Harold Lloyd
Encyclopedia
Harold Clayton Lloyd, Sr. (April 20, 1893 – March 8, 1971) was an American
film actor and producer
, most famous for his silent
comedies.
Harold Lloyd ranks alongside Charlie Chaplin
and Buster Keaton
as one of the most popular and influential film comedians of the silent film
era. Lloyd made nearly 200 comedy films, both silent and "talkies
", between 1914 and 1947. He is best known for his "Glasses Character", a resourceful, success-seeking go-getter who was perfectly in tune with 1920s era America.
His films frequently contained "thrill sequences" of extended chase scenes and daredevil physical feats, for which he is best remembered today. Lloyd hanging from the hands of a clock high above the street in Safety Last!
(1923) is one of the most enduring images in all of cinema. Lloyd did many of these dangerous stunt
s himself, despite having injured himself in August, 1919 while doing publicity pictures for the Roach studio. An accident with a bomb mistaken as a prop resulted in the loss of the thumb and index finger of his right hand (the injury was disguised on future films with the use of a special prosthetic
glove, though the glove often did not go by unnoticed).
Although Lloyd's individual films were not as commercially successful as Charlie Chaplin's on average, he was far more prolific (releasing twelve feature film
s in the 1920s while Chaplin released just three), and made more money overall ($15.7 million to Chaplin's $10.5 million).
, Nebraska
to James Darsie Lloyd and Elizabeth Fraser; his paternal great-grandparents were from Wales
. When he was a child, his parents divorced and Lloyd chose to stay with his father, who was always dreaming up grand get-rich-quick schemes that ended in disasters. They eventually ended up in Omaha where Lloyd had his first acting experience in a local stock company. He attended East High School and San Diego High School and received his stage training at the School of Dramatic Art (San Diego). In 1912, his father J. Darsie "Foxy" Lloyd was awarded the then-massive sum of $6,000 in a personal injury judgment (although this was split evenly between Lloyd and his lawyer) after being run over by an Omaha beer truck. Reportedly, on the toss of a coin ("Heads is New York or Nashville or where I decide!, tails is San Diego
"), he and Lloyd moved west.
Lloyd had acted in theatre since boyhood, and started acting in one-reel film comedies shortly after moving to California. He soon began working with Thomas Edison
's motion picture company, and eventually formed a partnership with fellow struggling actor and director Hal Roach
, who had formed his own studio in 1913. The hard-working Lloyd became the most successful of Roach's comic actors between 1915 and 1919.
Lloyd hired Bebe Daniels
as a supporting actress in 1914; the two of them were involved romantically and were known as "The Boy" and "The Girl." In 1919, she left Lloyd to pursue her dramatic aspirations. Lloyd replaced Daniels with Mildred Davis
in 1919. Lloyd was tipped off by Hal Roach to watch Davis in a movie. Reportedly, the more Lloyd watched Davis the more he liked her. Lloyd's first reaction in seeing her was that "she looked like a big French doll!" Davis retired from acting in 1923, and Jobyna Ralston
became Lloyd's co-star.
From 1915 to 1917, Lloyd and Roach created more than 60 one-reel comedies.
to a wealthy socialite in Captain Kidd's Kids
.
Beginning in 1921, Roach and Lloyd moved from shorts to feature length comedies. These included the acclaimed Grandma's Boy
, which, (along with Chaplin's The Kid
), pioneered the combination of complex character development and film comedy, the highly popular Safety Last!
(1923), which cemented Lloyd's stardom (and is the oldest film on the American Film Institute's List of 100 Most Thrilling Movies), and Why Worry?
.
Lloyd and Roach parted ways in 1924, and Lloyd became the independent producer of his own films. These included his most accomplished mature features Girl Shy
, The Freshman
(his highest-grossing silent feature), The Kid Brother
, and Speedy
, his final silent film. Welcome Danger
was originally a silent film but Lloyd decided late in the production to remake it with dialogue. All of these films were enormously successful and profitable, and Lloyd would eventually become the highest paid film performer of the 1920s. They were also highly influential and still find many fans among modern audiences, a testament to the originality and film-making skill of Lloyd and his collaborators. From this success he became one of the wealthiest and most influential figures in early Hollywood.
and later Paramount
and Twentieth Century-Fox. Lloyd was a founding member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
.
Released a few weeks before the start of the Great Depression
, Welcome Danger
was a huge financial success, with audiences eager to hear Lloyd's voice on film. Lloyd's rate of film releases, which had been one or two a year in the 1920s, slowed to about one every two years until 1938.
The films released during this period were: Feet First
, with a similar scenario to Safety Last which found him clinging to a skyscraper at the climax; Movie Crazy
with Constance Cummings
; The Cat's-Paw
, which was a dark political comedy and a big departure for Lloyd; and The Milky Way
, which was Lloyd's only attempt at the fashionable genre of the screwball comedy film
.
To this point the films had been produced by Lloyd's company. However, his go-getting screen character was out of touch with Great Depression
movie audiences of the 1930s. As the length of time between his film releases increased, his popularity declined, as did the fortunes of his production company. His final film of the decade, Professor Beware, was made by the Paramount staff, with Lloyd functioning only as actor and partial financier.
