LOS ANGELES -- Huntz Hall, 78, the rubber-faced, smashed-nose, pop-eyed comedian who made 120 films, including 87 with the durable, tough-talking Dead End Kids, later called the East Side Kids and the Bowery Boys, died Jan. 30 at his home here after a heart attack.

He was on screen for two decades with sidekicks Leo Gorcey, Gabriel Dell, Billy Hallop and Bobby Jordan, all now deceased. For a time, Mr. Hall and Dell performed as a nightclub act.

A sixth Dead End Kid, who left show business early to attend medical school, was Bernard Punsley, now a Los Angeles area physician.

Born Henry Hall in New York, one of 14 children of an Irish immigrant engineer, Mr. Hall attended New York's Professional Children's School. He made his Broadway debut when he was 3 months old and worked throughout his boyhood in vaudeville and radio serials.

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In 1935, he appeared in Sidney Kingsley's Broadway play "Dead End," about the problems of New York slums, where boys grew up idolizing gangsters. Two years later, the 16-year-old Hall followed the cast west to make a film version for Samuel Goldwyn and to spring the Dead End Kids on a welcoming nation.

Mr. Hall played Dippy, the dumbbell and best friend of Gorcey's gang leader Spit in the wisecracking young hoodlum screen team.

They made such films as "Crime School," "They Made Me a Criminal" and "Angels With Dirty Faces" starring James Cagney and Pat O'Brien for Warner Bros. in the late 1930s.

Moving to Universal in the 1940s, the group became the East Side Kids and continued spoofing themselves in such zany fare as "Spooks Run Wild" and "Private Buckaroo." After World War II, the group again changed studios and names -- going to Monogram Pictures (later Allied Artists) as the Bowery Boys. They made 49 films under that tag, ending the series with "In the Money" in 1958.

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Mr. Hall appeared in adult character roles in such motion pictures as "Gentle Giant," the 1967 film that spawned the television series "Gentle Ben," and "Herbie Rides Again" in 1974, one in the Disney series about a lively little Volkswagen. The actor's most critically acclaimed role was as producer Jesse Lasky in Ken Russell's 1977 film "Valentino."

In 1971, Mr. Hall portrayed speak-easy bodyguard Dutch in the short-lived television series "The Chicago Teddy Bears." He had performed in Los Angeles area dinner theater productions of "The Odd Couple" and "The Sunshine Boys" into the 1990s.

Mr. Hall was divorced three times and widowed once. Survivors include a son and a grandson. CAPTION: Huntz Hall launched his career as an infant and went from Broadway to Hollywood at age 16. ec

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