Vance, Jeffrey and Suzanne Lloyd. Harold Lloyd: Master Comedian. New York: Abrams. 2002. Print
Dardis, Tom. Harold Lloyd: The Man on the Clock. New York: Viking. 1983. Print
In the Golden Age of silent comedy there were many clowns, but only three great artists -- Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd.However, Harold made more films than Chaplin or Keaton, and his films often rivaled Chaplin's and always surpassed Keaton's at the box office.
First Sentences:
Considerable more than half of the silent films produced in America before 1928 no longer exist.
Entire studio outputs have vanished without a trace....In the early 1930s, millions of feet of film were systematically destroyed by their makers, who believed that there would be no further interest in silent pictures.
Description:
A few months ago Turner Classic Movies TV station ran a day of silent films starring comedian Harold Lloyd. So I recorded them and watched a bunch at my leisure over the next few days. I was slightly familiar with Lloyd's comedies (he was my father's favorite silent star for his everyman persona), and had seen his famous photo of him hanging from a clock face high above the city streets. But I didn't really know the man, his process, his film-making skills, or his reputation to others beyond my father.
Enter two outstanding biographies and cinematic reviews of Harold Lloyd: Jeffrey Vance and Suzanne Lloyd's Harold Lloyd: Master Comedian and Tom Dardis' Harold Lloyd: The Man on the Clock. While both cover the same man, his films, and the earliest days of motion pictures, they are significantly different, each one valuable for gaining perspective and insider information about this comedian.
Lloyd was a comedic film actor in the earliest days of film with brief roles in one-reelers and westerns starting around 1915. Later, he usually played a mousy, bespeckled, boyish-faced man with seemingly unobtainable goals of popularity (Speedy), financial success (A Sailor-Made Man), physical prowess (Safety Last), and always True Love (Girl Shy). In these roles he scaled the outside of tall buildings, walked a pet lion, wildly drove cars, scampered on top of trains and street cars, fought a giant, and became a human tackling dummy along with anything else he and his crew could dream up for a laugh.
The book by Vance and Lloyd (Lloyd's granddaughter), Master Comedian, is an oversized volume chock-a-block with huge, clear photos from sets, films, and Lloyd's personal life. Master Comedian carefully describes each of his films from plot to problems to profits. It is fascinating to read about the early days where everything, including "indoor" scenes was filmed outdoors using natural light (hence the attraction to sunny Southern California and Hollywood) up through the complicated logistics and expense making talking pictures.
Initially, Lloyd used no scripts, starting with just an idea or two, a setting, a few actors with a camera, and the patience to see what they could catch on film. Lloyd recounted that in the early days they started with one gag, shot it, and then figured out some sort of plot that would make the characters arrive at the scene so they could insert that gag.
Lloyd was one of the first filmmakers to preview footage on test audiences prior to distribution. Sitting in the back of theaters, he charted where the laughs were and what failed, then edited, re-shot, and added scenes until the film met his (and audiences') expectations.
Throughout Master Comedian there are lovely posed and candid shots of Lloyd, his film crew and actors, as well as his family life. There are stills from his earliest films before he created the "Glass Character" who wore the round tortoise-shell frames who overcame the challenges of love, machines, heights, and bad people. Freed from the costumes of Charlie Chaplin or the Keystone Kops, Lloyd found the glasses were enough to elicit a laugh from audiences.
We visit Lloyd's sprawling Beverly Hills estate with tennis and handball courts, Olympic pool, and golf course. Lloyd was a fine athlete who could win at any of these sports, and his skills of running, climbing, falling, and balancing were an integral part his films. Dardis gives attention to Lloyd's family life, from his own father who flipped a coin to determine whether the family would move to the West Coast or New York to Lloyd's long-standing marriage to Mildred, (one of his early leading ladies), and his sixty-five - yes, that's right 65! - Great Dane dogs he bred and raised. Dardis documents Lloyd's huge salaries that reached $10,000 a week in the early 1920's, not counting his 75% of the profits from each film. He cleverly invested his money for when the day when he stopped making films, leaving his heirs a fortune in the millions when he died.
Hal Roach, Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Fatty Arbuckle, Douglas Fairbanks, and all the stars of that era make appearances or are used as a contrast for Lloyd's comedic style and film-making techniques. The early comedy era comes alive under Dardis's detailed eye and the accounts of first-hand experiences.
A few months ago Turner Classic Movies TV station ran a day of silent films starring comedian Harold Lloyd. So I recorded them and watched a bunch at my leisure over the next few days. I was slightly familiar with Lloyd's comedies (he was my father's favorite silent star for his everyman persona), and had seen his famous photo of him hanging from a clock face high above the city streets. But I didn't really know the man, his process, his film-making skills, or his reputation to others beyond my father.
