Biography
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 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 app...
Known For
Complete Filmography

Return to Treasure Island
1954
as Maximillian 'Maxie' Harris
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 ...

Vice Squad
1953
as Jack Hartrampf
A Los Angeles police captain (Edward G. Robinson) ties the case of a slain policeman to a bank robbery, all in a day.

Pony Express
1953
as Jim Bridger
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...

Holiday for Sinners
1952
as Louie
Three old friends reunite during Mardi Gras and try to forget their problems.

The Half-Breed
1952
as Kraemer
An Apache of mixed blood tries to make peace between Indians and whites.

Carbine Williams
1952
as Sam Markley
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...

Ace in the Hole
1951
as Jacob Q. Boot
An arrogant reporter exploits a story about a man trapped in a cave to revitalize his career.

Intruder in the Dust
1949
as Nub Gowrie
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 ...

The Beautiful Blonde from Bashful Bend
1949
as Judge O'Toole
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...

Chicken Every Sunday
1949
as Sam Howell
A woman takes in boarders to support her husband's harebrained financial schemes.

That Wonderful Urge
1948
as Attorney Ketchell
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...

You Gotta Stay Happy
1948
as Mr. Caslon
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...

Unconquered
1947
as Leach
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...

Singapore
1947
as Mr. Bellows
After the war, Matt Gordon returns to Singapore to retrieve a fortune in smuggled pearls. Arrived, he reminisces in flashback about his prewar fiancée...

Miracle on 34th Street
1947
as Granville Sawyer
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...

Week-End at the Waldorf
1945
as Stevens
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 ...

Kiss and Tell
1945
as Bill Franklin
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...

Murder, He Says
1945
as Mr. Johnson
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...

Blood on the Sun
1945
as Arthur Bickett
Nick Condon, an American journalist in 20s Tokyo, publishes the Japanese master plan for world domination. Reaction from the understandably upset Japa...

Bring on the Girls
1945
as Dr. Efrington
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...

The Mark of the Whistler
1944
as Joe Sorsby
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...

The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek
1944
as Jacob Woodson, Justice of the Peace
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...

The Great Moment
1944
as President Franklin Pierce
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...

Double Indemnity
1944
as Mr. Jackson
A seductive housewife draws an insurance salesman into a plot of adultery and crime to collect on her husband's life insurance.

Standing Room Only
1944
as Hugo Farenhall
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....

Going My Way
1944
as Mr. Belknap
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...

The Woman of the Town
1943
as Mayor Dog Killey
Bat Masterson, who after failing to secure a job as a newspaper reporter becomes marshal of Dodge City. Preferring socializing to peacekeeping, Master...

The Desperadoes
1943
as Banker Clanton
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...

A Stranger in Town
1943
as Judge Austin Harkley
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...

Butch Minds the Baby
1942
as Brandy Smith
Aloysius 'Butch' Grogan leads a life of criminal activities motivated to provide for a widow and her child. He's on lookout for a gang of safe cracker...

The Remarkable Andrew
1942
as Chief Clerk Art Slocumb
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...

Mr. and Mrs. North
1942
as George Heyler
Married sleuths (Gracie Allen, William Post Jr.) find a corpse in their closet and round up suspects.

Sullivan's Travels
1941
as Mr. Hadrian
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 Parson of Panamint
1941
as Jonathan Randall
As he looks over the dusty, deserted remains of the western "boom town" of Panamint, grizzled old prospector Chuckawalla Bill Redfield recalls the tow...

Arizona
1940
as Lazarus Ward
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...

Trail of the Vigilantes
1940
as Sheriff Korley
A reporter goes undercover to break up an outlaw gang.

Dark Command
1940
as Angus McCloud
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...

His Girl Friday
1940
as Murphy
Walter Burns is an irresistibly conniving newspaper publisher desperate to woo back his paper’s star reporter, who also happens to be his estranged wi...

Henry Goes Arizona
1939
as Banker Edward G. Walsh (uncredited)
A New Yorker moves West when he inherits an Arizona ranch.

