Harold Lloyd fans?

[LizzieMaine]

It amazes me how wonderful and crisp the TCM prints of the early films like "The Freshman" were, especially when compared to the rather crummy print they have of 1947's "The Sin of Harold Diddlebock."

Lloyd was his own archivist, and had an elaborate system of film vaults on his estate, where he kept the original negatives of all of his films. Some of his earliest shorts were lost in a vault fire in the mid-forties, but otherwise all of his films were well-maintained and look as fresh today as they day they were made. The only ones he didn't own were "Professor Beware," which was owned by Paramount, and "Diddlebock/Mad Wednesday," which belonged to Howard Hughes. The latter film lapsed into the public domain in the 1970s, and has been bouncing around ever since in shabby dupes, which explains why it looks so bad today.

 

[zetwal]

His silent films were great

If there are any out there reading these thread who haven't seen HL before please be sure to watch his silent films first. If you watch the later talkies you could easily be disappointed and wonder what the fuss is all about. At least that's my opinion.

 

[Doctor Strange]

Lloyd's talkies are not exactly bad, they just don't have that magical silent movie quality. It's not that Lloyd can't handle the dialogue, so much as the slower pacing and more static camerawork of the early 30s totally hobble the comic energy.

As many observers have pointed out, watching Lloyd hang off of buildings in Never Weaken and Safety Last is surreal and hilarious, but when he does it in the sound film Feet First - even though it's just as brilliantly conceived and executed - his all-too-real cries for help and exhausted breathing ruin the comic effect.

And I was also thinking that I hoped folks managed to see the earlier silents yesterday: they remain the jewels of Lloyd's career...

I watched some of For Heaven's Sake and most of The Kid Brother, and I was struck once again by what a fine actor Lloyd is in the quieter moments. And wow, he had so much palpable romantic chemistry with the gorgeous Jobyna Ralston! (Actually, he made all his leading ladies look good: one gets the sense that he was far more interested in women than Keaton or Chaplin, who mostly used their female characters as idealized props.)

 

[MisterCairo]

I haven't seen any of Harold's talkies, but have seen Chaplin's Great Dictator. Neither seemed to thrive in the world of talkies, indeed, Chaplin made several silent films well into the talkie era.

I don't see it as a problem with their voices or acting skills not being transferable, as I gather was the case for several silent stars, rather, they were artists in the silent world and preferred to keep it that way.

 

[zetwal]

I haven't seen any of Harold's talkies, but have seen Chaplin's Great Dictator. Neither seemed to thrive in the world of talkies, indeed, Chaplin made several silent films well into the talkie era.

I don't see it as a problem with their voices or acting skills not being transferable, as I gather was the case for several silent stars, rather, they were artists in the silent world and preferred to keep it that way.

I wasn't trying to make generalizations about the carry over from silent to talkies. But I think HL fans will agree that his silent stuff was superior.

That said, and since you bring it up, I would have to say that I think that Chaplin's Great Dictator is wonderful.

 

[Tony in Tarzana]

Lloyd was his own archivist, and had an elaborate system of film vaults on his estate, where he kept the original negatives of all of his films. Some of his earliest shorts were lost in a vault fire in the mid-forties, but otherwise all of his films were well-maintained and look as fresh today as they day they were made. The only ones he didn't own were "Professor Beware," which was owned by Paramount, and "Diddlebock/Mad Wednesday," which belonged to Howard Hughes. The latter film lapsed into the public domain in the 1970s, and has been bouncing around ever since in shabby dupes, which explains why it looks so bad today.

Thanks Lizzie. Harold Lloyd could have written a textbook for actors on how to manage their careers. He's one of the very few who held on to their money and were able to enjoy a comfortable retirement. Contrast with Buster Keaton who had to do ridiculous movies near the end of his life for money.

 

[Blackthorn]

Just watched Safety Last.

Now I'm a Lloyd fan. I DVRed several this week and will have a lot of fun savoring them.

