Porter Hall Trailers
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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.
Most Popular Porter Hall Trailers
Total trailers found: 75
10 October 1947
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 slave in the colony of Virginia, whose inhabitants begin to hear and fear the sinister song of the threatening drums of war that resound in the wild Ohio valley.
31 December 1937
In the 1840s, Ramsey MacKay, the driver for the struggling Wells Fargo mail and freight company, will secure an important contract if he delivers fresh oysters to Buffalo from New York City.
22 January 1937
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 dangerous situation.
18 August 1939
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 basement of a music school for poor children.
01 April 1943
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.
24 December 1937
A writer takes a job as a secretary because her scrupulous husband isn't bringing in the dough as an attorney.
13 December 1940
A reporter goes undercover to break up an outlaw gang.
20 November 1948
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 claiming they're married.
22 July 1936
In the second screen version of The Maltese Falcon, a detective is caught between a lying seductress and a lady jewel thief.
25 July 1952
Three old friends reunite during Mardi Gras and try to forget their problems.
28 October 1948
Indecisive heiress Dee Dee Dillwood is pushed into marrying her sixth fiancée, but unable to face the wedding night, she flees into the adjacent hotel room of commercial pilot Marvin Payne, who just wants to sleep.
25 December 1940
Phoebe Titus is a tough, swaggering pioneer woman, but her ways become decidedly more feminine when she falls for California bound Peter Muncie.
16 November 1936
Wild Bill Hickok, Calamity Jane and Buffalo Bill go up against Indians and a gunrunner.
18 January 1949
A woman takes in boarders to support her husband's harebrained financial schemes.
17 November 1936
China, 1930s, during the ravaging civil war. General Pen entrusts O'Hara, an intrepid American adventurer, with the mission of providing a large sum of money to Mr.
05 March 1942
When Andrew Long, hyper-efficient small town accountant, finds a $1240 discrepancy in the city budget, his superiors try to explain it away.
18 July 1944
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 the medical and dental establishment.
09 May 1937
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 daughter Cora.
03 May 1952
An Apache of mixed blood tries to make peace between Indians and whites.
29 March 1939
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 the situation involving a series of deaths and an elusive murderer.
06 July 1944
A rich woman and a calculating insurance agent plot to kill her unsuspecting husband after he signs a double indemnity policy.
30 June 1954
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 see if he can unearth the cache of riches buried there by his colleague, Captain Flint.
19 October 1939
After the death of a United States Senator, idealistic Jefferson Smith is appointed as his replacement in Washington.
26 April 1945
Nick Condon, an American journalist in 20s Tokyo, publishes the Japanese master plan for world domination.
25 July 1941
As he looks over the dusty, deserted remains of the western "boom town" of Panamint, grizzled old prospector Chuckawalla Bill Redfield recalls the town's glory days.
07 January 1944
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.
16 June 1936
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 is responsible for killing someone due to reckless driving.
16 July 1938
Reporter Nicholas Ranson is jubilant when, on 17 Dec 1903, in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, Orville and Wilbur Wright take their first airplane flight.
22 November 1949
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 dead white man, holding a pistol that has recently been fired.
23 June 1939
A newspaper reporter gets involved with shady stock promoters when he listens in on a jury room session.
31 July 1953
A Los Angeles police captain (Edward G. Robinson) ties the case of a slain policeman to a bank robbery, all in a day.
31 December 1943
Bat Masterson, who after failing to secure a job as a newspaper reporter becomes marshal of Dodge City.
30 September 1938
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 ship's passengers.
04 June 1947
Kris Kringle, seemingly the embodiment of Santa Claus, is asked to portray the jolly old fellow at Macy's following his performance in the Thanksgiving Day parade.
18 January 1940
Walter Burns is an irresistibly conniving newspaper publisher desperate to woo back his paper’s star reporter, who also happens to be his estranged wife.
15 October 1937
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 she becomes engaged to a wealthy young man, he realizes he's fallen for her and plots to break up her impending marriage.
04 October 1945
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 suspected of being pregnant.
08 December 1939
A New Yorker moves West when he inherits an Arizona ranch.
25 May 1934
A husband and wife detective team takes on the search for a missing inventor and almost get killed for their efforts.
01 May 1952
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 automatic rifle used in World War II.
29 June 1951
An arrogant reporter exploits a story about a man trapped in a cave to revitalize his career.
29 June 1934
Ruth Raymond works on the telephone switchboard of a large NYC office building. One day, a private detective informs her that she is actually the daughter of railroad tycoon Luke Carson, and that she had been kidnapped as a baby 14 years ago by Luke's vindictive brother Elwood, and placed with strangers.
29 March 1936
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 Pat Quinn wants to play.
11 May 1938
Two attractive jewel thieves, one female (Olympe Bradna), one male (Gene Raymond) escape together after their latest escapade and hide out in the home of an aged concert pianist (Lewis Stone).
17 June 1938
Shirley Ross plays an innocent young girl convicted for complicity in a crime committed by her boy friend (Lloyd Nolan).
04 October 1945
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 a jewel thief; a soldier learns that without an operation he'll die and so looks for one last romance with a beautiful but ambitious stenographer; a cub reporter tries to get the goods on a shady man's dealing with a foreign potentate.
11 March 1938
Racketeer Steve Recka, art patron and political power-maker, rules his town and Madame Lan Ying, his beautiful friend and hostess (read:mistress), with an iron hand.
23 January 1942
Married sleuths (Gracie Allen, William Post Jr.) find a corpse in their closet and round up suspects.
20 March 1942
Aloysius 'Butch' Grogan leads a life of criminal activities motivated to provide for a widow and her child.
08 February 1936
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 the two strike up a rapport.
19 March 1936
Boys are sent to military school in order to get them out of the way of their too-busy-to-bother parents or guardians.
15 April 1940
When transplanted Texan Bob Seton arrives in Lawrence, Kansas he finds much to like about the place, especially Mary McCloud, daughter of the local banker.
11 February 1938
Joe McKnight temporarily leaves his fiancée, Nora Langdon, for an expedition in a South American jungle.
14 October 1938
The Arkansas Traveler, an itinerant printer, returns to a small town to help save The Daily Record, a newspaper started by Mr.
30 November 1941
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 and sets off on a journey, aiming to "know trouble" first-hand.
25 May 1943
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 when Willie's choice for this doesn't show in time, he gets some local boys to do it.
03 September 1937
Michael 'Nuggin' Taylor and Powdah save lives during a sea tragedy in this story about the slave trade on the high seas during 1842.
18 March 1938
Drummond's wedding with Phyllis is interrupted when the inspector guarding their gifts is killed. He tries to trace the killers and uncovers the mystery of diamond counterfeiters.
15 June 1953
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 days.
28 November 1931
Elsa Carlyle is impulsive and a gambler. Though loved by her husband Jeff, she's spoiled and selfish, concerned with social standing.
