by Hal Erickson
biography
Beefy, white-maned stage actor Hale Hamilton made his first film appearance in 1915. Hamilton's frequent film co-star was Grace LaRue, his first wife. A character actor in talkies, Hamilton was seen in such roles as Jackie Cooper's potential stepfather in The Champ (1931) and the crooked recording executive in Wheeler and Woolsey's comedy/mystery The Nitwits (1935). Hale Hamilton's most famous talkie assignment was as the clergyman brother of chain-gang prisoner Paul Muni in 1932's I Am a Fugitive.
