Public Domain Day - 2020

January 1st has become yet another reflection of our media-conscious society in its being heralded as Public Domain Day.  

This achieved widespread attention last year in 2019 when the creative works of 1923 passed into public domain (in the U.S. and many other countries--not all nations have uniform copyright codes). There had been a period between 1998 and 2018 when, in the U.S., the Copyright Term Extension Act kept works from entering the public domain.  With that expiration, it is expected that each year will bring a new crop of creative works -- books, music, art, and film -- into public domain.

This year, we welcome the works of 1924 into public domain.  For us classic film fans, that includes the following films:

Harold Lloyd's Girl Shy and Hot Water (which we discussed here)
Erich von Stroheim's Greed
Buster Keaton's The Navigator and Sherlock, Jr.
Raoul Walsh's The Thief of Bagdad
Herbert Brenon's Peter Pan starring Betty Bronson

To enter into public domain is a double-edged sword, as we know.  It can mean more accessibility to films and thereby increasing their popularity (perhaps the most famous example of this is the annual showing on TV of It's a Wonderful Life when it had been previously listed in public domain -- it is no longer), but it can also mean a lower likelihood to be restored and preserved if being in public domain appears to devalue it.

In an era where it seems much of our cultural heritage on film is being preserved by classic film fans and bloggers, we can be happy that a little more classic film is in our hands.

Wishing you all a very Happy New Year, and thank you again for the pleasure of your company.

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Jacqueline T. Lynch is the author of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. and Memories in Our Time - Hollywood Mirrors and Mimics the Twentieth Century. Her newspaper column on classic films, Silver Screen, Golden Memories is syndicated nationally.

National Train Day - intro

This is to announce our celebration next week of National Train Day, Saturday, May 7th.

Not an official holiday, you say? Only because I am not running the world, my friends.

Oh, there so many fun things to do on the train. You can eat at a table, with a tablecloth, with real plates and cutlery. Like a civilized person. Really.

You can mistake your berth for somebody else’s.

You can kiss somebody in the corridor.

You can watch the names of famous cities fly by in movie subtitles.

You can eat some more.

 

You can view this magnificent country in a way you just can’t by plane or on the interstate. To celebrate our movie connections with trains, we’ll have a look at “Union Pacific” (1939) on Monday, and “The Narrow Margin” (1952) on Thursday. The first film takes us to the beginning of the transcontinental railroad when the country was united, east and west. The second film takes us to the final years of the glamorous heyday of rail travel, in one of the most suspenseful cops and robbers movies you’ll ever see.

Have a look at this website for more information on National Train Day, and join us, all, aboa…rr…rr…dd.

Sidewalk Elevator - "Hot Water" - 1924

It’s been a long time since we featured that wonderful invention and movie prop, the sidewalk elevator. Not seen since this post from nearly three years ago. Three years without another sidewalk elevator?! It’s been agonizing, hasn’t it?

I’ve been searching for one (high and low, you might say), and constantly came up empty time after time. Even “Shane”, from last week’s post, surprisingly, did not feature a sidewalk elevator.

At last, our dry spell is over. Here is the reliable Harold Lloyd in “Hot Water” (1924). The proud owner of a new auto, he takes it for a spin, and as you can see in this series of captures, accidentally parks on a sidewalk elevator.

Enjoy. Now I have to go look for another one.

The Freshman - 1925

“The Freshman” (1925) sends an eager Harold Lloyd to college. Harold’s main goal is to fit in and be popular. His biggest handicap is himself and his sweet, heartbreaking desire to be liked.

We meet Harold first in his room at home, practicing college cheerleading yells and preening in his freshman beanie and sweater before a mirror. There is a movie poster for a film called “The College Hero”, the actor of which Harold idolizes. Apparently there is no freshman orientation at his school, because most of Harold’s knowledge about being a college student comes from his favorite movie and a boy’s book, “Jack Merivale at College.” The college annual has a photo of the football captain, who is the Most Popular Man on campus, and Harold wants to emulate his new hero so that he can be a hero himself.

He learns a snappy little jig from the movie he has seen, which the hero does just before he extends his hand to shake upon meeting new people. It’s hysterical, and Harold’s poor father bemoans to his mother, “They’ll either break his heart or his neck.” There is thinly veiled poignancy in this sarcasm, because both turn out to be true.

