Speedy

TCM's Essentials, Jr. movie for tonight is a very good choice: Harold Lloyd's Speedy, at 8:00 PM ET. I'm surprised to see that I haven't blogged about it before.

Lloyd plays Speedy, the protagnist, a good-hearted man who unfortunately has a love of baseball that constantly interferes with his job, and as a result of spending too much time trying to get baseball scores, he gets fired from a series of jobs. It's doubly unfortunate since he's got a girlfriend, Jane Dillon (played by Ann Christy) whom he loves, but whom he can't really support, which is a point of friction between him and the girl's Pop. Pop, you see, has a real job driving the last of New York's horse-drawn trolleys, and has a contract that he can keep the trolley as long as he likes on the proviso that he runs the route at least once every 24 hours.

This provieds an opportunity for Speedy to make good when Pop falls ill. Why not run the route himself? Well, it's not that simple: at night the trolley-car is being used for illicit poker games, and there's an electric trolley-car company that wants to drive Pop out of business and will stop at nothing to make sure the horse-drawn trolley doesn't run. Speedy, however, could just save the day with his usual intelligent slapstick comedy, and get the girl....

There's really nothing groundbreaking about Speedy, but like a lot of the Harold Lloyd or Buster Keaton comedies, it's like sitting down with an old friend -- you know you're going to have a good time reliving old memories.

The two movies that follow Speedy are movies I've also recommended in the past:

The Devil and Miss Jones airs at 10:15 PM ET; and
Orphans of the Storm is this week's Silent Sunday Night selection, at midnight.