Harold Lloyd fans?

[Gene]

Hello fellas,

My girlfriend recently got me into Harold Lloyd, and I have to say, I can't believe this man isn't more popular than he is. It always seems like he is overshadowed by Charlie Chaplin, but in my opinion the two have totally different styles.

Anyone else like this comedic genius (not to mention snappy dresser)? If so, what's your favorite movie of his? I'd have to say mine would be "Safety Last!" or "Speedy."

 

[GoldenEraFan]

I happen to like his films too, though I've only seen clips of them. Did you know he didn't need glasses? He just wore them for his character. I think it was because he didn't people recognizing him on the street.

 

[Atterbury Dodd]

I love Harold Lloyd. Is it possible to find any of his movies? I have seen two but can't find anymore on the internet.

 

[Professor]

Harold's by far my favorite! Chaplin's a fine star, but I've always considered him overrated. My favorite film of Harold's is "Girl Shy", it has the best chase sequence EVER. What really made Harold's "The Boy" role so successful though is that he was the "everyman" character that people identified with.

 

[Flivver]

I love Harold Lloyd. Is it possible to find any of his movies? I have seen two but can't find anymore on the internet.

Amazon still offers the Harold Lloyd Comedy Collection both new and used. This is by far the best compilation for the Harold Lloyd fan. It was issued several years ago by the Harold Lloyd Trust and contains nearly all of his feature-length movies, some shorts and many extras. I highly recommend it!

Lloyd is one of my favorite early commedians. Picking a favorite movie of his is tough. But among my favorites are "Safety Last", "Hot Water", "The Freshman" and "Speedy".

 

[Doctor Strange]

Harold Lloyd was utterly brilliant. His work generally lacks the poetry and social commentary of Chaplin and Keaton (*), but it's very funny, especially when seen with an audience. He literally was the character he played: optimistic and hard-working, he turned himself into a master comedian through sheer hard work and a long apprenticeship. And even the bomb accident that took off half his hand didn't stop him from hanging off buildings! He also sailed right into the sound era without fear, while Chaplin tried to wait it out (Keaton had much bigger problems than sound at the time) - though his talkies generally don't hold up as well his silents.

(* However, his films are more about the 1920s than Chaplin or Keaton's timeless movies. His very conventionality makes him much more of his period than they are, and his films really tell you what Americans believed back then. Of course, the other side of his regular-guyness is that during the communist witch hunt in the 1950s, he was given an honorary Oscar for being a "good citizen" at the same time that Chaplin wasn't being allowed back in to the US for his idealist politics!)

I don't think I could pick a favorite Lloyd film. All the one- and two-reelers he made after becoming "the glasses character" are great, and the early features (up to say Speedy) are all amazing laugh-generating machines!

"I'm just a regular fella - step right up and call me 'Speedy'!" - Harold's idiotic catch phrase in The Freshman

 

[LizzieMaine]

There's a reason why Lloyd was the top-grossing comedian of the twenties -- his films were well-made, consistently funny, and always emotionally-accessible to his audience. The people of the twenties felt he was *one of them*, not some kind of ethereal sprite like Chaplin or a brooding loner like Keaton. As the Doctor says, his films were as much about the Twenties as they were about a feckless boy with glasses.

My favorite Lloyd is "Girl Shy." A more perfectly-constructed silent comedy I've never seen.

 

[Brian Sheridan]

I concur that the Lloyd collection issued a few years ago on DVD is well worth the money. As perfectly remastered as you can get plus tons of outstanding extras like commentaries and one doc that show you the places today where Lloyd had filmed.

 

[Doctor Strange]

Going back to the original post...

One of the reasons that Lloyd isn't more popular is that his films were out of circulation for many years. Ever the smart cookie, he had retained the distribution rights to most of his films, and apart from the sequences appearing in his own two theatrical compilation features of the early 60s, they weren't shown in the 50s-70s. Though there were also distribution issues with Chaplin's and Keaton's films over the years, there were always enough of them out there to see. (For example, The Gold Rush and The General were public-TV staples when I was a kid.)

When I was at the height of my Super 8 collecting phase in the mid-70s, there were only a few of Lloyd's films available. (Including Girl Shy, Lizzie, which is why it's the only Lloyd feature that I have in Super 8!) It wasn't until after his death that Time-Life brought out releases of most of Lloyd's films with a lot of hoopla. I recall going to see these in double features at NYC revival houses at the time: I expected to discover that Lloyd's films were okay, though less "brilliant" than Keaton's... but they were a revelation! (Even though these Time-Life releases were a bit bowdlerized, and were subsequently replaced with restored prints.)

