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.

Grandma's Boy

I mentioned a month or so an early Harold Lloyd feature that I had on my DVR when TCM aired two one-hour features in a Silent Sunday Night's Block. After blogging about For Heaven's Sake, the other movie in that block was Grandma's Boy.

Harold Lloyd once again plays The Boy, although there's an establishing sequence before we see Lloyd. The Boy lives in a small town called Blossom Bend, one of those towns that John Nesbitt would have talked about in his Passing Parade shorts, as it really is the sort of place that's been passed over. The Boy would be a mama's boy, except that he lives with Grandma (an actress named Anna Townsend whom I hadn't heard of before). And he's been that sort of boy his whole life, incredibly timid and finding everybody walking over him. (The shot of a one-year-old Boy already wearing the Harold Lloyd glasses is a fun little sight gag.)

Cut to the present day, when The Boy is 19 years old (Lloyd, who plays him, was 28 at the time) and all grown up, at least physically. Emotionally, he's just as much a coward as he always was. But he's interested in The Girl (Mildred Davis, who would marry Lloyd the following year and remain married for 45 years until her death). Mildred isn't uninterested in him, but he's not the only Boy in town. Also interested in The Girl is The Rival (Charles Stevenson, who was 35 at the time and looks it). The Rival is a bully, and treats The Boy like dirt, largely because he knows he can get away with it.

The night of the big dance comes up, and the Boy, having had his one suit destroyed by The Bully, is given Grandpa's old suit, which is in mothballs since it dates back to the Civil War (remember, that would only have been 60 years prior to the movie, and had Grandpa been alive he probably would have been in his early-to-mid 80s). Grandma's trying to help her grandson because she knows he's going to have to strike out on his own someday and the world is going to be way too cruel to a coward such as the Boy currently is.

That night, the police discover that a tramp who has been through the town several times before and been a problem for the police every other time is back in town and causing all sorts of criminal mayhem. The police deputize all the adult men in town, except for The Boy, having run out of badges. Grandma realizes he needs serious help. But how? She decides to tell her grandson about Grandpa's (Lloyd again, this time with ridiculous sideburns) exploits in the Civil War, aided by a special magic charm that she then gives to The Boy.

You can probably guess where the movie is going to go from here, but then a movie like Grandma's Boy isn't so much about suspense as to what the destination is going to be as much as it is about how they get to that destination. Harold Lloyd, despite being relatively early in his career and not having worked much with features, still does so expertly, providing a good mix of both sight gags and suspense.

There's a reason I like Harold Lloyd a whole lot more than Chaplin, and films like Grandma's Boy are part of that reason.

For Heaven's Sake

Among the plethora of silent films I've got sitting on my DVR is a pair of Harold Lloyd quickies, both running a shade under an hour in length. First up is For Heaven's Sake.

Harold Lloyd once again plays The Boy, this time named Harold Manners. He's an extremely wealthy man, as he gets in multiple car crashes in one day, totaling his luxury cars and getting a blurb in the newspaper for it. In addition to being that sort of accident-prone, Harold also accidentally sets fire to a food cart. The only thing is, this particular food cart wasn't being run by a traditional food vendor, but a Brother Paul, who together with his adult daughter Hope (Jobyna Ralston, referred to once again in the credits as The Girl), runs one of those missions in the poor part of town for the down-on-their luck.

Harold doesn't realize this, so he writes a check to cover the damage that he caused, which Brother Paul interprets as a check to support the mission, which he then names in honor of Harold. Harold is none too pleased when he finds out the next day that the mission is named after him, because he doesn't believe in that stuff and certainly doesn't believe in charity for the purpose of getting your name in the paper and looking good. He vows to go down to the mission and give the folks running it a piece of his mind.

But then he meets Hope, and falls in love with her because of how pleasant-looking she is. He then starts helping the mission out in an attempt to get Hope to fall in love with him, too. However, all sorts of mishaps happen, since this is after all a Harold Lloyd silent comedy with all the sight and physical gags.

For Heaven's Sake isn't exactly a bad movie, but in terms of Harold Lloyd's work, there's definitely a lot of his stuff that I prefer. Part of that is that there really isn't all that much of a plot here, just a series of scenes that don't always fit together. (I suppose you could argue the same for a classic like Safety Last!, but there, the framing story works better.) Still, it's Harold Lloyd, and he's always nice enough to watch.

Court House Crooks

When I watched Way Down East, there was a good half hour left in the time slot TCM ran it in, so they included the early two-reeler Court House Crooks.

