Friday, April 20, 2018

Happy Birthday Harold Lloyd.

Today we celebrate the birthday of silent film comedian Harold Lloyd. To celebrate this day we will look at some of Harold Lloyd's best silent short films.


What many film fans best know Harold for today is his thrill comedies. These comedies would often involve Harold being in a high place and in danger of falling. These films would both create suspense and get laughs. Our first short Never Weaken (1921) is a fantastic example of this. This short is really clever and the humor is often quite surprising, which adds to how funny it is.





Our next short is I Do (1921). Most of Harold's films featured him as a young romantic who over the course of the movie falls for and gets the girl. As evidenced by the title this film is one of the few times, his character spends the majority of the movie married. This film features an interesting sequence that is in fact animated. Originally a longer elopement sequence was made that was in live action. However this sequence did not go over well at previews and H.M. Walker who provided most of the inter titles for films made at the Hal Roach Studio, created a brief animated segment to cover that part of the story. Harold's wife in this film was played by Mildred Davis who would actually become Harold's real life wife in 1923.



Our last short is Haunted Spooks (1920). Some of you might be aware of how, Harold posing with what he thought was a prop bomb accidently blew off one of his fingers. Well that happened during the making of this film. If you look extremely closely you may notice that i some scenes he has all his fingers and in some he is wearing a prosthetic glove. Because of this incident there was a rather large break in the shooting schedule. Shooting started from August 9, 1919 to August 23, 1919. It continued from January 5, 1920 to January 25, 1920. One incredible part of this film is the intertitles. These were once again by H.M. Walker. As well as text these intertitles also feature some great artwork in the background. H.M. Walker was an artist as well as a writer and this film lets him show this off. My fellow Our Gang fans should look for Ernie "Sunshine Sammy" Morrison in a brief role before the Our gang shorts started. Once again Harold's wife is played by his future real life wife, Mildred Davis.
















-Michael J. Ruhland

 

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