I'm told by Steve Cloutier from http://www.leroyshield.com that the Shield family has said that the reason Leroy changed his name from "Shields" to "Shield" was that he considered it would be advantageous in Hollywood if his name 'sounded more Jewish than Irish.'

Curiouser and curiouser.

If he was worried about that… why didn't he just play his old klezmer records for potential clients?

A member of the Beau Hunks says that it's certainly possible that among all the work Shield did for Victor records, there might well have been some sides along those lines…

But Larry SHIELDS is all over the web, including Wikipedia, where he's identified as an early New Orleans clarinetist who was on the recordings by the Original Dixieland Jass Band, often credited as the first jazz records (and offered up by racists as "evidence" that jazz was invented by white people). He was one of the first N.O. musicians to go to Chicago, and he later spent time in L.A., Chicago, and finally L.A., where he did not write scores for Hal Roach.

The klezmer angle is interesting, since klezmer and dixieland clarinet overlap so much (Mickey Katz, Benny Goodman playing "Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen"…), but I didn't find anything on line about that, other than the post you're quoting, the post IT's quoting, and your own post. The internet is so dang recursive.

Finally, Leroy Shield (no "s") was also known as Roy (as I learned from a different set of liner notes, to the Beau Hunks' great Little Rascals album). But Larry?

We need a Talmudic Hal Roach scholar.

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