The idea is a good one. A District Attorney (Ford Sterling) is having an affair with the Judge's (Charles Arling) wife (Minta Durfee). The judge buys his wife a necklace but drops the case, with the DA finding it, pocketing the necklace, and throwing the case away. When a young man (a young Harold Lloyd) is found with the case, he's put on trial for the larceny.

Unfortunately, I found it a fairly weak effort, as it's varies between unfunny and going floridly over the top in an attempt to be humorous, in the way that silent actors tended to gesticulate since they couldn't use dialog to make their points. The trial is also absurd, since it would have been handed to a different judge who didn't have a stake in the case and with only an empty jewelry case, the defendant should never have been convicted. A key plot point also relies on there being a window where there shouldn't be one, since the courtroom is directly opposite the hall from the DA's office.

At any rate, since this is from 1915, it's in the public domain and there are several copies on Youtube. I didn't watch this one to see if it's got a music score, but watch for yourself if you want to judge:

For those who miss Silent Sunday Nights

One of the bad things about TCM's Summer Under the Stars is that the regular programming features mostly go missing. Now, in the case of Noir Alley it's not such a big deal, as there's a fair amount of noir in the schedule outside of Eddie Muller's regularly scheduled spot. Audrey Totter is today's star, and Muller has already presented her film Tension (on tonight at 8:00 PM) before.

In the case of Silent Sunday Nights and the TCM Import, it's different. Maybe one day during the month there will be a day dedicated to an actor who made mostly foreign-language films, and one day dedicated to somebody who made a bunch of silents. Marcello Mastroianni will be coming up at the end of the month, but tomorrow is given over to the films of Harold Lloyd. There are a few talkies from the end of his days as a star, the feature favorites like Safety Last! (8:00 PM tomorrow), and at the start of the day, some even older shorts. I'm not certain if I'd heard of Ask Father, which kicks off the day at 6:00 AM, before. It's from 1919, so the print should be in the public domain. The music? Well, fortunately I was able to find a print on Youtube that was uploaded by the people who commissioned the new score, so it probably shouldn't be facing copyright issues. and get taken down:



Enjoy the Harold Lloyd silents, because they're the only ones on TCM this month.

High and Dizzy

I couldn't think of anything to post about this morning without checking to see which movies I've watched recently are in print on DVD, so I decided to present the 1920 Harold Lloyd short High and Dizzy. It's available on Youtube, and since the copy shown doesn't seem to have a score (at least, not in the opening credits that I watched, there's no copyright problems for those who would worry:

Proof that I don't look too far ahead in the TCM schedule

At the end of March, I mentioned the Harold Lloyd movie Never Weaken, and even embedded a Youtube video of it. If I had a tendency to look ahead in the TCM schedule, I would have noticed that tomorrow is a day chock full of Lloyd's movies in honor of his birthday. Not only that, but Never Weaken is going to be among the titles, at 6:45 AM.

Among the features, one that I think I've seen before -- it sure sounds familiar -- but am sure I've never recommended is Girl Shy, at 8:30 AM. This one has Lloyd playing the shy Boy, hence the title, who actually writes a book on how to romance women. On the way to the publisher, he meets a rich Girl (Jobyna Ralston, later of The Freshman), but she's engaged to a man more of her social class. He then learns that that man is all wrong for her, and has to get to the church on time to stop the wedding. If I've seen the movie, than this sequence should include Harold hanging from the arm of a trolleybus that should normally be connected to the overhead electric wires. (A Google search seems to confirm this.)

More Harold Lloyd, just because

TCM is showing what is probably Harold Lloyd's best-known film, Safety Last!, tonight at 1:00 AM. For anybody who doesn't know, this is the one with the iconic image of Harold hanging from the hands of a clock as he's trying to climb up the side of a building. The movie does seem to be available on Youtube, although since it was released in 1923 it's technically not in the public domain as far as I know.

So I decided that I was going to link to a different Harold Lloyd movie, one that is in the public domain. My first choice was going to be Get Out and Get Under, but it turns out I already did that one back in March, 2015 when Lloyd was the subject for TCM's Silent Sunday Nights. So instead, I'll present Never Weaken from 1921:

The Kid Brother

This week's Silent Sunday Nights feature comes up on TCM at 12:30 AM tonight, not midnight as is generally the case: The Kid Brother.

Harold Lloyd plays Harold Hickory, the youngest son of the local sheriff Jim; Harold has two older brothers Leo and Olin. Dad seems to be of the Theodore Roosevelt school of what makes a man a man, that being the physicality and the overt masculinity. Leo and Olin have those qualities; Harold decidedly doesnt, not that he's feminine. He's just small compared to his brothers and relatively shy. It means that Dad doesn't care as much for his youngest son, and any time he needs a job done, he'll call on the two older brothers.