So even though Lloyd's films have now been easy to see for a long time, there's a residual effect of their having been off the scope for several decades while today's elder film buffs were in their formative years. Lloyd's reputation has never quite caught up.

 

[MisterCairo]

I love Harold Lloyd, and those glasses!

I was introduced to him through a tv program, I can't recall the name, likely aired in the late 70s. It was narrated, and basically a series of, I think, 30 minute shows taken from his films and shorts.

I'd love to get his collection on DVD, must start searching!

 

[Edward]

I love Harold Lloyd, and those glasses!

I was introduced to him through a tv program, I can't recall the name, likely aired in the late 70s. It was narrated, and basically a series of, I think, 30 minute shows taken from his films and shorts.

I'd love to get his collection on DVD, must start searching!

That's the show I saw too.... It was broadcast on (I think) the BBC when I was about six years old - around 1982. I seem to remember watching it in the early evenings, on BBC2, alongside such greats as the Fay Wray King Kong. Some years later I saw the silent originals and at the time (I'd have been about nine by then) I was disappointed.... there was something in that quick-fire narrative (almost Groucho as I recall). From memory, it added, or at least implied, a lot of back story - "It's just like Philadelphia all over again..." I'd love to be able to get hold of that on DVD, as well as the original shorts, as while I'm sure the purists were horrified by it, I really think it did bring something new to the films. Given the time during which they were possibly made, Lloyd himself must have had something to do with them? I remember particularly loving one which surrounded the conceit that The Kid has bought a car with a five minute or one hour or something like that guarantee. Inevitably, it immediately breaks down, and the rest of the plot surrounded his efforts to return the car to the showroom in time to claim under the guarantee. That and the unforgettable scene in Safety Last where he climbs the clock tower....

I can still also recall the theme song - "Harold Lloyd, Hooray for Harold Lloyd.... a pair of glasses and a smile."

 

[MisterCairo]

YES! The theme, it's coming back now! -

http://www.haroldlloyd.us/index.php?id=32&option=com_content&task=view

 

[LizzieMaine]

That Time-Life series was on public TV here in the mid-seventies, and the editing was done by two of Lloyd's late-in-life staff members. From what they said, he was very interested in presenting his films not as museum artifacts but in a way that would be relevant to contemporary audiences -- they may annoy presentational purists, but there's no questioning that they brought Lloyd to the attention of a generation that might otherwise have never noticed him.

One thing not often remembered about Lloyd is that he didn't always play the Spunky Boy Out To Make Good. In several of his features he appeared as an annoyingly-rich preening young wastrel, who ended up learning his lesson in the end. One of my favorite Lloyd bits comes from one of these pictures, in which he buys a succession of expensive fancy cars, only to have them each demolished in increasingly ridiculous ways. After the final car is ground to rubble by a passing locomotive, he lets just the slightest bit of aggravation pass his face, and then proceeds to light his cigarette from the smoking wreckage and saunter away without a care in the world. A wonderfully subtle bit of acting, and a very very funny scene.

 

[Tomasso]

He also enjoyed a second career in photography, with Marilyn Monroe and Betty Page among the models who posed for his cheesecake pix.

 

[Ghostsoldier]

I understand he was blind in one eye, also, and he did all of his own stunts (like Jackie Chan).

When I was a kid, we watched his movies on 8mm film all the time, which we checked-out from the public library; we could really identify with him (and, of course, I wore glasses, so he was my hero)...in my opinion, he's worlds above Keaton, and yes, even Chaplin.

Rob

 

[Marc Chevalier]

A neighbor of mine did major production work on the "Harlod Lloyd Comedy Collection". He was given deep access into Lloyd's archives, his home, etc. Lucky guy!

.

 

[Brian Sheridan]

I understand he was blind in one eye, also, and he did all of his own stunts (like Jackie Chan).
Rob

Don't know about the eye but I know he wore a prosthetic glove because an accident with a prop bomb that resulted in the loss of the thumb and index finger of his right hand in 1919. Sometimes you kind of can see the glove though he does his best to hide it.

 

[Doctor Strange]

I think the one-eye thing came into play later, after his movie career, but was ironic because he did so much stereo photography as a hobby in his later years. (I guess if a guy missing half a hand can hang off of buildings, he can also can take stereo slides with one good eye!)

 

[Ghostsoldier]

Thanks, Brian...I had forgotten about his damaged hand!

Here's his website:
http://www.haroldlloyd.com/

Rob

 

[skyvue]

Keaton's my favorite of the oft-cited trio, but Lloyd comes in second by a wide margin over Chaplin for me.

I love his stuff, and I've gotten to see a lot of it in theatres with an appreciative audience. A real treat.