Composer, Conductor, Pianist. Also known as Roy Shield and LeRoy Shield. His jazzy, vivacious music brightened the soundtracks of many Hal Roach comedies of the 1930s. Shield's best known tune, the wistful "Good Old Days", became the theme song for the classic series "Our Gang" (aka "The Little Rascals"). The Minnesota-born Shield was raised in Belle Plaine, Iowa, and made his concert debut as a pianist at age 12. In 1921 he accompanied mezzo-soprano Eva Gauthier on a recital tour of the US and Cuba, performing modern repertoire (Ravel, Stravinsky, Satie). From 1923 to 1931 he was employed by the Victor Talking Machine Company (later RCA Victor), turning out over 1000 recordings in all genres as a pianist, conductor, arranger and producer; he was eventually put in charge of RCA's West Coast operations, based in Hollywood. As music director for NBC's Chicago division (1931 to 1945) and orchestra manager for NBC in New York (from 1945), he scored countless radio programs and hosted two popular series, "The Roy Shield Revue" (1936 to 1952) and "Roy Shield & Company" (1941 to 1945). In 1942 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Chicago Musical College. His serious compositions include the "Union Pacific Suite" for orchestra (1944) and the tone poems "Gloucester" (1940) and "The Great Bell" (1948). He retired in 1955. In one of those curious happenstances of art, Shield owes his posthumous fame to an anonymous moonlighting gig. In 1929 RCA Victor sent him to Hollywood to oversee the Hal Roach Studios' conversion from silent to talkie production. Eager to write music for films - his RCA duties gave him little opportunity to compose - he struck a private deal with the producer. He was obviously bursting with ideas. Working at night with a hand-picked 15-piece band, Shield recorded some 100 pieces of stock music for Roach between May of 1930 and March of 1931. They ranged from short action cues to fully developed themes that brilliantly complimented the onscreen antics. He received no credit or publicity, though he can be glimpsed in a cameo as a bandleader in the two-reeler "Let's Do Things" (1931). Roach got more than his money's worth. Shield's catchy melodies were used (and reused) in almost all the studio's short subjects through 1935, often spliced arbitrarily into the soundtracks by deadline-pressed music editors. "Gangway Charlie" became the theme music for Charley Chase's films; "Beautiful Lady" was a perfect introduction for Thelma Todd; "Let's Go" opened the "Boy Friends" comedies. "Good Old Days", with its gently crooning saxophone lines, was first heard in the "Our Gang" short "Teacher's Pet" (1930) and that series is now unthinkable without it. Other Shield tunes familiar from the shorts include "On to the Show", "Little Dancing Girl", "Dash and Dot", "Fliver Flops", "You Are The One I Love", "If It Were Only True", "Hide and Go Seek", "Look At Him Now", "Arrowhead", "The Moon and You", "Candy, Candy", "In My Canoe", "Rocking Chair", "Bells", "Give Us a Hand", and "Here We Go". Shield briefly returned to Roach three times in the mid-1930s, gaining his only screen credits for two Laurel & Hardy features: as music director for "The Devil's Brother" (adapting Auber's opera, 1933) and writing a full score for "Our Relations" (1936), only parts of which were used. He also made new arrangements of earlier themes, including fanfare and dance versions of "Good Old Days". After 1936 Roach turned scoring duties over to studio staffer T. Marvin Hatley and Shield never worked in movies again, choosing to focus on his radio career. His "Variety" obituary overlooked his Hollywood activities and Shield faded from memory, even as his music was impressing itself on baby boomers who grew up watching "The Little Rascals" on television. When R. Crumb & His Cheap Suit Serenaders recorded a "Little Rascals Medley" for their 1974 album, they credited Hal Roach because they had no way of knowing who the actual composer was; the tunes had never been issued commercially and the original sheet music and audio tracks were presumed lost. The Laurel & Hardy society The Sons of the Desert and authors Leonard Maltin and Richard W. Bann took the first steps in rescuing Shield from obscurity, the latter identifying him as the composer of "Good Old Days" and other Roach themes in their book "Our Gang" (1977). During the 1980s BBC music director Ronnie Hazlehurst recreated some of Shield's music for use in British TV game shows and later released two albums of the material as "Laurel & Hardy's Music Box". Roach himself seemed puzzled by the renewed interest, though he acknowledged that Shield's contributions were special: "He was probably a genius. We were fortunate to have his services". The definitive restoration efforts came from The Netherlands. Graphic designer Piet Schreuders and a team of arrangers painstakingly reconstructed the Roach scores from the films themselves, isolating musical fragments without dialogue or sound effects, pieceing them together, and transcribing the results. Their work was recorded by the Amsterdam-based The Beau Hunks Orchestra in a series of acclaimed albums released between 1992 and 2000.