Headstone for Hal Roach actress Lyle Tayo

I would like to bring your attention to the fact that actress Lyle Tayo’s grave is unmarked.  She is a true member of the Hal Roach Stock Company.  Randy Skretvedt says this about Tayo in the chapter about Laurel and Hardy’s “Should Married Men Go Home?” in his book “The Magic Behind the Movies”:  Ollie’s wife, just as much of a “bloodhound” according to him, is played by Lyle (pronounced “Lily”) Tayo. She had made her first of nine appearances with Stan and Ollie in Call of the Cuckoo, and had been hit by a pie while tending to a flowerpot in The Battle of the Century. Her real name was Lyle Shipman, and she was born on January 19, 1889, in Elmdale, Kansas. She would be memorable as an unmarried prospective Christmas tree customer in Big Business, and as an outraged next-door neighbor in Perfect Day. Our Gang fans remember her for her role in Shivering Shakespeare as the apoplectic mother who admonishes her son Chubby, who’s onstage in a school play about ancient Rome, every time he lifts up his toga to see what his next line is (“Norman! Norman!!”). She made about 50 films from 1921 to 1934, almost exclusively for Roach, with a couple of excursions to Paramount in the early ’30s. Marrying a man named Barton, she retired to be a wife and mother, except for a 1948 appearance in the Frank Sinatra-Fred MacMurray movie Miracle of the Bells. She died on May 2, 1971, in Hollywood at 82.

Like Lionel Belmore and Oliver Hardy, she is at Valhalla Memorial Park in North Hollywood.  We were able to get funding for Mr. Belmore’s marker in two weeks.  I hope we are as fortunate with Ms. Tayo.  I would like to do a dedication to both of them on the same day at Valhalla whenever the COVID 19 goes away enough to make gatherings safe.

 

Please considering making a donation of any size.  Every little bit helps.  Thank you in advance for helping to get this fine actress that we have enjoyed watching over the years a proper and fitting headstone.

 

Bob Satterfield

Way Out West Tent

Grand Sheik Emeritus