Harold is off to Tate University (not the same name used for the college in “Good News” -1947, discussed here, which was Tait.)

Harold’s utterly without guile enthusiasm for all things collegiate lead him into mishaps with the dean, making a fool of himself when he finds himself accidentally on stage for a student assembly, and nearly getting killed being the tackle dummy for football practice. Harold starts off on the wrong foot and stays there, but in his idealism for being a college man, he has no idea that everything has gone wrong. The in-crowd hazes him mercilessly without his knowing it, and makes him jump through hoops just to see if he will. Harold mistakenly believes he is the most popular man on campus.


The only genuine element of Harold’s college success lies in Peggy, played by Jobyna Ralston, a co-ed he met on the train. She is, as the title card tells us, “the kind of girl your mother must have been,” in short, true blue and sweet. Peggy is a poor but honest lass who will work her way through school at the Hotel Tate as a check room girl and maid. The scene on the train is cute, when he helps her do a crossword puzzle, the clue for one word which requires them to think of suitable endearments that will fit the number of blocks, like “sweetheart” and “darling”, and the elderly couple behind them suspect they are lovers.

Harold repeats his how-do-you-do jig every time he meets someone new, and for a repetitious gag, it really gets funnier each time we see it. At a school dance, where Harold thinks he is the admiration of all, Harold defends Peggy’s honor when a masher tries to take liberties. When Harold slugs the brute, the resentful fellow lets the cat out of the bag that nobody really likes Harold, that he has been made a fool, and everyone is laughing at him. Harold discovers this is true, and the agonized facial expression depicting his realization is moving. Lloyd was not just a fantastic physical clown and athlete, he could really act.


His pain and embarrassment are acute, and we see Peggy’s heart breaking to see it. Wordlessly (yeah, I know it’s a silent movie anyway), she holds her arms out to him, and he cries in her lap. So sweet and sad, you want to shove your arms through the TV and hold him yourself. Well, all right. Maybe it’s just me.



She encourages Harold to just be himself, not to try to be kind of the campus hero for friends who are false. How much he takes in we don’t know because he still wants to be football hero.




The climax of the film takes place at the Big Game. There is footage here used from an actual stadium packed to the gills. According to the IMDb site, the football scenes were shot at Memorial Stadium in Berkeley, California between the first and second quarters of the East-West game of 1924-25. Members of the University of Southern California football team played both teams. The entire film, incidentally, was shot in sequence, which of course was unusual.



The football game of course goes wrong for dear old Tate, and when Harold the water boy at last gets to play in the final moments, he messes up in some very funny faux pas, but his pluck and his refusal to quit actually puts him in a spot where he can save the day. He does.



Now everyone on campus, all the in-crowd, all the bullies, even the crusty old football coach are imitating Harold’s how-do-you-do jig. But all Harold can think of as they ride him out of the stadium on their shoulders is his best girl.




There’s not a lot of studying or class time at dear old Tate or Tait, however you spell it. Maybe that’s why everyone from June Allyson, Peter Lawford, and Harold Lloyd went there.



Here is an interesting clip from YouTube analyzing how the famous jig was shot by means of undercranking to make it look a little faster and a lot sillier:

More Sexy Typists

Because there is nothing more sexy than a typewriter, and nothing more exciting than watching someone type, here we have a sequel to our post last November on “A Guy, A Girl, and a Typewriter”, but this time focusing in on the gentlemen.

Above we have Troy Donahue (“if Troy Donahue can learn to type, then I can learn to type…” I believe was how the lyric in “A Chorus Line” went) as the handsome young writer/stablehand in “Susan Slade” (1961). As we can see by the movies, typing is clearly an expression of virility.


Here we have David Niven and Doris Day in “Please Don’t Eat the Daisies” (1960), while the suave and dashing Niven pauses in his typing, allowing Miss Day to openly adore him for a moment or two before he goes back to work.



William Holden in “Love is a Many-Splendored Thing” (1955). Was there ever a more virile typist? I think not.


Even the normally aloof tough guy Humphrey Bogart, seen here in “A Lonely Place” (1950), evolves into a raging sex symbol just by taping out a few lines and slapping the carriage return, as he has slapped the mugs of so many gangsters.



