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Forty-one years ago a young movie bit-player named Hal Roach invested $100 in a rented camera, a little film -and a few actors. He called himself a producer and produced what shall generously be called a comedy. A short while later he met an actor den (Margie); James Lydon (Holly¬ wood); Charles Farrell (Margie); Reed Hadley (Public Defender); Cesar Ro¬ mero (Passport to Danger); Bill Bishop (Life); Douglas Dick (Waterfront). named Harold Lloyd. They made a comedy called “Lonesome Luke” and sold it for $850. Forty-one years later, Roach’s son bought out his father’s entire holdings for a reported $10,000,000 and estab¬ lished himself as the world’s leading producer of TV film. What happened during those 41 years is a story unique in movie an¬ nals. Hal Roach, during the rough and raucous infancy of the motion picture industry, was a free-wheeling giant of his time. He originated the “Our Gang” comedies. He introduced Harold Lloyd, a giant in his own right. He fathered the Laurel & Hardy com¬ edies and the Charlie Chase epics. He discovered the famous film comedi¬ ennes Mabel Normand and ZaSu Pitts. Roach today sits behind a rough- hewn desk in an office with a curious flavor of the past — walls laden with old-time photographs, floor strewn with bear rugs. “I just sit here and loaf,” he admits amiably. Not 30 feet away, in an adjacent of¬ fice, sits his 36-year-old, 230-pound son, sole owner of Hal Roach Enter¬ prises. In 1939, while his father was producing what was to be his last picture, Hal, Jr., had just attained the imposing title of co-director on a picture called “One Million B.C.,” with Victor Mature and the late Carole Landis. It is still seen occa¬ sionally on TV, a thought that gives young Roach the heeby-jeebies. “To think,” he says, awe-struck, “that, a picture like that could need a co¬ director!” Ten years later (“I let him get his experience on someone else’s payroll,” his father admits), Hal, Jr., came back to his father’s studio to announce that television was the coming thing. His father, forward-thinking to the point of being ahead of his time, agreed. But that was about the continued