Harold Lloyd

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Harold Lloyd (1922)

Harold Clayton Lloyd (born April 20, 1893 in Burchard , Nebraska , † March 8, 1971 in Beverly Hills , California ) was an American actor , comedian and film producer who was also involved in gags and directing his films. Between 1913 and 1947 he starred in around 200 films, where he reached his artistic and commercial peak in the 1920s.

In addition to Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton , Lloyd is one of the three great comedians of the silent film . The film character that made him famous was his Glasses Character - a young man with glasses who is looking for success and happiness. The hallmarks of his films were extensive chase scenes and acrobatic masterpieces, especially climbing skyscrapers at dizzying heights. The image of Skyscrapers of all things became legendary ! how it hangs on the hand of the clock of a high-rise building, the streets far below. Lloyd, who performed many of his stunts himself, was a founding member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences . In 1953 he received the honorary Oscar for his life's work.

Life

Harold Lloyd's birthplace in Burchard

Harold Lloyd was born to James Darsie Lloyd (1864-1947) and Elizabeth Fraser Lloyd (1868-1941) in the small village Burchard ( Nebraska born). He had a brother, Gaylord Lloyd (1888-1943), who later appeared in several of his films, most notably as Harold's doppelganger in His Royal Slyness . In 1921, Gaylord was the leading actor in a handful of one-act comedies.

The young Harold went to school in Denver and San Diego and also received lessons at the School of Dramatic Art , San Diego. His family moved frequently in search of work. Initially, Lloyd often did auxiliary work for traveling theater troupes to make money. At the age of twelve he appeared on stage for the first time as Little Abe in Tess von den d'Urbervilles himself.

Silent film (1913-1928)

"The Best One Reel Comedies Made": Advertisement in Moving Picture World from June 1919, right Bebe Daniels

Lloyd began his real career in 1913 as an extra for the Edison film company and a little later at Universal Studios , where he met Hal Roach . In 1914 he co-founded the company Rolin , which specializes in short comedies , for which he brought Lloyd on board. Directed by Roach, the budding comedian appeared in several short films about the character Willie Work (pun: "Will he work?"), Which were not successful and only one of which, Just Nuts , is considered to have been preserved. Due to disagreements over pay, Lloyd soon switched to Mack Sennetts Keystone , while Roach, unable to find an adequate replacement for Lloyd, hired himself out for a period as a director for the Essanay .

At Keystone, Lloyd was mostly cast in extra roles, such as B. in Love, Loot and Crash as a dealer whose fruit cart is constantly being thrown overboard. He had a little more to do than one of Miss Fatty's Seaside Lovers , when he was allowed to ensnare Fatty Arbuckle, who works in women's clothes . Probably his biggest part in Keystone was in the short film Court House Crooks as an unjustifiably suspected young man, a role he played in a completely serious manner, without a hint of humor.

When the Pathé company could be won over for distribution, Lloyd and Roach got together again in mid-1915 as the Rolin Phunphilm Company . A series of silent film comedies, which centered on the Charlie Chaplin- oriented character Lonesome Luke , brought Lloyd his first successes. Most of these one-act plays produced as an assembly line - a few two-act plays with the figure are also known - are now considered lost, the best known of the surviving ones being Luke's Movie Muddle .

With the Luke short film Giving Them Fits , Bebe Daniels and Snub Pollard joined Lloyd at the end of 1915, and they would remain the comedian's most important partners until the end of the decade. Daniels was the girl to be conquered in the films, while Pollard was usually the opponent. The beefy Bud Jamison (from 1916 to 1919), the stunted Sammy Brooks (from 1916 to 1924) and, above all, Noah Young (from 1918 to 1934), who was usually occupied as a stupid muscled man, were other frequent Lloyd comrades-in-arms .

After a number of short films, Luke was given up at the end of 1917 and Lloyd instead developed the screen figure with which he became famous: He left off the make-up and put on circular horn-rimmed glasses , a straw hat and the conventional suit of a young employee (as a headgear could alternatively a flat cap or, more rarely, a top hat can also be used). In terms of character, the new character introduced in the short film Over the Fence (1917) initially hardly differed from its predecessor: Lloyd continued to play an unpolished daredevil and only allowed the romantic gentleman of later years to shine through sporadically. For example, a film such as B. Why Pick on Me? (1918) already on the speed, ingenuity and gag density of later works, but suffered as it were from a hero who, with his rowdy demeanor, did not encourage identification.

The comedian's sluggish advancement ultimately prompted his partner and lover, Bebe Daniels, to part with him after countless short films and instead to appear in Cecil B. DeMille's salon comedies. She was replaced in 1919 by Mildred Davis , who appeared in a total of fifteen films, starting with From Hand to Mouth , before she gave up her film career after her marriage to Lloyd in 1923 at his request. Her successor in a total of six feature films (from Why Worry? To The Kid Brother ) was Jobyna Ralston , who, according to some sources, was Harold's "love interest" for a while in real life.