Harold Lloyd, whose hapless bespectacled everyman might not be considered the most macho fellow around, but put him behind a typewriter, and he’s as sexy as William Holden. No, really. Love this old typewriter in “Girl Shy” (1924).


And just because we’ve noted before that Barbara Stanwyck is the silver screen’s most prolific typist, here she captivates Warren William in “The Secret Bride” (1934), proving once again that she can hold her own with the boys.

Movies About Movies Blog-a-thon

“Movie Crazy” (1932) gives us Harold Lloyd in an interesting and effortless transition from his silent movie comedy techniques to the world of sound. Probably because he brings his sight gags with him, some of them tried and true, and some of them delightfully unexpected, but with the addition of some witty dialogue.

Lloyd is fortunate to have Constance Cummings as his leading lady, and her early departure from Hollywood after a handful of movies in the early 30’s was Hollywood’s loss. Here she gives a performance that is natural, engaging, and free from the typical affectation of the period.

Back home in Kansas, small-town, star-struck Lloyd exasperates his parents with his dreams of movie stardom, playacting a topical scene of the day about a man losing his money in the Wall Street crash, as he imagines the coffee grinder his mother is turning is really a camera. A mistake and miscommunication lands Lloyd his Hollywood contact, and he dreams of fame.

When Lloyd arrives on the Chief (of course, like all hopeful movie actors), he stumbles, literally, upon a film in progress on the station platform. An elegant Spanish lady emotes to her leading man, played by Kenneth Thomson. After bumbling through a disastrous walk-on part, our over-eager Harold gets kicked off the set. As the cast disbands, the Spanish lady tosses a stray rose to the props guy, but Harold catches it instead, thinking she has thrown the rose to him as a love offering, and he is smitten.

But his career comes first. He doggedly pursues his screen test, which is then viewed by the execs in the screening room. Harold could not be more inept, but what is engaging about his character and this film is the refusal to make Harold a pathetic object. He is as much a victim of his own flaws as this confusing and sophisticated new world of movie making. He is just as full of actor’s pompous conceit as he is charmingly unassuming while becoming buddies with Constance Cummings.

They meet in the rain, after a very funny bit about losing his shoe down a storm drain leads one thing to another. She tries to put up the convertible roof of her roadster and he unsuccessfully tries to help is a fine bit of comedy from them both. They are a perfect blend of his silent physical comedy and her witty 1930s screwball sarcasm, as she finally in desperation hollers at him, “Will you do me favor? Will you just walk away?!” And when he all but destroys her car she sarcastically retorts, “Can I go now?”

She ultimately takes pity on him, takes him into her home and allows him to change into one of her pants outfits while his clothes dry, which shows her and us that Harold is both a good sport and more comfortable about himself than most of the actors with brittle egos she has known in Hollywood. This includes the leading man with the drinking problem, played by Thomson, whom she would like to discourage. When Thomson visits, begging her to take him back, Cummings asks Harold to remain as a kind of chaperone. It’s a funny scene, as he sits in the background stone still while a scene of movie-quality angst is played before him. We are fascinated by his fascination.

Eventually, this lout Thomson becomes Harold’s rival. There is a sweet and charming moment when, in the middle of an argument, Cummings and Harold kiss and are stunned to acknowledge their attraction for each other. We also see, in a clever scene when the Spanish lady removes her wig she is actually Constance. When she discovers Harold is smitten with the Spanish lady, Constance becomes jealous and plays tricks on him to get him to choose between them.

The climax is a scene within a scene, as Harold stumbles upon a movie set with Constance and Thomson playing at being victim and villain. The camera pans back as an enormous ship’s hold becomes not a thing of grim, rugged reality but an illusion, with the set of a city skyline behind it showing that there are other films being shot all around, and none of those worlds are real, either.

Harold, at once amazed and taken in by this, is nevertheless duped into becoming emotionally involved in the scene on the ship when Thomson threatens him to stay away from Constance, and then dramatically declares he would kill Constance before he let another man have her. When Thomson takes his place on the set and Constance plays at being his prisoner on board the ship, Harold cannot help but try to save her. The movie world has become real. There is a prolonged, athletic, and inventive fight scene between Thomson and Harold, as the ship’s hold fills with water. Popeye and Bluto never duked it out so outrageously.