Into this situation comes the traveling medicine show. Heading the show is Mary (Jobyna Ralston, who played The Girl in several Harold Lloyd movies). Dad doesn't really want the show in town since he knows they're not very honest, but Harold screws up and the medicine show sets up shop, much to Dad's consternation. That's not going to be the only problem for Dad, and also not the only thing between the show and the Hickory family. Leo and Olin wouldn't mind having Mary either, but they're about to get more pressing concerns.

As the local sheriff, Dad has been put in charge of safekeeping for the money that the town is raising to build a new dam. Why they couldn't put the money in a bank, I don't know. (It might be explained in the movie, but it's been quite a few years since I've seen this one.) The money for the dam goes missing, and everybody understandably accuses Jim of having taken it. This is why they should have put the money in the bank. Jim sets up a search party to try to find the money, but Harold doesn't get to take part.

Which is all for the best, anyhow, because it leaves Harold alone to do some inadvertent snooping of his own. Harold runs into one of Dad's enemies and somebody from the medicine show splitting up the money, so he knows not only that Dad is innocent, but who the guilty people are. However, everybody else is out looking for whoever might have done it, so it's up to tiny Harold to outwit these big guys, recover the money, and earn his father's trust. Oh, and perhaps if he can do all those things he might win the girl, too.

The Kid Brother is a Harold Lloyd movie, which means you can be sure you're going to get some inventive sight gags and some physical comedy. It's not as zany as, say, Safety Last, but that doesn't mean I'm trying to denigrate the movie. In fact, it's well photographed with good sight gags, and a good story. If you already like Harold Lloyd, you've probably seen this movie. If you're not too familiar with Lloyd's work, this wouldn't be a bad place to start.

The Kid Brother has been released to DVD, but I think it may have fallen out of print since it's not available from the TCM shop and Amazon only lists one box set that looks like it contains a bunch of public domain product.

Harold Lloyd Shorts on Silent Sunday Nights

Tonight sees the return of Silent Sunday Nights after the five-week hiatus for 31 Days of Oscar. This week sees four two-reelers starring Harold Lloyd. However, as often happens when there are a bunch of shorts put into one longer block, the schedule often winds up confused.

TCM's online daily schedule lists the four shorts all beginning in the following order:

Get Out and Get Under
High and Dizzy
I Do
From Hand to Mouth

Also according tot the daily schedule, there's going to be a short called Bermuda Cockleshells (one of those RKO Sportscope shorts) following the four silents, at 1:50 AM. The four shorts put together add up to about 100 minutes. The monthly schedule, which I downloaded a week ago, however, has Get Out and Get Under and I Do switched, keeping the other two in the same order. No mention of any shorts, but that's no surprise because the shorts are generally only schedule a week ahead of time or so.

And then there's the satellite box guide, which stars off with From Hand to Mouth, follows that with High and Dizzy, Get Out and Get Under, and I Do in that order. The box guide also lists each movie as starting on the half-hour, although I've noticed when there are a bunch of shorts the box guide always gets the starting times wrong.

The silents are all from before 1923 so they should all be in the public domain. Here's Get Out and Get Under:

Harold Lloyd shorts

This week's Silent Sunday Nights brings three Harold Lloyd movies which don't seem to be on DVD, at least not on a DVD that's currently in print. The first two are two-reelers I don't think I've seen before; Number, Please? at midnight tonight followed by Never Weaken at 12:30 AM. The last film is Lloy'd first "feature", if you can call a movie that runs a little over 45 minutes a feature: A Sailor-Made Man. This one has apparently made it to some Lloyd box sets that are Region 2 DVDs, but not North American Region 1.

As usual, Harold Lloyd plays The Boy. He's in love with The Girl (Mildred Davis), but unfortunately, her father doesn't like the idea of her marring Lloyd, unless Lloyd can get an honorable profession and make a man of himself. So what does our hero decide to do? Join the Navy, even though he's spectacularly unsuited for the Navy. Eventually, the Navy calls at a port in the stereotypically Middle Eastern kingdom of Khaipura-Bhandanna, where The Girl and her father just happen to be as well. The bad news is that the Maharajah has become smitten with the Girl, and takes her for his harem. In a plot twist that probably was unoriginal even in 1921, the only person who can save The Girl is The Boy, which is also his chance to become the sort of man her father would like!

