Rondo Hatton
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| Rondo Hatton | |
 Rondo Hatton's acromegalic features have made him a Hollywood horror film icon. |
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| Birth name | Davis Elkins |
| Born | April 22, 1894 Hagerstown, Maryland |
| Died | February 2, 1946 (aged 51) |
| Years active | 1930-1946 |
Rondo Hatton (April 22, 1894 – February 2, 1946) had a brief, but prolific career playing thuggish bit parts in many Hollywood, California B-movies. He was known for his brutish facial features, due to his acromegaly, a disorder of the pituitary gland.
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[edit] Biography
Hatton was born Davis Elkins in Hagerstown, Maryland. Interestingly, Hatton was reputedly voted most handsome student in high school before his face was disfigured by acromegaly. He worked as a journalist until after World War I when the symptoms of acromegaly begun to show.
Because the symptoms developed in adulthood (as is common with the disorder), the disfigurement was incorrectly attributed to his exposure to mustard gas during service in World War I, or so the studios claimed in their publicity.
Director Henry King noticed Hatton when he was working as a reporter with The Tampa Tribune covering the filming of Hell Harbor (1930) and hired him. After some hesitation, Hatton moved to Hollywood in 1936 to pursue a career playing similar, often uncredited bit roles. His most notable of these was as a contestant in the "ugly man competition" (which he loses to Charles Laughton) in the RKO production of The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
Universal Studios attempted to exploit Hatton's unusual features to promote him as a horror star after he played the part of henchman Hoxton Creeper in their sixth Sherlock Holmes film, The Pearl of Death (1944), but he died of a heart attack (a direct result of his acromegalic condition) in 1946 before getting a chance to really make his mark.
[edit] In popular culture
His famous face has become an icon of Hollywood cinema. His legacy lives on through such tributes as a character in Disney's The Rocketeer (1991) and The Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Awards.
The 2000 AD character Judge Dredd is rarely seen without his helmet on and the first time this happened he had used face-changing technology to make himself look like Rondo Hatton. As the artist Brian Bolland revealed in an interview with David Bishop: "The picture of Dredd’s face – that was a 1940s actor called Rondo Hatton. I’ve only seen him in one film." [1]
Rondo Hatton is also regularly name-checked in the novels of Robert Rankin, (often referred to as "the now-legendary Rondo Hatton") and credited as appearing in films which are either fictional, or which he clearly had no part in, such as Carry On films. The main joke being along the lines of 'he had a Rondo Hatton' (hat on).
[edit] Filmography
Because of the numerous uncredited extra roles in Hatton's career, compiling a complete and accurate filmography is a difficult endeavor. The titles here reflect as thorough and accurate an attempt as possible but it is by no means comprehensive.
- 1930 Hell Harbor (uncredited)
- 1937 In Old Chicago
- 1938 Alexander's Rag Time Band (uncredited)
- 1939 Captain Fury (uncredited)
- 1939 The Hunchback of Notre Dame (uncredited)
- 1939 The Big Guy (uncredited)
- 1939 Union Pacific (uncredited)
- 1939 Gun Cargo (uncredited)
- 1940 Chad Hanna
- 1940 Moon Over Burma
- 1942 The Cyclone Kid (uncredited)
- 1942 Black Swan (uncredited)
- 1942 Tales of Manhattan (uncredited)
- 1942 Sin Town (uncredited)
- 1942 Moon and Sixpence (uncredited)
- 1943 Sleepy Lagoon
- 1943 The Ox-Bow Incident (uncredited)
- 1944 The Princess and the Pirate (uncredited)
- 1944 The Lodger (uncredited)
- 1944 Raiders of Ghost City (uncredited)
- 1944 Johnny Doesn't Live Here Anymore (uncredited)
- 1944 The Pearl of Death
- 1945 The Royal Mounted Rides Again (uncredited)
- 1945 The Jungle Captive
- 1946 Spider Woman Strikes Back
- 1946 House of Horrors
- 1946 The Brute Man
