Hal LeSueur

Hal LeSueur (September 3, 1901 – May 3, 1963) was an American actor.

He was born Hal Hays LeSueur in San Antonio, Texas, the second child of Thomas E. LeSueur (1868–1938) and Anna Bell Johnson (1884–1958). His older sister was Daisy LeSueur, who died as a very young child, and his younger sister was Lucille Fay LeSueur who became the famous movie star Joan Crawford.

His mother later married Henry J. Cassin (1867-after 1919). The family lived in Lawton, Oklahoma, then moved to Kansas City, Missouri, around 1916. LeSueur and his first wife moved from Kansas City around 1928 to Los Angeles. He found work in the stock department at MGM, where his sister had become a star. He only found work as an extra or bit part.

He had two wives, Jessie Beryl Burress (married 1928-divorced 1930); and Kasha Haroldi (married 1931-divorced 1935). He and Kasha had one daughter, Joan Crawford LeSueur (born December 2, 1933), who became a dancer on Broadway known professionally as Joan Lowe.

LeSueur and his first wife, Jessie, separated May 15, 1929. He filed for divorce in Los Angeles on August 21 of that year. He and his second wife, Kasha, who was a stand-in for his sister, Crawford, and for Peggy Shannon, were married in Santa Ana. She divorced him because she said he was indifferent and not interested in being married. She gained custody of their daughter. Apparently, Kasha later married a man named Lowe, hence their daughter's professional surname.

On November 9, 1935, LeSueur was in a head-on collision at the top of Cahuenga Pass. The other car caught fire and the three people inside, Earl Gose, who was driving, his wife, Golda, and his unmarried sister, Grace, were pulled from the blaze. Their car burned to a charred hulk. LeSueur suffered severe cuts and bruises on his hands, face, arms and legs. The other people were also seriously injured. All were taken to a hospital in Hollywood. The injuries of Grace Gose proved fatal three days later.

LeSueur's mother, Anna, and his ex-wife, Kasha, accompanied him to the Coroner's inquest on November 15. Earl and Golda Gose were unable to appear. LeSueur testified that he was driving near the center of the highway when the other car suddenly pulled out from behind another car into his lane and he was unable to avoid the collision. The Coroner's jury exonerated him of blame for the crash, returning a verdict of accidental death.

In February 1936, Earl and Golda Gose sued him, seeking $86,400 in damages. Golda, who was taken into court on a hospital stretcher, which was placed before the jury box, testified that LeSueur was driving on the wrong side of Cahuenga Boulevard when his car collided with theirs. LeSueur not only denied responsibility for the accident, but in his cross-complaint for $10,000 charged that the crash came about through Gose's negligent driving. The suit was then abruptly dropped, however, when a settlement was reached. LeSueur agreed to pay them $8,500, one tenth of what they had originally sought.

As he was not a credited actor on the films he worked on he decided he really did not like acting, so he did make-up work at MGM for a while. When he left that job, he worked as a sporting goods salesman.

LeSueur made one final movie appearance, playing a reporter in Jeanne Eagels (1957).

He made one TV appearance in an episode of the series State Trooper, titled No Fancy Cowboys, which aired on March 13, 1957.

When he left the sporting good business, LeSueur began working as a desk clerk at a Los Angeles hotel, and supplemented his income working as a switchboard operator at the motel where he lived.

Hal LeSueur died at age 61 of a ruptured appendix in Los Angeles. He is interred in Forest Lawn Cemetery, Glendale.

His sister Joan said this of him "Hal was a louse, an out-and-out bastard. He could charm the skin off a snake, but nothing, not his jobs, not the men and women in his life, lasted long. Liquor, then drugs, and always his distorted ego, took over. I supported that son-of-a-bitch until the day he died...At least Norma Shearer's brother, Douglas, was brilliant and self-sufficient, and made his own career at Metro. But I was stuck with a schmuck. That man--or did he ever become a man--was a monster. God, I hated him."