This is a film where were are reminded in visuals that this is a fake world, and that stardom is rare, and that there is more heartbreak in Hollywood waiting for the stranger who comes here than there is the chance of a break. This is merely a public service announcement. Instead, in true move fairy tale fashion, Harold gets the fame, gets the girl. A movie exec sees his “fight scene” and decides to give him a contract to play not heroes, but comics because that is where he is most talented.

We can only agree. And the message of heartbreak for anyone bound for Hollywood is rescinded. Dreams do come true here after all. It’s the bread and butter of the industry.

For more blogs on movies about movies, kindly have a look at Goatdog's blog-a-thon this weekend.

Safety Last (1923)

“Safety Last” (1923) is the one with Harold Lloyd hanging onto a clock, dangling from a building several stories high. You know the one.

Much has been written about Mr. Lloyd’s comic genius (including from time to time on this blog), and about his remarkable ability to still perform some stunts through the 1920s even though he had lost his right thumb and forefinger in an accident.

What is especially interesting about this film, like many of his other films of this period, is the legacy of an unintentional documentary slice of the 1920s. Mr. Lloyd and his gang are out to set up gags, thrill sequences, and climactic endings, but inadvertently document for us the era in a way later films shot primarily on studio lots, did not. There is a gloss to 1930s films, even the Warner Bros. gangster films, where illusion and façade permeate the story. The Dead End Kids are a big stagey, and even Bogart and Cagney get a bit talky at times. But in the films of Harold Lloyd where he plays his “glasses character,” there is a whole world going on in the background that no longer exists. It comes through the film in a genuine and unselfconscious sort of realism.

The story of this film has Harold, a.k.a. The Boy, leaving his sweetheart in the small town to go to the big city to Make Something of Himself. The line in the caption is “make good.” Making good used to be important in our society, and it had nothing to do with getting rich quick with fail-proof techniques learned from TV infomercials. It had nothing to do with skill through steroids, and not an ounce of bling was required or even tasteful.

“Making good” was a leftover Victorian principal, just beginning to be made fun of in the breezy 1920s, but not so much that it wasn’t still accepted as proper. It had to do with accomplishment, self-reliance, and respectability.

The film opens with a clever sight gag, where Lloyd is seen through bars, a noose hanging in the background, and a minister standing by. His girl, played by Lloyd regular and future wife, Mildred Davis, is teary-eyed. We think he is on death row, but when the camera shows us he is leaving the train station and the bars are just gates, the noose is a mail catch device for the train, and the minister, and his girl are just seeing him off on his adventure, we know we are in for a ride. Already we have been fooled.

As he is about to board his train, he mistakes a baby carrier for his luggage, and nearly walks off with an infant. Notably, the baby and mother are African-American, but this is not a racial joke. The two could be played by white actors, so it is heartening to see someone get a day’s pay for film work who might otherwise not have a lot of opportunity for that. Also, the mother is dressed for travel, with a suit typical to the period and an enormous hat, looking every bit the middle class lady. It’s unfortunate that later in the film we are shown a Jewish jeweler in an unflattering stereotype.

What is most fascinating about the film are the scenes shot in the big city department store where Lloyd has found a job. He rooms with a pal, and the two have a clever gag where, hiding from the landlady, they crawl into their overcoats and hang themselves by pegs on the wall. Some of the funniest gags are the most simple.

He has a meager job as a sales clerk, but boasts to his girlfriend that he is a big success, and that his position at the store “grows in respectability every day.” We see again that respectability is a very important component in making good.

His supervisor is a self-important floorwalker with a pince-nez and a morning suit. Lloyd is nearly pummeled by a flock of women shopping for the bolts of cloth at his counter. We see that many of them, women looking to be about in their 40s and 50s, actually have their hair bobbed. This was not just a fad for the young flappers. They are not dressed as flappers, obviously, but though the post-World War I world is not the one in which they grew up, and they mean to adapt. There are women clerks in the store, too.

