Porter Hall

Cast as a murder suspect in The Thin Man (1934), Hall's guilt was so transparent that it effectively ended the mystery even before it began. In DeMille's The Plainsman (1936), Hall played Jack McCall, the rattlesnake who shot Wild Bill Hickok in the back (his performance won Hall a Screen Actors Guild award). In the rollicking Murder He Says (1944), Hall portrays the whacked-out patriarch of a family of hillbilly murderers. And in Miracle on 34th Street (1947), Hall is at his most odious as the neurosis-driven psychiatrist who endeavors to commit jolly old Kris Kringle (Edmund Gwenn) to the booby hatch. Even with only one scene in Going My Way (1944), Hall manages to pack five reels' worth of venom into his role of a loudmouthed atheist. In real life, Hall was the exact opposite of his screen image: a loyal friend, a tireless charity worker, and a deacon at Hollywood's First Presbyterian Church. Porter Hall died at age 65 in 1953; his last film, released posthumously, was Return to Treasure Island (1954). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide