Crazy movie

TCM's schedule for tomorrow, June 13, is listed as "classic comedies", although to be a bit more specific, it looks as though a good portion of the morning is stars who did work in the silent era before transitioning to sound. Among them is Harold Lloyd, who made the talkie Movie Crazy that TCM is running tomorrow at 11:30 AM.

Lloyd plays Harold Hall, who as the movie opens is living in the small town of Littleton, KS, with his parents. But he has a love of the movies, reminiscent of Esther Blodgett in at least the first version of A Star is Born, and hears a radio story about Hollywood needing new faces, as well as reading an article about it. So with that in mind, Harold, a would-be actor, decides that he too is going to go to Hollywood to try to make it as a star, sending the fine people at Planet Studios unsolicited photos and a cover letter.

Somehow, the studio gets the wrong photos, because Harold with those glasses isn't what you'd think of as a matinee idol, yet he gets asked out to Hollywood for a screen test. On his first day at the studio he has no idea what he's doing or where to go, but a director, seeing him, gives him a job as a walk-on extra in a scene of the latest movie of Mary Sears (Constance Cummings). Now, you'd think that Harold being big on Hollywood and reading those old-style movie magazines, he'd know what Mary Sears looked like and possibly even that her next movie was going to star her as a Spanish lady, complete with brunette wig. But Harold seems oblivious to this or even how to act, completely screwing up his one scene to the point that the director doesn't want him on the lot any more.

That night, Harold gets caught in a rainstorm and loses a shoe right outside Mary's house, not realizing that this is Mary's house or that she's a star. Worse, since Mary isn't wearing the wig from her role, she's in her naturally blonde hair. But she takes to him, especially when Vance (Kenneth Thomson), the male lead in the movie she's currently making, shows up unnanounced to her house. Mary doesn't exactly get along with Vance outside of work because he drinks way too much and is also terribly possessive, thinking Mary should be in love with him and that if he can't have Mary, nobody else can. So Vance is going to be after Harold for the rest of the movie thinking that Harold is trying to horn in on Mary.

Harold's screen test turns out to be an absolute disaster, while Mary decides she's going to have a bit of fun with Harold. Harold likes both blonde Mary and the actress playing the Spanish lady, somehow still not knowing these two are the same woman. Mary obviously knows this, so she picks on unsuspecting Harold, although she really does like him and is looking out for his best interests as much as she can. Eventually everything comes together when Harold, trying to escape studio bosses, wanders on to the set where the climactic scene of Mary and Vance's movie is being filmed. Harold and Vance get in a fight for real, although the studio people don't realizes the two men dislike each other intensely and are not really acting.

I mentioned a few months back when I did a post on Sidewalks of New York how poor Buster Keaton got put in a bunch of lousy stuff at MGM once he lost his creative freedom and after talkies came along. Things weren't quite so bad for Harold Lloyd, although Movie Crazy is definitely not up to the level of Lloyd's silent movies. Lloyd shows that he still had a flair for designing visual gags, but the movie as a whole has the tendency of feeling more like a collection of scenes than a fully fleshed-out feature-length plot. Still, Lloyd and Cummings have the talent to pull off material like this, making the movie more hit than miss, even if not quite a classic.