Saturday is a half-day, and this means payday. We see that these were still the days when one’s pay envelope contained cash, not a company check. Harold is paid $15 for the week. Incidentally, there was no withholding for taxes at this time, and Social Security had not yet been created. Harold spends his hard-earned cash for a lavaliere and chain for his girlfriend, to create the illusion for her that he is “making good.”

But the climb up the corporate ladder is not easy for The Boy. In one scene, Harold is reprimanded by his supervisor for having taken off his suit coat while working behind the notions counter. He is called before the general manager for working in public in his shirt sleeves. In front of respectable ladies. No dress-down Fridays in Harold’s world.

Unexpectedly, his sweetie comes to the big city to visit him, and there is a sequence of scenes in the store where Harold must try to continue to fake his importance, bossing around his co-workers and taking over the general manager’s office, without being caught.

The thrills really come when, in an attempt to win $1,000 from his employer by creating a publicity stunt to bring business to the department store, he ends up climbing the building. His pal is supposed to be the one performing the stunt, but being chased by a cop throughout the rest of the film prevents him from taking over for Harold, who tries the climb himself. A rather literal way to climb the corporate ladder.

The building is 12 floors, and was filmed at the Brockman Building on 7th Street in downtown Los Angeles. This climb is part amazing stunt work, and part amazing trick photography. The way the camera angles move from the first-floor viewpoint, to the upper floors, to finally the top of the building is dizzying and must have created quite a thrilling spectacle for the audiences who saw it in 1923, because it’s still terrific today.

Crowds gather below, and a number of obstacles nearly topple Harold’s nerve-wracking climb, including pigeons, a mouse, office workers hanging out the windows, and a clock face that might not hold his weight.

We see actual traffic below, actual advertisements on the other buildings, and an array of casual observers, important despite their anonymity, to create a visual documentary of the mores, the attitudes, the humor, and the pace of the times in the early 1920s. Tellingly, Lloyd’s having made good has nothing to do with doing well at his job, but because of a get-rich-quick publicity stunt. Lloyd was not just a man of his time, but a man before his time.

Number, Please? (1920)

Harold Lloyd’s “Number, Please?” (1920) is one of those films where what is in the background and not the focus of attention is just as fascinating as the action occurring in the foreground.

This is in part because of Harold Lloyd’s typical “modern” feel to his films. His characters, the costumes, the slang, all are pitched firmly in the 1920s. There are no timeless allegories for Mr. Lloyd as what might be presented in a Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton film. Lloyd is all Jazz Age and because of this, we are treated to a view of that era that is genuine and natural. It is one thing to see a film made today of that era, or a documentary, but it is quite another experience to witness a time period so completely unselfconsciously presented.

This short has a simple plot. Lloyd, and his rival, Roy, played by Roy Brooks, must be the first to ask permission of the mother of The Girl, played by Lloyd regular and future wife, Mildred Davis, for The Girl to go on a hot air balloon ride. The first one who gets permission from Mother, gets the girl.

What makes the film interesting is not so much the set up of gags (though one running sequence of Lloyd coming into possession of a stolen women’s purse and being unable, despite repeated attempts, to get rid of it, is very clever), but rather the set and the times. The action takes place at Ocean Park in Venice. It opens with Harold, dejected at being left by his girl, moping as he rides the old wooden Blarney roller coaster. We see the park amusements in the background of his adventures, the advertising signs and the attractions. They are quite eye catching, and it is a delightful game to look for detail.

Several amusement piers had been constructed in the early part of the 20th century around Venice, and the Pickering Pier, where most of the action in this film seems to take place, was built in 1913, and bought by Mr. Pickering in 1919. It was renovated and had a grand re-opening in June of 1920. This film was released in December 1920, so we are seeing a new and extremely popular venue for tourists and day-trippers in that period, practically while the paint was still drying.

Some of the gags in the film include Mr. Lloyd’s getting smacked in the face by a toupee on the roller coaster, which has flown off the head of the fellow in front of him. When Lloyd is given charge of The Girl’s dog, “General Pershing” (this is 1920, after all, and we were still flush off the ebullient conclusion of World War I), he ties the poor dog to a carousel. Of course, the carousel starts to turn, and the dog endures what no film crew would dare do to a dog today. However, after being dragged around and around by his leash, the dog eventually hops onto the carousel and is saved by his own ingenuity from being strangled.

The title comes from Harold’s deciding to beat Roy’s time by reaching The Girl’s mother through that newfangled contraption, the telephone, instead of running over to her house, as Roy does. The public phone booths are extremely busy and he must endure several frustrating failed attempts to reach one. These are the days before self-service dialing, and he must tell the operator the number to connect.

Phone calls no longer cost a nickel and cell phones make phone booths obsolete, but when it comes to customer service, nothing has changed since 1920. The operators gossip and pay no attention to their customers, and when they finally address poor Mr. Lloyd’s needs, they are curt, and they give him several wrong numbers.

We see signs for Lucky Strike cigarettes in the background, for the Pickering Pier, for Ocean Park (which would be demolished in 1975 after a fire in 1974), for the Denver Hotel. Sammy Brooks, a young African-American actor who played several roles for Lloyd in the 1920s, has a funny gag when Lloyd, trying to hide from the police, puts the child on his shoulders and puts his own coat and hat on him. Harold walks away from the cops, looking like a very tall black man with very long legs, very short arms, and a hat too big for him. In a way, it copies the very funny sequence shown earlier where Harold is looking at himself in the funhouse mirrors and we are shown several out-of-proportion images of him.

Eventually, Sammy gets knocked off by an awning, and Harold must keep running.

For more on the history of Ocean Park amusement piers, have a look at this fun website.

Slapstick to Screwball

Silent film director D. W. Griffith enthusiastically announced of this new art form, “We’ve gone beyond Babel, beyond words. We’ve found a Universal language.”

Some ten years later, Buster Keaton took a pratfall as his car was demolished by an oncoming train.

Griffith is quoted in the autobiography of one of his most famous stars, Lillian Gish, who affirms that he believed “we were taking the first tiny steps in a new glorious medium that had been predicted in The Bible and called the Universal Language. That when it could be brought to its full power, it would bring about the millennium.”

And so it came to pass that Harold Lloyd hid from bullies by crawling up inside laundry hanging from a clothesline.

Charlie Chaplin cooked and ate a boot.

And anybody in the scene took a pie in the face.

The glorious medium that Mr. Griffith had believed was predicted in the Bible and would bring about the millennium reflected almost obsessively on the common lives of common people, but with a little bit of exaggeration. Mr. Griffith specialized in drama, not comedies, and so perhaps his view of the purpose of film was a bit more serious than Mack Sennett’s. Griffith’s hope that silent films would bring about the brotherhood of man fell short of ending warfare for all time. But he was right about the universality of silent film. He was also right about predicting the success of Mack Sennett. Sennett was his protégée.

The universality of silent films was lost when sound pictures came on the scene. Even dubbing into different languages does not have the same effect of universality of meaning. Not everything translates well. Even the titles of films are changed to mean something different.

But pantomime goes beyond mere words, and in comedy films, mere pantomime found embellishment in slapstick. Slapstick evolved into the purest form of film comedy, a gag requiring only a little setup, or sometimes none at all. Afterward, nothing needed to be explained.

There had been physical comedy since the Renaissance, and some early 20th century vaudevillian stage slapstick launched the careers of some famous film comedians, but the slapstick was not so intricate, so carefully plotted, and so technically sophisticated as it became on film. With special effects, physical comedy reached its zenith on film. One could not be witty or acerbic in a silent film. Comedy could be represented successfully only in its broadest terms, and so the Keystone Kops formed a bumbling brigade that raced through the city streets, tumbling off the running boards of the “paddy wagon.”

In yet another ten years, Laurel and Hardy were taking a piano up a flight up stairs, dropping it and being run over by it as they ushered slapstick into sound film. However, sound allowed slapstick to meld into screwball. The dinosaur skeleton model may have tumbled into a heap in “Bringing Up Baby,” (1938) but the film is as much noted for its banter between Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant as for the tear in the back of her dress at the party.

Carole Lombard’s comic prattle in “My Man Godfrey” (1935) begins to overshadow her talents at physical comedy, and all the pratfalls taken in “Sullivan’s Travels” (1941) take a back seat to Preston Sturges’ witty script. Witty could be just as silly as slipping on a banana peel, but it required more understanding. Never again would comedy be so simple, and so universally understood.

If Mr. Griffith was right about silent films being the Universal Language, then pantomime was its grammar. Slapstick was its exclamation point.

This entry is also part of the Film of the Year Slapstick Blog-A-Thon. Please visit this site and the other blogs taking part for more on slapstick comedy.

Haunted Spooks (1920)

“Haunted Spooks” is a two-reeler where Harold Lloyd, dumped by his wealthy girlfriend for another man, marries a complete stranger instead and spends the wedding night in a haunted house. As with most silent comedies, the plot is thin but never-ending, at least until the film runs out.

Harold Lloyd has a remarkable modern quality to him, as noted before (see June 21st and June 27th entries), perhaps it is as much to do with his simple costume of a regular suit and nerdy glasses, and his manner of occasionally looking directly into the camera, as if to gauge our reaction to what he is doing. When Chaplin or Keaton look in the direction of the camera, it is to gaze beyond it, as if it is not there. Lloyd knows we are there every step with him, and he seems to want to know what we think.

The action takes place in the South, as the caption tells us, “Go down the Mississippi River several miles and turn to the right.” The 1920s college boy wit continues with the explanation that “A southern gentleman has died for the first time,” and his heir, The Girl, must live with her husband in the family mansion for a year, or the whole inheritance will fall to The Uncle.

However, The Girl, played by Mildred Davis, is not married. She tells the lawyer, “But I have no husband -- nothing but a Ford and a phonograph.” With such dialogue, we get the feeling the roaring, carefree 1920s has begun with this film.

Her ambitious lawyer tells her he will round up a husband, and finds Lloyd failing at a series of unsuccessful suicide attempts after losing out his best girl to another. He does not look terribly despondent, however, just frustrated that nothing works, not jumping off a bridge into ankle-deep water, nor standing in front of an oncoming trolley which switches tracks right before it hits him, nor throwing himself, backside first, into the oncoming car driven by the lawyer. This is quite a funny sequence with the lawyer’s car moving backward and forward and side to side, desperately trying to miss Lloyd, who perseveres and stubbornly sticks his bum out in front of the bumper wherever he can find it.

Lloyd agrees to marry The Girl in a hasty ceremony, after which a comic automobile ride in the Girl’s previously mentioned Ford out to the mansion gives us a sensation of being in a fast-moving Ford ourselves, as we trail the happy couple behind a road hog.

Meanwhile, at the mansion the Uncle, wanting to plant a trap and warn off the couple so he can inherit the mansion himself, tells tales of ghosts haunting the mansion on this night of nights to the assembled servants. All played by African-American actors and not white actors in blackface as was common before the 1920s, the staff are so upset by the ghost stories that they practically trample the happy couple on arrival in their haste to get away. Remaining is the dignified but anxious butler, who explains to Lloyd about the ghosts and the staff problem, and a young boy, played by Ernest Morrison. Young Morrison appeared in many silent films as a child and is probably the first black child star. Very popular, he worked for Hal Roach, and later appeared as one of the Dead End Kids in his teens.

Here, he is comic relief, when his unfortunate hiding place from the ghosts, a flour bin, covers him all in white powder and makes him appear ghost-like. He spends much of the film freaking out, and unavoidably freaking out others. This is the film of the famous shot of Lloyd with his hair standing on end in fright, as if from static electricity.

The mansion itself is an interesting set, very heavily ornamented, richly furnished, decorated with different wallpapers and wainscoting as to appear quite realistic and not like a slapped-together set.

Eventually the butler discovers the Uncle’s ruse and ghostly tricks, and he muscles him out. The other servants return, and Lloyd and The Girl proceed with their wedding night. As they enter their room, night clothes over their arms, she coyly asks him, “Say, what’s our name?”

Before all this chaos, there had not been time for a proper introduction.

Sponsored Link:
Harold Lloyd Movies

Now Playing - Spring 1920

The above newspaper ad was published in the spring of 1920, and tells us as much about the state of the film industry at that time as about the films.

First, it seems that a silent film does not always speak for itself. The ad for "Eyes of Youth" is loaded with more verbiage than "War and Peace." We are informed that the star, Clara Kimball Young (who did not really remain a star for much longer after this film was produced), is "The Screen's Most Vital Personality." Not gorgeous or breathtaking, but "vital." We are also informed that the film is "lavishly staged, magnificently scened, gorgeously gowned and with a remarkable supporting cast." Any movie that is "magnificiently scened" gets my 25 cents, especially worth the price since it is "Enacted in Nine Wonderful Reels."

