Today, we spotlight the great Harold Lloyd, born on April 20, 1893. Mr. Lloyd is considered one of silent film comedy's Big Three (along with Chaplin and Keaton - and, if it's a Big Four, Harry Langdon) and the Harold Lloyd films are still unequaled in their blend of comedy and thrills with the action hero ethos exemplified by Douglas Fairbanks, Sr.
Turns out Harold Lloyd is among several stalwarts from silver screen comedy with birthdays at this time of year.
That guy responsible for the first 20th century British Invasion and the international popularity of both going out to the movies and buying home movies (on 8mm, 9.5mm, 16mm, 28mm, etc.), Charles Spencer Chaplin, was born on April 16, 1889.
The lesser-known but wonderful Fay Tincher, a very reluctant but inspired comedienne - she aspired to move behind the camera and make dramas as a director/writer - but easily one of the funniest of her day, was born on April 17, 1884.
We respectfully tip a battered top hat Chaplin got from his friend Max Linder and wore in One A.M. to his colleague and fellow comedy great Harold Lloyd. All three were responsible for a million laughs.
A preeminent silver screen presence through much of his career, Harold Lloyd is best known for his ascent up a very tall building in Safety Last.
The plucky comedian with the horn-rimmed glasses dangling from the clock remains one of the images most frequently selected to represent silent movies and the 1920's. If my viewing of it before an enthusiastic capacity crowd at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival a few years ago is any indication, Safety Last still kills with 21st century audiences! This is because Harold worked to became an unsurpassed master of comedy construction, especially in his 1923-1928 feature films.
Safety Last had been preceded by several daredevil Harold Lloyd pictures which got big laughs from scenarios involving imminent danger on tall buildings.
Harold's college football epic The Freshman may be his second best known feature after Safety Last. It influenced all football comedies - live-action and animated - that followed. Have a difficult time imagining the football sequences in Horse Feathers, Three Little Pigskins, Pigskin Palooka and Disney's How To Play Football without the precedent established by this classic Harold Lloyd comedy.
It's the epitome of big screen fun at the movies to see one of Harold's best features - Why Worry, Girl Shy, Hot Water, For Heaven's Sake, The Kid Brother, Speedy - with a packed audience and stirring orchestral accompaniment. While lots of Harold Lloyd flicks are up on YouTube, they were not designed to be seen on cell phones in 2021 - and yes, we're well aware that's exactly how people watch movies these days.
As is also the case with the Fairbanks swashbucklers (Robin Hood, Thief Of Bagdad, The Black Pirate) and Keaton's The General, the films are designed to be seen on the big screen, with orchestral accompaniment and an SRO theatrical audience. Harold differs from the others in the Big 3 or 4 in that his characterization evolved in movies, while Chaplin (as a member of Fred Karno's troupe), Keaton and Langdon honed their comic personas in stage and vaudeville.
After a brief stint working as a supporting player in Mack Sennett's Keystone Comedies, Harold began his career as a silver screen headliner as the first star of producer Hal Roach's new Rolin Studio in 1915. He starred in 67 comedy short subjects as an ever-obstreperous guy in too-tight clothes known as Lonesome Luke.
The Lonesome Luke comedies are much more in the Keystone Comedies and L-Ko (Lehrman Knock-out) slapstick school than in the later, more sophisticated signature style of Harold and Hal Roach Studios, but do feature a fine stock company of star-to-be Bebe Daniels, goofball supporting comedian Snub Pollard and all-purpose heavy Bud Jamison.
While Luke was definitely in the thick of what at least one film historian termed "the mustache brigade," his surviving early films show glimpses of the far less over-the-top and more naturalistic "glasses" character Lloyd would subsequently develop.
In 1917, Harold retired the less-than-memorable Luke and replaced him with the "glasses" character. While the supporting casts, scenarios, comedy routines and slapstick gags at first stayed much the same, this change did wonders for Harold Lloyd's comedy.
Harold rode the handsome, likable and energetic "glasses" character to great success, first in featurettes, then in full-length features. From these fairly humble beginnings, Harold made himself an expert on feature film comedy, story and screenplay structure.
Lloyd carefully studied what works or doesn't work with theatrical audiences and determined exactly where the laughs come.
The can-do sensibility of WW1 era light comedian turned 1920's action hero Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. is clearly a strong influence even in such early Harold Lloyd featurettes as Grandma's Boy, Dr. Jack and A Sailor-Made Man. Throughout these Hal Roach Studio featurettes, Harold remains the most swashbuckling and dashing of movie comedians. Harold very likely talked shop with Doug!
The transition to sound appears to have thrown Harold off his game. Lloyd had shot half of his 1928 vehicle Welcome Danger as a silent feature, then, noting the popularity of the new sound films, re-tooled it as a talkie. Artistically, the sound version of Welcome Danger represents the first misfire by Lloyd in a decade, but, due to the public's fascination with the new talkies, it was a box-office hit. Difficult to say what is weirder, seeing the patented Harold Lloyd routines slowed down for a sound movie or hearing perennial bad guy Noah Young's voice sound like Walt Disney's Goofy.