Enter two outstanding biographies and cinematic reviews of Harold Lloyd: Jeffrey Vance and Suzanne Lloyd's Harold Lloyd: Master Comedian and Tom Dardis' Harold Lloyd: The Man on the Clock. While both cover the same man, his films, and the earliest days of motion pictures, they are significantly different, each one valuable for gaining perspective and insider information about this comedian.
Lloyd was a comedic film actor in the earliest days of film with brief roles in one-reelers and westerns starting around 1915. Later, he usually played a mousy, bespeckled, boyish-faced man with seemingly unobtainable goals of popularity (Speedy), financial success (A Sailor-Made Man), physical prowess (Safety Last), and always True Love (Girl Shy). In these roles he scaled the outside of tall buildings, walked a pet lion, wildly drove cars, scampered on top of trains and street cars, fought a giant, and became a human tackling dummy along with anything else he and his crew could dream up for a laugh.
The book by Vance and Lloyd (Lloyd's granddaughter), Master Comedian, is an oversized volume chock-a-block with huge, clear photos from sets, films, and Lloyd's personal life. Master Comedian carefully describes each of his films from plot to problems to profits. It is fascinating to read about the early days where everything, including "indoor" scenes was filmed outdoors using natural light (hence the attraction to sunny Southern California and Hollywood) up through the complicated logistics and expense making talking pictures.
Initially, Lloyd used no scripts, starting with just an idea or two, a setting, a few actors with a camera, and the patience to see what they could catch on film. Lloyd recounted that in the early days they started with one gag, shot it, and then figured out some sort of plot that would make the characters arrive at the scene so they could insert that gag.
Lloyd was one of the first filmmakers to preview footage on test audiences prior to distribution. Sitting in the back of theaters, he charted where the laughs were and what failed, then edited, re-shot, and added scenes until the film met his (and audiences') expectations.
Throughout Master Comedian there are lovely posed and candid shots of Lloyd, his film crew and actors, as well as his family life. There are stills from his earliest films before he created the "Glass Character" who wore the round tortoise-shell frames who overcame the challenges of love, machines, heights, and bad people. Freed from the costumes of Charlie Chaplin or the Keystone Kops, Lloyd found the glasses were enough to elicit a laugh from audiences.
I liked the glass character because it allowed you to be a human being. It allowed to to be the boy next door or anyone. - Harold LloydDardis' Man on the Clock, while covering the same man's era and films, focuses more on the details of Lloyd's personal life. Using diaries, conversations, articles, and other primary source records, Dardis offers a very close look at the decisions made by Lloyd, his drive for perfection, his early success and relative failure in the "Talkies," and his relationship with his wife, leading actresses, and other women. Readers even re-live the early publicity shot where Lloyd lit a cigarette with a fake bomb, only to have it actually explode and blow off his thumb and index fingers, narrowing missing blinding or even killing him.
We visit Lloyd's sprawling Beverly Hills estate with tennis and handball courts, Olympic pool, and golf course. Lloyd was a fine athlete who could win at any of these sports, and his skills of running, climbing, falling, and balancing were an integral part his films. Dardis gives attention to Lloyd's family life, from his own father who flipped a coin to determine whether the family would move to the West Coast or New York to Lloyd's long-standing marriage to Mildred, (one of his early leading ladies), and his sixty-five - yes, that's right 65! - Great Dane dogs he bred and raised. Dardis documents Lloyd's huge salaries that reached $10,000 a week in the early 1920's, not counting his 75% of the profits from each film. He cleverly invested his money for when the day when he stopped making films, leaving his heirs a fortune in the millions when he died.
Hal Roach, Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Fatty Arbuckle, Douglas Fairbanks, and all the stars of that era make appearances or are used as a contrast for Lloyd's comedic style and film-making techniques. The early comedy era comes alive under Dardis's detailed eye and the accounts of first-hand experiences.
They are tearing the arms off the chairs and laughing so loudly the organist can't hear himself play - Theater manager, Portland, Oregon, regarding the current Lloyd film.
Both books are solid reads, with Master Comedian a shorter, glossier look while Man on the Clock a much more in-depth account of Lloyd's life. I highly recommend both books and can't wait to get a few more Harold Lloyd films from the library and watch them with delight.
We embrace Lloyd because he is one of us. An ordinary fellow. dealing with ordinary struggles, losses, and embarrassments. Harold Lloyd with endure as long as we do.
____________________
If this book interests you, be sure to check out:
If this book interests you, be sure to check out:
Wilson, Victoria. A Life of Barbara Stanwyck: Steel True: 1907-1940.
Everything you could possibly want to know about this renowned actress, early films, and juicy background stories of movies and the men and women who made them. Highly recommended (previously reviewed here)
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