Hal Le Roy
Film, vaudeville and television actor and dancer (1913-1985)
Hal Le Roy (December 10, 1913 – May 2, 1985) was an American tap dancer, actor, and singer appearing on stage, in film, and on television.
Life and career
Hal Le Roy was born John LeRoy Schotte in Cincinnati, Ohio, on December 10, 1913. He danced in amateur productions as a youth, spurring his mother to take him to New York. His dancing teacher, Ned Wayburn, got him his first job, in Hoboken Hoboes in 1928.
The tall, gangling Hal Le Roy had a distinctive dancing style combining conventional tap with eccentric legomania, with his legs and feet twisting and turning energetically at crazy angles. Le Roy quickly worked his way into Broadway roles, where his flamboyant style created a sensation in the 1931 Ziegfeld Follies. In September 1931 Vitaphone, the short-subject division of Warner Bros. hired him for a single film, the one-reel (10-minute) musical The High School Hoofer. This was essentially an audition film, testing Le Roy as a screen personality. His dancing was practiced but his delivery of dialogue was not, and in his first film he was very awkward, reciting his dialogue syllable by syllable, without natural inflection.
“Hal Le Roy” enters the record as film, vaudeville and television actor and dancer (1913-1985). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Film, vaudeville and television can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Hal Le Roy” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Film, vaudeville and television provides the most credible route into that argument.
The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5640830. The first chronological checks are 1913, 1985, 1928 and 1931.
Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.
- Establishing names and roles
- Building a first chronology
- Locating cited institutions
Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Hal Le Roy”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Hal Le Roy primary sources, Hal Le Roy archive and Film research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Hal Le Roy”?
- How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
- Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Hal Le Roy” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.