Harold's 1930 feature Feet First attempts to bring the daredevil thrill comedy seen in High & Dizzy, Ask Father and Safety Last into the sound era.
Notably, hearing a scenario in which sound emphatically emphasizes the extent to which Harold's life is in danger, as seen in these clips from Feet First, alters the comedy dramatically.
Harold's struggles, screams and cries make the high and dizzy sequence in Feet First more than a tad too real - and a lot less funny than similar hair-raising sequences in the Lloyd silents. There are also spectacularly unfunny bits involving an unrelentingly unfunny black stereotype character played by Willie Best.
Of Harold's 1930's films, Movie Crazy is by far the most successful at bringing 1920's style Harold Lloyd comedy into sound. Writer Clyde Bruckman, who had a penchant for reusing gags from his previous work, remade parts of the following "magician's coat" sequence with The Three Stooges - and Columbia Pictures was sued for it (author, journalist and Bruckman biographer Matthew Dessem elaborates further here).
His last silver screen transformation, which produced The Cat's Paw, The Milky Way (directed by Leo McCarey) and Professor Beware, all significant departures from his earlier work, did not lead to a subsequent series of original story-driven Harold Lloyd comedies with dramatic overtones. This transformation might have been successful, but would have required Harold to abandon everything that had made him a box-office sensation and also cast himself in character parts as a middle-aged gentleman well into his forties. The Cat's Paw in particular points the way to how he could have adapted his characterization from the 1920's to the different requirements of the 1930's-1940's.
The Cat's Paw, directed by Sam Taylor, constitutes a worthy attempt to modernize a Harold Lloyd comedy with a storyline more like a LaCava or Capra film and ends up closer to Gabriel Over The White House than The Bitter Tea Of General Yen.
Present-day viewers will find the Asian stereotypes throughout The Cat's Paw very problematic, especially as none are portrayed by top Asian screen actors of the day (such as Anna May Wong), but in a twist counter to 1930's movies in general, they act as the mentors, teachers and inspirations to Harold's protagonist and are by far the most sympathetic characters in the movie.
On one hand, perhaps deferring to the directors - Hawks, Lubitsch, LaCava, Capra, Wilder, Cukor etc. - who would have brought the Harold Lloyd persona into the late 1930's and 1940's simply would not have suited Harold. On the other hand, Harold did collaborate quite successfully with former Hal Roach Studios director Leo McCarey on the 1936 film The Milky Way.
It's also quite possible that by the time he made Professor Beware, Harold concluded he'd worked his tail off long enough and was ready to call it a day in showbiz.
After leaving movies in 1938, he did emerge from retirement to star in one more movie and collaborate with one of those directors: legendary stage and screen wunderkind Preston Sturges: The Sin Of Harold Diddlebock.
The last Harold Lloyd feature has its share of excellent comedy, but is a tug-of-war between the visions of Lloyd and Sturges - and the central premise that the indefatigable go-getter Harold Lamb from The Freshman would give up, fold and become a dreary office nebbish strikes this writer as 100% counter to the essential Harold Lloyd characterization. Although the Harold Diddlebock character lost his savings in the Great Depression, his complete and utter defeat still rings false from the git-go. There are, however, many very funny scenes featuring the perennial and hilarious Sturges stock company players (Jimmy Conlin, Edgar Kennedy), as well as the irrepressible Jackie the lion.
Unfortunately, it would be an understatement that Lloyd and Sturges were not on the same page; as brilliant, inventive and original as Preston Sturges was, the very specific parameters of 1925 style silver screen comedy definitely did not number among his strong suits. The guy who Harold Diddlebock becomes in the movie, as he transitions from doormat to flashy dresser, high-rollin' high stakes gambler and overall wild and crazy guy, could be seen as the flamboyant Sturges himself.
A severely truncated version of The Sin Of Harold Diddlebock that circulated under the title Mad Wednesday was released in 1950.
In closing, we suggest that if one is not well-versed in the films of Harold Lloyd, a fine way to become familiar with the dapper and clever comedian is to go to the Harold Lloyd YouTube channel and binge-watch 28 of his classic movies on the Harold Lloyd - Short Films (HD 1080) playlist. In addition, many of his silent and sound feature films are up on the Harold Lloyd YouTube channel in their entirety.
Even better: follow those comedy gems with the terrific documentary by ace filmmakers and historians Kevin Brownlow and (the late) David Gill, who gave Harold Lloyd a long overdue spotlight in one of their outstanding Photoplay Pictures films. Have wanted to buy this on Blu-ray or DVD (region-free or otherwise) for eons. As the other Brownlow-Gill films are, it's among the best of the best.
As the gang at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog catch up on last weekend's online presentations by the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum, we reflect upon the stellar contributions to comedy and cinema made by Harold Lloyd, the still unsurpassed master of the action comedy and originator of best practices in feature film story construction.
Thanks for the laughs, Harold!
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