An all-American boy, with an all-American childhood,
comedian Harold Lloyd became entranced with amateur dramatic
productions through odd jobs as a theatre usher, call boy,
and stagehand. After working in a stock company where he specialized
in intricate character make-up, Lloyd moved from Nebraska to
California, where there was more theatrical work. While assisting
at a San Diego dramatic school, Lloyd took extra work in several
of the silent film companies operating up the coast in Los
Angeles. One of his fellow extras was Hal Roach, who had plans
to become a film producer.
One small inheritance later, Roach set up his own movie company and hired Lloyd
as his comedy star. Lloyd's first film character, Willie Work, didn't work, though
it enabled him to teach himself the skills of film comedy from the ground up.
Leaving Roach briefly for bit work at Mack Sennett's Keystone studios, Lloyd
returned to Roach and developed a new characterization, Lonesome Luke — which
frankly wasn't new at all but a direct steal of Charlie Chaplin's "tramp." Be
that as it may, Roach and Lloyd's "Lonesome Luke" two-reelers, which
co-starred Bebe Daniels, were very popular, but Lloyd got sick of the imitation
and set about creating a more original character.
In later years, both Lloyd and Roach took separate credit for coming up with
the "glasses" character — a handsome, normal looking youth who
wore horned-rimmed glasses. Regardless of who thought it up, it was manna from
heaven for Lloyd, whose star ascended once he got away from heavy character make-up
and silly costumes and concentrated on playing a comic variation on the "average
guy". Determining to be funny at all times on screen, Lloyd surrounded himself
with a crack team of gagmen, who came up with endless comic bits of business
for his new character. With their two-reelers doing terrific business, Lloyd
and Roach began working their way towards feature films, which would bring in
even more revenue. Lloyd's first feature, Grandma's Boy (1922), set the tone
for subsequent films: he played a character who "grew" either in strength
or integrity as the film progressed. The film itself had a strong plotline to
support his character, and the gags flowed freely and naturally from the action,
instead of being inserted for their own sake, as often happened in silent film
comedy. Though Lloyd would vary his "glasses" character from film to
film — a spoiled rich lad in one picture, a humble clerk in the next — he
never strayed far from the likeable boy-next-door that he'd established in his
short subjects.
Lloyd left Hal Roach to form his own production company in 1924, and the annual
feature releases which followed — most especially The Freshman (1925) — established
Harold as the top moneymaking comedian in the movies. Lloyd was "as rich
as Croesus," to quote film critic Andrew Sarris, and he invested his savings
in a huge Beverly Hills estate: Greenacres; he would live the rest of his life
with his wife (and former co-star) Mildred Davis and their children.
Uniquely attuned to the optimistic 1920's, Harold's go-getting screen character
had trouble surviving the Depression-era 1930's. Though he made a successful
transition to sound with 1929's Welcome Danger, each of Lloyd's subsequent talking
features grossed less than the previous one at the box office. He took up to
two years to produce a film, and was more careful than ever to maintain his high
standards, but despite excellent films like Movie Crazy (1932) and The Milky
Way (1936), Lloyd's jazz-age character seemed out of step and anachronistic in
more desperate times.
He left films as an actor in 1938, dabbling briefly as a producer for RKO in
the early 1940s and working on occasion in radio. When time seemed ripe for a
screen comeback in 1946, it was with The Sin of Harold Diddlebock, which might
have been a better film had not Lloyd clashed so vehemently with his director,
eccentric genius Preston Sturges. A still fabulously wealthy Beverly Hills resident
whose activities in charity and municipal work brought him universal respect,
Lloyd devoted the 1950s to his favorite hobbies, painting and stereoscopic photography.
Feeling somewhat forgotten in the early 1960s, Lloyd began releasing his old
films theatrically with modest success, and just before his death agreed to their
long-awaited TV distribution; still the creative dynamo, Lloyd insisted upon
personally re-editing his old films so that they would play better on TV. To
many around the world, Lloyd was one of the richest, nicest, and most accessible
film stars in Hollywood.
