Jon Hall was a leading man in many adventure films and he freelanced for several American studios during his lengthy career. When he first started in the 1930's he used his birth name Charles Hall Locher, as his father was Felix Locher, a sometimes character actor in silent films. His cousin was the award winning cinematographer Conrad Hall. Jon's first film using his screen name was John Ford's "The Hurricane" with Dorothy Lamour in 1937.
He made six films with Maria Montez at Universal in the 1940's all of which were made in Technicolor and were very popular. But by 1959, he had definitely slowed down. After the TV show he did, "Ramar of the Jungle", he got into the manufacture of housings for underwater cameras. It was because of this that "Forbidden Island" came to be made.
The movie was primarily noted for its underwater photography and its music by the composer of exotic soundscapes, Martin Denny. In storyline it is actually a rather tired crime drama dealing with the usual band of miscreants trying to retrieve a priceless emerald from a sunken ship. Hall heads up the divers, who mysteriously start to die off after one of them discovers an underwater skeleton. The mayhem continues until the decidedly sunken conclusion.
This picture was his next to the last and that last one has become something of a cult item, "The Beach Girls and the Monster" which tried to cash-in on the beach blanket craze of the 1960's.
Jon Hall will always have a place, actually two places, on the Hollywood Walk of Fame; one for his movies and the other for television. His memory will not fade for those who enjoy his brand of colorful adventure.