 

[Bill Taylor]

Harold Lloyd is one of my favorite silent movie commedians with Mabel Normand #1, Harold Lloyd #2, then Fatty Arbuckle, Marie Dressler, Chaplin. I managed to catch three of the TCM Harold Lloyd movies (Kid Brother, Speedy, Welcome Danger (Lloyd's first talking movie - 1929) and the first part of the next showing (Feet First - 1930). You just "gotta" love Speedy. At that point I ran out of steam. I have Dish Network, so I did set up the record function for some of them, if it worked properly. I live in a rural area and there are often hiccups.

I do prefer the silent productions over sound for these type of comedies. I believe silent movies are more of an art form than the later sound movies. And Lillian Gish was certainly not silent on that subject, either. And, in the words of the immortal Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson) - "you used to be big" -- "I "am" Big, it is the movies that have gotten small". Or, sort of like that.

As a humorous aside, Gloria Swanson actually started out at Keystone Studios, working along with Mabel Norman, Fatty Arbuckle, Mae Busch, Charlie Chaplin, Marie Dressler, etc. Mabel and company were the big stars, and so Gloria soon moved on. Probably didn't want to get hit with any more pies in the face. I think I read somewhere that Mack Sennet hired Gloria Swanson to try to keep Mabel under control (it didn't work). Harold Lloyd was never involved with Keystone, and for the most part (or completely in the 1920s) produced his own films and owned them outright, which he later put into trust as was indicated in a previous post, by LizzieMaine, I think.

Anyway, it was nice getting a temporary fill of Harold Lloyd. He is terrific!

Bill Taylor

 

[Magic Mark]

I love his films. Unbelievably clever and funny. As an entertainer myself, it's fun to adapte these types of ideas for our generation and see that good material holds up well!

 

[Bugsy]

Lloyd was also a damn fine athlete. Look as some of the stuff he does in his films.

 

[klind65]

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.

LizzieMaine, You said it best. Agreed, his product was always classy, extremely well-made and popular with the public - and to prove it just watch them today and you'll be hard pressed to find any modern comic "genius" to equal him. Some time back, I bought the DVD complete set of Harold Lloyd and showed it to my parents. They absoultely loved him and insisted we watch every single film in the set - which is a sizable number. The set is wonderful also for the extensive special features which include Lloyd speaking about how they tecnically made the films ...and about his beginnings with Hal Roach...

Lloyd films featured a concatenation of appealing leading ladies -my favorites being Bebe Daniels and Jobyna Ralston. Daniels went on to marry Ben Lyon after an extended affair with Lloyd and Ralston married that chap from "Wings" Richard Arlen. Indeed, I have read that Lloyd would consistently fall in love with his leading ladies who would eventually leave to marry others! However, he married the last of his leading ladies......whose name, darn it! is escaping me. Someone please,- what is it? They lived ( I hope) happily ever after on their massive Hollywood estate, " Green Acres" surrounded with family and friends.

I can't say which is my favorite film; I like them all - but maybe "Girl Shy" or "Safety Last". I especially love the way Lloyd films give such a great sense of the city streets and how it might have felt to have walked the great avenues in the Golden Age. One can really escape into them.

I liked Lloyd right away and never liked Chaplin although I tried. I watched "Modern Times" and some other flick he made, but I just got bored! Lloyd's films are the first ones I'll show someone in whom I want to nurture a love of silent films. Everyone loves them.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I liked Lloyd right away and never liked Chaplin although I tried. I watched "Modern Times" and some other flick he made, but I just got bored! Lloyd's films are the first ones I'll show someone in whom I want to nurture a love of silent films. Everyone loves them.

I enjoy all the silent comics, but in a different way, I think. I like Chaplin for the way in which he seems to be able to *be* anyone or do anything at any time -- the ultimate chameleon. Keaton I admire for his refusal to ever be intimidated by anyone or anything. Langdon I love for his demented innocence. But of all the comics, Lloyd is the only one whose exploits actually make me care about him as an individual, whatever type of character he's playing.