Shortly after Bebe Daniels, Snub Pollard said goodbye to Roach's own short film series, after Lloyd had to pause for an indefinite period due to a serious accident: During the filming of Haunted Spooks on August 23, 1919, an accidentally hot bomb exploded during an advertising shoot . Lloyd lost two fingers on his right hand and temporarily lost his eyesight. After four and a half months, the shooting could continue, the crippled hand was from then on covered in all films by special gloves, which the cinema audience never noticed.

At the end of 1919, since Bumping Into Broadway , the length of Lloyd's films had doubled in two roles (approx. 20-25 minutes), which was accompanied by a noticeable increase in quality and Lloyd's ultimate breakthrough as a comedian of standing. The film A Sailor-Made Man (1921), originally planned as a two-act film, grew to a duration of around 45 minutes during the shooting and is often rated as his first feature-length film. Lloyd himself only admitted this name to his next work, Grandma's Boy (1922). This film helped the breakthrough role type with which Lloyd is identified today (although he was not committed to it): an average man underestimated by his fellow citizens who has to endure some humiliation before he shows it to everyone with shrewdness, physical agility and an unshakable will to rise.

Harold Lloyd and his wife and film partner Mildred Davis (1925)

With Safety Last , Lloyd's most famous film came into the cinemas in 1923, which perfectly integrated his typical high-rise climbing, which also symbolizes the rise of the film character, into the plot. The famous scene in which the comedian hangs on the hand of a clock also comes from this film. Another major work is The Freshman (1925, later main part of the compilation film Harold Lloyd's Funny Side of Life ), in which Lloyd plays a ridiculed student who eventually becomes the football star of the college team. The Kid Brother (1927) with Lloyd as a supposed sissy in the Wild West, who is viewed by many critics and fans as the comedian's real masterpiece, is wrongly less known to the general public . The chase from the love comedy Girl Shy (1924), which is one of the most spectacular in film history, is also worth mentioning . A total of ten (or eleven, depending on your point of view) silent feature films were made, which established Harold Lloyd's current fame as one of the "Big Three" of silent film comedy.

Sound film (1929–1951)

From 1929 Lloyd began making sound films. In contrast to many of his colleagues, the transition to the new medium did not cause him any problems at first. His first sound film Welcome Danger , of which there is also a silent version with partly alternative material, was a complete success, at least in commercial terms, despite its length. In the following year, the attempt to artistically tie in with Safety Last failed with Feet First : the tone brought a too realistic note into the game, so that the thrill ultimately superimposed the comedy. Still, this work, along with its latest box office hit Movie Crazy and The Milky Way, is today recognized as Lloyd's best sound film.

In the course of the 1930s, Lloyd's popularity fell sharply, as the audience during the Depression could no longer identify with his role-type circling around itself. After the commercial failure of his sixth sound film Professor Beware , he gave up acting for the time being in 1938 and then tried his hand at producing the comedies A Girl, a Guy, and a Gob (1941) and My Favorite Spy (1942). In 1944/45 he hosted the NBC radio show The Old Gold Comedy Theater .

In 1947, comedy director and writer Preston Sturges was able to persuade him again to undertake a very promising film project: The screwball comedy The Sin of Harold Diddlebock continued the end of The Freshman and was intended as the culmination of Lloyd's career. During the filming, however, there were constant differences of opinion between Lloyd and Sturges, two masters of their trade with each distinctive personality, so that in the end neither of the two was satisfied with the end product. At the box office, the film ultimately proved to be a bitter flop, as did a version streamlined by producer Howard Hughes and provided with alternative material, which was released in 1950 under the title Mad Wednesday . The inconsistency of this historically interesting film is still reflected today in its very different reception.

Late life and private matters

Mildred Davis

In the 1950s, the still very wealthy Lloyd finally withdrew into private life. Since February 1923 he was married to his long-time film partner Mildred Davis (1901-1969), with whom he had three children: Gloria (1924-2012) and Harold (1931-1971), who only survived his father by three months and who attended the Side of his parents was buried. They also adopted Marjorie (1925–1986) in 1930. Gloria's daughter Susan later headed Harold Lloyd Entertainment, which looks after Lloyd's estate.

In 1925 Lloyd was admitted to the Freemasons ' League ; his lodge , the Alexander Hamilton Lodge No. 535 , is in Hollywood . He also held the office of President of the Shriners from 1963 . Lloyd was also committed to the Republican Party . His hobbies included nude and 3D photography . The comedian also experimented privately with color films; the first two were filmed on Green Acres , its vast property in Beverly Hills , but never came to light.

