09 | A tightwad accountant for a newspaper becomes friends with a reporter. The bookkeeper goes on vacation, and while there he learns of a kidnapping cons… |
| King of Gamblers | George Kramer | 1937-04-22 | A fast moving and low budget crime drama seasoned with mystery & comedy…. |
| The Half-Breed | Kraemer | 1952-05-03 | One of only five films directed by Academy Award-nominated editor Stuart Gilmore, this 1951 Western stars Robert Young as Dan Craig, a gambler who may… |
| The Princess Comes Across | Darcy | 1936-05-22 | A Swedish princess boards an ocean liner in Europe en route to an acting career in America, and finds herself getting inconveniently attached to a ban… |
| Satan Met a Lady | Milton Ames | 1936-07-22 | In the second screen version of The Maltese Falcon, a detective is caught between a lying seductress and a lady jewel thief…. |
| Singapore | Mr. Bellows | 1947-08-13 | After the war, Matt Gordon returns to Singapore to retrieve a fortune in smuggled pearls. Arrived, he reminisces in flashback about his prewar fiancé… |
| The Story of Louis Pasteur | Dr. Rossignol | 1936-02-22 | A true story about Louis Pasteur, who revolutionized medicine by proving that much disease is caused by microbes, that sanitation is paramount and tha… |
| This Way Please | S.J. Crawford | 1937-10-15 | A famous singer and matinée idol helps a pretty young theater usher in her dreams of becoming a singer, but when her career begins to take off and sh… |
| Snowed Under | Arthur Layton | 1936-03-29 | Alan Tanner’s new play opens in a week, but Tanner just can’t finish the third act. He’s retreated to a snowbound cottage to work, but blonde neighbor… |
| Trail of the Vigilantes | Sheriff Korley | 1940-12-13 | A reporter goes undercover to break up an outlaw gang…. |
| The Woman of the Town | Mayor Dog Killey | 1943-12-31 | Bat Masterson, who after failing to secure a job as a newspaper reporter becomes marshal of Dodge City. Preferring socializing to peacekeeping, Master… |
| And Sudden Death | District Attorney | 1936-06-16 | An heiress with a penchant for speeding runs afoul of a traffic cop. Romance develops between the two, but it’s soon complicated when he believes she … |
| You Gotta Stay Happy | Mr. Caslon | 1948-10-28 | Indecisive heiress Dee Dee Dillwood is pushed into marrying her sixth fiancée, but unable to face the wedding night, she flees into the adjacent hote… |
| The Great Moment | President Franklin Pierce | 1944-07-18 | The biography of Dr. W.T. Morgan, a 19th century Boston dentist, during his quest to have anesthesia, in the form of ether, accepted by the public and… |
| Going My Way | Mr. Belknap | 1944-05-15 | Youthful Father Chuck O’Malley led a colorful life of sports, song, and romance before joining the Roman Catholic clergy. After being appointed to a r… |
| They Shall Have Music | Mr. Flower | 1939-08-18 | The future is bleak for a troubled boy from a broken home in the slums. He runs away when his step father breaks his violin, ending up sleeping in the… |
| The Case of the Lucky Legs | Col. Bradbury | 1935-10-05 | A con man who stages phony “lucky legs” beauty contests and leaves town with the money is found with a surgical knife in his heart by Mason…. |
| The Arkansas Traveler | Mayor Daniels | 1938-10-14 | The Arkansas Traveler, an itinerant printer, returns to a small town to help save The Daily Record, a newspaper started by Mr. Allen, an old friend wh… |
| Souls at Sea | Court Prosecutor | 1937-09-03 | Michael ‘Nuggin’ Taylor and Powdah save lives during a sea tragedy in this story about the slave trade on the high seas during 1842…. |
| That Wonderful Urge | Attorney Ketchell | 1948-11-20 | When an heiress finds out that the friendly young man she’s met at Sun Valley is really an investigative reporter, she ruins his career by falsely cla… |
| The Desperadoes | Banker Clanton | 1943-05-25 | Popular mailcoach driver Uncle Willie is in fact in league with the town’s crooked banker. They plan to have the bank robbed after emptying it, and wh… |
| Dangerous to Know | Mayor Bradley | 1938-03-11 | Racketeer Steve Recka (Akim Tamiroff), art patron and political power-maker, rules his town and Madame Lan Ying (Anna May Wong), his beautiful Orienta… |
| Wells Fargo | James Oliver | 1937-12-31 | In the 1840s, Ramsey MacKay, the driver for the struggling Wells Fargo mail and freight company, will secure an important contract if he delivers fres… |
| Standing Room Only | Hugo Farenhall | 1944-01-07 | During WWII, an executive and his secretary arrive in Washington, DC on business but, because of the housing shortage, are unable to find hotel rooms…. |
| Bring on the Girls | Dr. Efrington | 1945-03-30 | A millionaire joins the Navy hoping to find a girl who’ll marry him for himself, not for his money. A beautiful gold-digger who works at a resort hote… |
| Mr. and Mrs. North | George Heyler | 1942-01-23 | Married sleuths (Gracie Allen, William Post Jr.) find a corpse in their closet and round up suspects…. |
| Holiday for Sinners | Louie | 1952-07-25 | Three old friends reunite during Mardi Gras and try to forget their problems…. |
| Chicken Every Sunday | Sam Howell | 1949-01-18 | A woman takes in boarders to support her husband’s harebrained financial schemes…. |
| Carbine Williams | Sam Markley | 1952-05-01 | David Marshall Williams is sent to a prison farm where he works in the tool shop and eventually develops the precursor of the famous M-1 Carbine autom… |
| The Cheat | Leslie (uncredited) | 1931-11-28 | Elsa Carlyle is impulsive and a gambler. Though loved by her husband Jeff, she’s spoiled and selfish, concerned with social standing. Meanwhile, Jeff … |
| Unconquered | Leach | 1947-10-10 | England, 1763. After being convicted of a crime, the young and beautiful Abigail Hale agrees, to escape the gallows, to serve fourteen years as a slav… |
| Week-End at the Waldorf | Stevens | 1945-10-04 | Anything can happen during a weekend at New York’s Waldorf-Astoria: a glamorous movie star meets a world-weary war correspondent and mistakes him for … |
| Mr. Smith Goes to Washington | Senator Monroe | 1939-10-19 | Naive and idealistic Jefferson Smith, leader of the Boy Rangers, is appointed to the United States Senate by the puppet governor of his state. He soon… |
| The Remarkable Andrew | Chief Clerk Art Slocumb | 1942-03-05 | When Andrew Long, hyper-efficient small town accountant, finds a $1240 discrepancy in the city budget, his superiors try to explain it away. When he i… |
| Henry Goes Arizona | Banker Edward G. Walsh (uncredited) | 1939-12-08 | A New Yorker moves West when he inherits an Arizona ranch…. |
| King of Alcatraz | Matthew Talbot | 1938-09-30 | A convict who has just escaped from Alcatraz Prison takes over a passenger ship. Two of the ship’s crew hatch a plot to overpower him and rescue the s… |
| Bulldog Drummond’s Secret Police | Man in Drummond’s Dream | 1939-03-29 | Captain Drummond and his girlfriend want to marry but a hidden treasure in the house in which they want to celebrate their marriage is complicating th… |
Credit: TMDB
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