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
1939
as Senator Monroe
After the death of a United States Senator, idealistic Jefferson Smith is appointed as his replacement in Washington. Soon, the naive and earnest new ...

They Shall Have Music
1939
as Mr. Flower
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...

Grand Jury Secrets
1939
as Anthony Pelton
A newspaper reporter gets involved with shady stock promoters when he listens in on a jury room session.

Bulldog Drummond's Secret Police
1939
as Man in Drummond's Dream
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...

Tom Sawyer, Detective
1938
as Uncle Silas Phelps
The further adventures of Twain's most beloved fictional characters of Tom Sawyer and his friend, Huckleberry Finn.

The Arkansas Traveler
1938
as Mayor Daniels
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...

King of Alcatraz
1938
as Matthew Talbot
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...

Men with Wings
1938
as Hiram F. Jenkins
Reporter Nicholas Ranson is jubilant when, on 17 Dec 1903, in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, Orville and Wilbur Wright take their first airplane flight. ...

Prison Farm
1938
as Chiston R. Bradby
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...

Stolen Heaven
1938
as 'Von' Offer
Two attractive jewel thieves, one female (Olympe Bradna), one male (Gene Raymond) escape together after their latest escapade and hide out in the home...

Bulldog Drummond's Peril
1938
as Dr. Botulian
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...

Dangerous to Know
1938
as Mayor Bradley
Racketeer Steve Recka, art patron and political power-maker, rules his town and Madame Lan Ying, his beautiful friend and hostess (read:mistress), wit...

Scandal Street
1938
as James Wilson
Joe McKnight temporarily leaves his fiancée, Nora Langdon, for an expedition in a South American jungle. Nora gets a position as librarian in the smal...

Wells Fargo
1937
as James Oliver
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...

True Confession
1937
as Mr. Hartman
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 ...

This Way Please
1937
as S.J. Crawford
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...

Souls at Sea
1937
as Court Prosecutor
Michael 'Nuggin' Taylor and Powdah save lives during a sea tragedy in this story about the slave trade on the high seas during 1842.

Wild Money
1937
as Bill Court
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...

Make Way for Tomorrow
1937
as Harvey Chase
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...

King of Gamblers
1937
as George Kramer
Working for a slick restaurateur who has fallen for her, a down-on-life songstress falls instead for a crusading crime reporter, unaware that her empl...

Bulldog Drummond Escapes
1937
as Norman Merridew
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 ...

The General Died at Dawn
1936
as Peter Perrie
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...

The Plainsman
1936
as Jack McCall
Wild Bill Hickok, Calamity Jane and Buffalo Bill go up against Indians and a gunrunner.

Let's Make a Million
1936
as Spencer
A wealthy mama's boy finds himself the victim of con artists involved in an oil stocks racket.

Satan Met a Lady
1936
as Milton Ames
In the second screen version of The Maltese Falcon, a detective is caught between a lying seductress and a lady jewel thief.

And Sudden Death
1936
as District Attorney
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 ...

The Princess Comes Across
1936
as Darcy
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 band...

Snowed Under
1936
as Arthur Layton
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...

Too Many Parents
1936
as Mrs. Saunders
Boys 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 Philip Stewart wri...

The Story of Louis Pasteur
1936
as Dr. Rossignol
A true story about Louis Pasteur, who revolutionized medicine by proving that much disease is caused by microbes, that sanitation is paramount and tha...

The Petrified Forest
1936
as Jason Maple
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...

The Case of the Lucky Legs
1935
as Col. Bradbury
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.

Murder in the Private Car
1934
as Alden Murray
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 daug...

The Thin Man
1934
as Herbert MacCaulay
A husband and wife detective team takes on the search for a missing inventor and almost get killed for their efforts.

The Cheat
1931
as Leslie (uncredited)
Elsa Carlyle is impulsive and a gambler. Though loved by her husband Jeff, she's spoiled and selfish, concerned with social standing. Meanwhile, Jeff ...

Secrets of a Secretary
1931
as Drunk
Society girl becomes a social secretary when her father dies penniless. From a story by Charles Brackett.