In 1960 he served as the jury president of the Berlinale 1960 . Towards the end of his life, Lloyd, whose autobiography was published in 1928, produced two more documentaries , including scenes from his old comedies: Harold Lloyd's World of Comedy (1962) and Harold Lloyd's Funny Side of Life (1963). These compilation films aroused renewed interest in the comedian's work, but for legal reasons it was not possible until 1974 - after Lloyd's death - to re-screen his films in their integral version. The Time Life group had acquired the rights and again exploited the films in the cinema and on television. For a long time, Lloyd had refused to sell his films to television or cinemas without any further conditions, because he feared that his films would be destroyed, for example through commercials or cuts. For a long time, his films were therefore not very accessible.

Harold Lloyd died of prostate cancer on March 8, 1971, at the age of 77 . He is buried in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park cemetery in Glendale , California .

Rating and style

Along with Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton , Lloyd is considered one of the three great silent film comedians. In the ranking he usually only takes third place and is less known today than Chaplin and probably also Keaton, although in the 1920s he was the most financially successful of the three with his comedies: his films played three to five times as much like the Keaton works published at the same time, while Chaplin was the even bigger box-office magnet, but had radically reduced his film output after 1923.

In contrast to his two colleagues, Lloyd did not come from any artist family. He also had no roots in vaudeville , which is why he saw himself not primarily as a comedian, but more as an actor. Unlike the “innate comedians” Chaplin and Keaton, Lloyd had to work hard to be weird at all. His producer and friend Hal Roach later called him the "best actor possible to play a comedian". It was only in a long process that Lloyd moved from a simple Chaplin impersonator to a star comedian with his own glasses character . In contrast to Chaplin and Keaton with their eccentric outsider figures of the tramp and the “Stoneface”, Lloyd played more of an “average guy”. Often his Glasses character is helpless and fearful at the beginning of a film, but develops courage in the course of the action and finally finds happiness, success and a wife. Orson Welles found that Lloyd was underrated precisely because of his all-American-boy figure. According to Ed Park, although there is not so much obviously poetic about his character as there is in Chaplin or Keaton, perhaps the poetry of Lloyd is just more subtle.

Lloyd's enormous popularity in the 1920s can probably also be explained by his “belief in the success of the capable”, which fitted into that decade. The Lexicon of International Films analyzed that it was precisely because of this that later, more skeptical generations had more difficult access to Lloyd: “Where the gag had to be a means to a socially critical end, the Lloyd's gag was still irresistible as a means of laughter, but it was allowed because of its lack in protest posture did not receive the higher orders. So the wave of the slapstick renaissance rolled over one of the masters of the genre (...) “In Germany there was a certain, deserved rediscovery through television in the 1980s. Film critic Kevin B. Lee argued that Lloyd is more relevant today than Chaplin or Keaton because while these two comedians had staged their own world, Lloyd's more realistic film character would live dangerously in ours. Although the Glasses character comes from the 1920s, his actions testified to the horror and helplessness of social mobility .

In most of his films from the 1920s onwards, Lloyd, although he never allowed himself to be named as a director or author in the opening credits, was also influential in many areas behind the camera. Even if he hardly has the influence of Keaton or Chaplin in film history, innovations and influence on film history can also be seen in him: In Grandma's Boy (1922) he was one of the first comedians (after Chaplin's The Kid ) to break with the then usual comedy conventions and added a melodramatic plot to the comedy. Works like Girl Shy and Safety Last! solidified the foundations of already existing genres such as action or romantic comedy. For The Kid Brother and Safety Last , he also used new types of camera perspectives .

As Lloyd's trademark, which also set him apart from other comedians, was the climbing on skyscrapers, which he practiced in a total of six films between 1919 and 1947. Although the most famous of these, Safety Last! , was actually a comedy, some cinema owners employed nurses at the show to take care of shocked viewers during the climbing scenes in an emergency. For this type of film, which Lloyd did not justify (see e.g. the short film Dunces and Dangers by Larry Semon ), but led to perfection, the term thrill comedy was created.

About the life and work of Harold Lloyd, his importance for comedy and in particular the slapstick genre as well as his relationship to the other great comedians of his time, the German author and director Andreas Baum on behalf of ZDF / ARTE published an international TV Documentation with the title "Harold Lloyd: Hollywood's Timeless Comedy Genius" (English title: "Harold Lloyd: Hollywood's Timeless Comedy Genius") produced. The film presents numerous film clips and a. many previously unpublished photos, documents and interviews, e.g. B. with family members, friends and other comedians as well as numerous rare private recordings of the star and has been available on DVD since 2017 in a longer “Director's Cut” with additional bonus material.