The plot may not be much to speak of, but when you're watching a movie like A Sailor-Made Man, it's really more about the visual comedy and the physical gags. These are two areas where Lloyd excelled, and the movie gives him a variety of locations to engage in different sorts of gags. In addition to your standard US middle class places, there's shipboard humor, and the Arabian palace. Granted, the Arabian palace is probably nothing like it would be in real life, but we're not looking for realism in a 1920s comedy.

As I said at the beginning, this isn't available on DVD here in the States, so you're going to have to catch the TCM showing tonight.

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.

Harold Lloyd returns!

When Charlie Chaplin got a day in TCM's Summer Under the Stars last August, I mentioned that I thought Harold Lloyd deserved more recognition. Well, this year, he gets a day; on Wednesday, August 5. As TCM need to fill 24 hours of programming, they're showing a mix of Lloyd's most famous work, as well as some of his lesser stuff. The more famous stuff was overlooked the last time there was a Lloyd tribute, but tomorrow, you can see Lloyd in Safety Last! at 10:30 AM ET, and The Freshman at 3:45 PM.

However, I'd like to recommend something a little less well known this time around: A Sailor-Made Man, airing at 7:30 AM. Here, Lloyd's character is "The Boy", although in reality he's an adult playboy. He's got the money to live independently, but he's fallen in love with The Girl (Mildred Davis), and The Girl's father doesn't like the fact that our hero doesn't have any real-life experience. Work in the real world, and maybe I'll let you marry my daughter. So, The Boy gets the bright idea to join the US Navy. Needless to say, Lloyd is one of the most incompetent sailors you'll ever meet -- and once you've enlisted, you have to serve out that enlistment, which effectively means that Lloyd is stuck as a sailor for years to come, seemingly with no hope of getting The Girl.

Until the ship docks in India, that is. As luck would have it, The Girl and her father are on their vacation yahct, and have docked in the same port as Lloyd's navy ship. Lloyd tries to impress his beloved, but in so doing, gets himself in trouble with the local maharajah. Is this the end of our hero? Will he ever get The Girl? Well, since this is a comedy, you have to assume that the answers are "No" and "Yes" respectively, but as with all of these silent comedies, the fun is in seeing how they get to the destination you know they're going to reach. And like all Lloyd comedies, this one is filled with a lot of fun sight gags, and plucky Harold Lloyd trying to save the day.

A Sailor-Made Man is generally considered to be Lloyd's first feature film. Before this, Lloyd had been producing two-reelers; for A Sailor-Made Man, he produced about 50 minutes of material, with the intention of cutting it down to a two-reeler. When the studio showed the 50 minutes of film to preview audiences, however, they enjoyed everything, and the producers were loathe to cut anything out, with the result that they released a short (by today's standards) feature film, running about 47 minutes.

A Sailor-Made Man has been released to DVD, as has most of Lloyd's work. But, it only seems to be currently available as part of a big box set.

Harold Lloyd is underrated

TCM's "Summer Under the Stars" salute for August 2 is Charlie Chaplin. It's probably heretical to say this, but I think Chaplin is overrated. Sure, many of his earlier movies are inventive, as is the case with much of went on in silent cinema, but later on, he got tedious. Watch, for example, the scene in The Great Dictator where Chaplin plays with the globe. It's not funny, and I can't help but wish it would end -- much like the entire movie. When the AFI released its 2007 list of the Top 100 American Movies, three of Chaplin's movies were on the list, with City Lights all the way up at #11.

Buster Keaton finally got a mention in the 2007 list; The General was #18. Keaton was snubbed in the 1998 list, while Chaplin has multiple entries in both lists. The bigger surprise, however, is that Harold Lloyd is absent from both lists.

Lloyd is, of course, best known for Safety Last!, the comedy in which Lloyd, in trying to make good in the big city so that he can bring his girlfriend to live with him, gets roped into climbing up the side of a building to make $500. Even though everybody knows about the iconic image of Lloyd dangling from the hands of a clock, this is by far not the only good part of Safety Last!. Other things to watch out for include a very clever sight gag about Lloyd and his roomate dodging the rent, and an extended sequence of Lloyd trying to deal with competetive women in his job at a department store.

Lloyd's general character was as a bright, earnest, eternally optimistic man; a role that he certainly was playing in Safety Last!. But it's not just there that he would play it; another of his great roles is as The Freshman. Here, 32-year-old Harold Lloyd plays a young man going off to college who will do anything to fit in, and eventually becomes the waterboy for the football team. Of course, this being a comedy, things go wrong for the team, eventually requiring the coach to put Lloyd in the game. Lloyd, of course, saves the day in another very clever, very comedic sequence, and gets the girl (Jobyna Ralston, seen in the picture above with Lloyd).

Both of these, and many other Harold Lloyd movies, are available on DVD.