Hal Skelly (May 31, 1891 – June 16, 1934) was an American Broadway and film actor who became a veteran of medicine shows, musical comedy, burlesque, Lew Dockstader's minstrels and opera. He joined the A.M. Zinn musical comedy company in San Francisco, where his eccentric dancing ability earned him the nickname "Tumbling Harold Skelly." Always enamored with the circus, he spent a year with Barnum & Bailey. Skelly toured China and Japan with a musical comedy troupe, the Raymond Teale Company.
He made his Broadway debut in Fiddler’s Three (1918) and went on to appear in ten other shows on Broadway. In 1927, he played a starring role alongside Barbara Stanwyck, in her first Broadway hit, the musical production,Burlesque. Paramount Pictures invited the two to star in the 1929 talkie film version of the show, retitled The Dance of Life, because studio executives judged the original title too risqué. Stanwyck turned down the offer while Skelly accepted, reprising his role as "Skid Johnson." He would make a total of ten films, including Woman Trap (1929), Behind the Make-Up (1930), and The Shadow Laughs (1933), and was also featured on two movie soundtracks.