I've shown three of the big four comics on the big screen, all but Langdon, -- and it's interesting to see how audiences respond. They titter politely at Chaplin, they oooh and ahhh at Keaton, but -- every time -- they *cheer* for Lloyd. Clearly, he understood something about audiences and how to reach them that's still perfectly applicable today.

 

[Doctor Strange]

I've shown them all to audiences too - if smaller audiences than Lizzie's. Personally, I have found that Keaton is the one who generally gets the most amazed responses. But Lloyd is always a crowd pleaser.

Chaplin gets respect for inventing sophisticated film comedy and being the first mega-star. And his best films - say, the Mutual shorts - don't suffer from the dragged out pacing of his later features, nor his even-then-passe sentimentality. They are brilliant laugh machines, laced with touches of truth. And as Lizzie observed, his chamelonic ability to instantly become whatever is needed is astounding, and points forward to Mickey Mouse and the Max Fleischer cartoons, etc. Chaplin may be a bit of an acquired taste now, but he can still suck in an audience pretty dependably. (But you know, his films aren't all masterpieces. If you avoid the weaker material, you will be rewarded.)

Keaton's films look better than ever because - though he himself couldn't articulate it - he was a modernist. He is anti-sentiment and pro-irony: a David Letterman to Chaplin's Johnny Carson, if you will. Rather than Chaplin's sad Little Fellow buffeted by other people, he's the stoic going up against big ideas, like Nature or Machinery or The Female, and finding the most ingenious ways to triumph. (Chaplin would be chased by a cop, or a few cops; Keaton would go up against the entire city police force.) And Keaton was a very technically sophisticated (again, if extraordinarily humble and self-deprecating due to his lack of formal education) filmmaker. His camera tricks and big action setpieces remain utterly mind-boggling. His movies look fantastic, and they blow people's minds.

Lloyd was somewhere between the two, and with a (brilliant) touch of the ordinary. He's been called the father of situation comedy (though a strong argument can be made for the more obscure but just as wonderful Charley Chase!) because he was much more obviously a normal guy than the sprite-ish Chaplin or the from-some-other-realm Keaton. He's a more reactive comedian than they - almost anticipating the style of Jack Benny or Bob Newhart.

The Babbitt of Comedy (*), he was an average Joe who toiled for years until he pulled himself by his bootstraps to become a star. His films are carefully engineered to generate laughs and sympathy: in the same way that he always threw himself into athletics and hobbies, he was going to be the best at making comic films, no matter how much effort and expense it took... And because his films were so carefully constructed - and his character is so recognizable, even if 1920s boosterism isn't quite in vogue these days - his movies are still a delight. And as klind65 observed, as time capsules from the Jazz Age, they are unsurpassed.

(* No disrespect intended: Regulars on this board know that I LOVE Sinclair Lewis's novels and characters. And like them, Lloyd is emblematic of the 1920s.)

Anyway, I love 'em all. And Laurel & Hardy, Charely Chase, and some lesser-known others (though not Langdon - something about him just rubs me the wrong way.)

 

[Blackthorn]

I watched Girl Shy a few days ago. I have to say, I am now a Harold Lloyd fan, which is funny because I had never heard of him before this thread.

 

[HadleyH]

wrong

and

deleted LOL

 

[Blackthorn]

wrong

and

deleted LOL

Hmmmmmm...and intrigued.

 

[MisterCairo]

Thanks Lizzie. Harold Lloyd could have written a textbook for actors on how to manage their careers. He's one of the very few who held on to their money and were able to enjoy a comfortable retirement. Contrast with Buster Keaton who had to do ridiculous movies near the end of his life for money.

Are you seriously suggesting that Beach Blanket Bingo, the Pyjama Party and How to Stuff a Wild Bikini were ridiculous movies?

I'd slap your face with my glove and challenge you to a duel, sir, if I could....