Australians in Hollywood : Biographical Notes

Snub Pollard
“Snub” Pollard (1889-1962) was born Harold Fraser, and worked in Australian vaudeville with the troupe “Pollard's Lilliputians” before breaking into films during a U.S. tour. His early movie work included a stint with Keystone studios and an uncredited appearance as the refreshment stand clerk in Charlie Chaplin's By the Sea (1915). Having adopted an upside-down Kaiser Wilhelm moustache as his comic trademark, he worked as a sideman for silent era legend Harold Lloyd in a series of slapstick films before being given his own starring series in 1919. He passed his use by date as a slapstick artist in the mid-20s, but was reborn as a sound comedian in the late 30s, when he played Pee Wee McDougal, comic sidekick to the singing cowboy star Tex Ritter, in a series of films including Sing, Cowboy, Sing (1937), Tex Rides with the Boy Scouts (1937) and Utah Trail (1938). All told, Pollard appeared in well over 200 movies. In later years he was in The Perils of Pauline (1947), The Man of a Thousand Faces (1957) and Studs Lonigan (1960).

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