Daphne Pollard (born Daphne Trott, 1892) is best known as a recognizable (if tiny) figure from the Hal Roach stock company, including several Laurel and Hardy films (as Mrs. Hardy). She also appeared in comedies with Edgar Kennedy, Shemp Howard, and others.
While she resembled a Little Person, Pollard was actually just very small (about five feet tall). Indeed her small size was how she got her start in show business, beginning her career in her native Australia with the Pollard Lilliputian Opera Company in 1898. (Many members of this company changed their last name to Pollard, including Snub Pollard, thus giving rise to the popular misconception that the two were brother and sister).
She moved to the U.S. in 1907 and appeared in vaudeville and Broadway shows (e.g. The Passing Show of 1915) through the mid-twenties, with a West End interlude in 1917 where she appeared with George Robey in Zig Zag. In 1927, she went to work for Mack Sennett as a screen comedienne, but jumped ship to Roach shortly thereafter. Her last credited role is in the 1943 East Side Kids movie Kid Dynamite. She passed away in 1978.
To find out more about the history of vaudeville and comedy veterans like Daphne Pollard, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, and for more on classic comedy and early cinema read Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube.
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