Honors

Star on the Walk of Fame
  • In 1951, Lloyd was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Actor for Mad Wednesday .
  • In 1953 Lloyd received the honorary Oscar for "outstanding comedian and good citizen" ( Master comedian and good citizen ). The addition good citizen alluded to Charlie Chaplin, who was no longer acceptable because of his alleged closeness to communism in that McCarthy era and who was refused re-entry into the USA.
  • In 1960, Lloyd received a star on the Walk of Fame (near 6840 Hollywood Blvd. and 1501 Vine Street) in Hollywood .
  • In 1994 the United States Postal Service issued a 29-cent postage stamp in honor of the comedian (designed by Al Hirschfeld ).

Filmography

Early works (selection)

  • 1914: The Patchwork Girl of Oz
  • 1915: Just Nuts
  • 1915: Love, Loot and Crash
  • 1915: Miss Fatty's Seaside Lovers
  • 1915: Court House Crooks
  • 1915: Giving Them Fits
  • 1916: Luke's Movie Muddle

"Glasses" short films (selection)

One-act (approx. 10-15 min.):

  • 1917: Over the Fence
  • 1917: Bliss
  • 1917: All Aboard
  • 1917: Move On
  • 1918: Hey There!
  • 1918: Are Crooks Dishonest?
  • 1918: Why Pick on Me?
  • 1918: Take a Chance
  • 1919: Going! Going! Gone!
  • 1919: Ask Father
  • 1919: Look Out Below
  • 1919: Spring Fever
  • 1919: Billy Blazes, Esq.
  • 1919: Just Neighbors
  • 1919: A Jazzed Honeymoon
  • 1919: Count Your Change
  • 1919: Pay Your Dues

Two and three acts (approx. 20-40 min.) (Complete):

  • 1919: Bumping Into Broadway
  • 1919: Captain Kidd's Kids
  • 1919: From Hand to Mouth
  • 1920: The False Prince (His Royal Slyness)
  • 1920: Haunted Spooks
  • 1920: To Eastern Westerner
  • 1920: Höhenrausch (High and Dizzy)
  • 1920: Get Out and Get Under
  • 1920: The number, please? (Number, Please?)
  • 1921: Now or Never
  • 1921: High Society (Among Those Present)
  • 1921: Father Joy (I Do)
  • 1921: Just Don't Weaken (Never Weaken)

Feature films

Sound films

Compilation films

  • 1962: Harold Lloyd's World of Comedy (also producer)
  • 1963: The Funny Side of Life (also producer)

literature

  • Adam Reilly: Harold Lloyd. His films - his life (= Heyne books 32, Heyne film and television library. Vol. 17). Heyne, Munich 1980, ISBN 3-453-86017-9 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Elizabeth Fraser Lloyd in the Find a Grave database . Retrieved September 13, 2017 (English).
  2. ^ A b Gloria Lloyd, daughter of Harold Lloyd, dies , Variety , February 11, 2012.
  3. ↑ Harold Lloyd Jr. in the Find a Grave database . Retrieved September 13, 2017 (English).
  4. ^ Famous Freemasons Harold C. Lloyd , Homepage: Grand Lodge of British Columbia and Yukon (Retrieved April 25, 2012).
  5. ↑ http://www.highbrowmagazine.com/4286-remembering-harold-lloyd-third-genius-silent-comedy
  6. ↑ knerger.de: The grave of Harold Lloyd .
  7. ↑ Article on Harold Lloyd
  8. ^ Benjamin Wright: Remembering Harold Lloyd: The Third Genius of Silent Comedy
  9. ↑ Harold Lloyd at two thousand and one
  10. ↑ Kevin B. Lee: Timeless Obsession: Why Harold Lloyd is More Relevant than Keaton or Chaplin
  11. ^ Benjamin Wright: Remembering Harold Lloyd: The Third Genius of Silent Comedy
  12. ↑ Article about Harold Lloyd at PBS
  13. ^ Google Books, book on Bill Strother
  14. ^ Benjamin Wright: Remembering Harold Lloyd: The Third Genius of Silent Comedy
  15. ↑ Harold Lloyd: Hollywood's Timeless Comedy Genius. Retrieved November 29, 2018 .
  16. ^ Wes D. Gehring: Chaplin's War Trilogy: An Evolving Lens in Three Dark Comedies, 1918-1947

Web links

Commons : Harold Lloyd  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Lloyd, Harold
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Lloyd, Harold Clayton (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION US-American actor
DATE OF BIRTH April 20, 1893
PLACE OF BIRTH Burchard , Nebraska , United States
DATE OF DEATH March 8, 1971
Place of death Beverly Hills , California , United States