We are further told that the movie is "The Most Remarkable Dramatic Film Ever Published and was Made at a Cost Exceeding $250,000." That probably wouldn't even cover the trailer today.

We see also that a Harold Lloyd short, "Haunted Spooks," runs with the feature, as well as a Pathe newsreel. You get a lot of bang for your 25 cents. The Lloyd short is guaranteed to make you "Laugh 'Till Your Ears Ring."

Though I generally dislike the sensation of my ears ringing, for those that do, 25 cents is a bargain.

We are still in an age of superlatives when it comes to film hype, but "most remarkable dramatic film," "vital" and "magnificently scened" have not been heard in years. Even "wonderful" isn't used any more when advertising a film. There may be a reason.

An Eastern Westerner (1920)

Harold Lloyd in “An Eastern Westerner” (1920) plays a rich milquetoast (do the younger folk of today even know that word?) who is sent by his father, after carousing all night in a dance hall where “Shimmie Dancing Prohibited” to an uncle’s ranch Out West as a punishment.

The plot is thin, the gags are constant, and hapless Harold Lloyd finds himself saving a damsel in distress and her father from the town bully. Like silent screen clown counterparts Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, Lloyd does this through pluck, conscience, acrobatics, ingenuity, and a lot of dumb luck.

Unlike Chaplin and Keaton, Mr. Lloyd has a strange kind of modernity to him. Where Chaplin played the classic Little Tramp, a fellow who could have stepped out of the pages of Dickens to visit the 1920s, and Keaton, who played a wider range of roles in different historical time periods nevertheless still carried turn-of-the-20th century American Everyman about him, Lloyd was different. Harold Lloyd rode on the crest of the wave of public interest that had to do with the frivolous young college set, and he looked hopelessly collegiate.

Perhaps it is his round glasses which makes him seem like a modern day nerd, without any other affectation to his screen character (Chaplin’s costume or Keaton’s flat hat). Lloyd would make a credible computer geek today.

His antics to save The Girl, played by Mildred Davis, and her sausage curls from Tiger Lip Tompkins (Noah Young), the bully and his rather KKK-styled hooded gang called “The Masked Angels,” who we are told are “men who have broken eight commandments and twisted the other two,” Lloyd’s fighting is never direct but a kind of guerrilla tactic involving all the props one can find in an alley. There is an especially neat stunt when he hides in a wooden barrel, which is set to rolling and quickly smashes against a porch with the staves coming apart and the Lloyd entangled in the hoops.

Another fun scene is when Lloyd sits in at a game of cards and a tough hombre rolls his own cigarette with one hand while concentrating on his hand of cards. Lloyd tries to imitate him and comes out with a handful of factory-perfect cigarettes at once. Luck is occasionally with him.

In the silent screen days, at least with the comedies, the gags were the foundation of the plot, which was loosely constructed around the gags. It is as if a modern-day stage magician started to form a story around the tricks he performs for us on stage. The tricks are the purpose of the act; the story is just to string us along until the next trick.

The wild and wooly western town is actually quite realistic-looking, with its uneven streets and alleys and run-down structures. It looks more realistic than the neatly laid out and painted western towns of the B-westerns of a couple of decades later. Perhaps because 1920, when the film was made, was a bit closer to the wild west days than the late 1940s.

The film closes after one more stunt with a train, the damsel saved, and Mr. Lloyd takes a pencil and draws a circle around her ring finger, indicating they are to wed. It is the kind of thing Chaplin would do because the Little Tramp never had any money, but wealthy young college boy Lloyd should have been able to wire home for the dough to purchase a diamond. At the very least, such a gesture illustrates how much the film contemporaries borrowed from each other.

This film is also noted for being shot just after Mr. Lloyd lost part of his right hand in a stunt on a previous film, though his flesh-colored prosthetic glove and his superb athletic ability never reveals to the audience that he is now with a handicap. Like the character he played, he always found a way around a problem and never gave up.

That's all for this week. See you Monday.

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