On March 23, 1937, Lloyd sold the land of his studio Harold Lloyd Motion Picture Company to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The location is now the site of the Los Angeles California Temple
.
Lloyd produced a few comedies for RKO Radio Pictures in the early 1940s but otherwise retired from the screen until 1947. He returned for an additional starring appearance in The Sin of Harold Diddlebock
, an ill-fated homage to Lloyd's career, directed by Preston Sturges
and financed by Howard Hughes
. This film had the inspired idea of following Harold's Jazz Age
, optimistic character from The Freshman into the Great Depression
years. Diddlebock opened with footage from The Freshman (for which Lloyd was paid a royalty of $50,000, matching his actor's fee) and Lloyd was sufficiently youthful-looking to match the older scenes quite well. Lloyd and Sturges had different conceptions of the material and fought frequently during the shoot; Lloyd was particularly concerned that while Sturges had spent three to four months on the script of the first third of the film, "the last two thirds of it he wrote in a week or less". The finished film was released briefly in 1947, then shelved by producer Hughes. Hughes issued a recut version of the film in 1951 through RKO under the title Mad Wednesday. Such was Lloyd's disdain that he sued Howard Hughes, the California Corporation and RKO for damages to his reputation "as an outstanding motion picture star and personality", eventually accepting a $30,000 settlement.
, on Saturday, February 10, 1923. Together, they had two children: Gloria Lloyd (born 1923), and Harold Clayton Lloyd, Jr.
, (1931–1971). They also adopted Gloria Freeman (1924–1986) in September 1930, whom they renamed Marjorie Elizabeth Lloyd, but who was known as "Peggy" for most of her life. Lloyd, for a time, discouraged Davis from continuing her acting career. He later relented, but by that time her career momentum was lost. Davis died in 1969, two years before Lloyd's death. Lloyd's son was gay, and according to Annette D'Agostino Lloyd
(no relation) in the book Harold Lloyd: Master Comedian, Harold Sr. took this in good spirit. Harold Jr. died from complications of a stroke.
_02.jpg)
Lloyd's Beverly Hills home, "Greenacres
", was built in 1926–1929, with 44 rooms, 26 bathrooms, 12 fountains, 12 gardens, and a nine hole golf course. The estate left the possession of the Lloyd family in 1975, after a failed attempt to maintain it as a public museum.
The grounds were subsequently subdivided, but the main house and the estate's principal gardens remain and are frequently used for civic fundraising events and as a filming location, appearing in films like Westworld
and The Loved One
. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places
.
radio anthology series, after Preston Sturges, who had turned the job down, recommended him for it. The show presented half-hour radio adaptations of recently successful film comedies, beginning with Palm Beach Story with Claudette Colbert
and Robert Young
.
Some saw The Old Gold Comedy Theater as being a lighter version of Lux Radio Theater
, and it featured some of the best-known film and radio personalities of the day, including Fred Allen
, June Allyson
, Lucille Ball
, Ralph Bellamy
, Linda Darnell
, Susan Hayward
, Herbert Marshall
, Dick Powell
, Edward G. Robinson
, Jane Wyman
, and Alan Young
, among others. But the show's half-hour format—which meant the material might have been truncated too severely—and Lloyd's sounding somewhat ill at ease on the air for much of the season (though he spent weeks training himself to speak on radio prior to the show's premiere, and seemed more relaxed toward the end of the series run) may have worked against it.
The Old Gold Comedy Theater ended in June 1945 with an adaptation of Tom, Dick and Harry
, featuring June Allyson
and Reginald Gardiner
and was not renewed for the following season. Many years later, acetate discs of 29 of the shows were discovered in Lloyd's home, and they now circulate among old-time radio collectors.
Lloyd remained involved in a number of other interests, including civic and charity work. Inspired by having overcome his own serious injuries and burns, he was very active as a Shriner with the Shriners
Hospital for Crippled Children. He was a Past Potentate of Al-Malaikah Shrine in Los Angeles, and was eventually selected as Imperial Potentate of the Shriners of North America for the year 1949-50.
He appeared as himself on several television shows during his retirement, first on Ed Sullivan
's variety show Toast of the Town June 5, 1949 and again on July 6, 1958. He appeared as the Mystery Guest on What's My Line?
on April 26, 1953, and twice on This Is Your Life
: on March 10, 1954 for Mack Sennett
, and again on December 14, 1955 on his own episode. During both appearances, Lloyd's hand injury can clearly be seen.
Lloyd studied colors, microscopy
, and was very involved with photography
, including 3D photography and color film experiments. Some of the earliest 2-color Technicolor
tests were shot at his Beverly Hills home (These are included as extra material in the Harold Lloyd Comedy Collection DVD Box Set). He became known for his nude photographs of models, such as Bettie Page
and stripper Dixie Evans, for a number of men's magazines. He also took photos of Marilyn Monroe
lounging at his pool in a bathing suit, which were published after their deaths. In 2004, his granddaughter Suzanne produced a book of selections from his photographs, Harold Lloyd's Hollywood Nudes in 3D! (ISBN 1-57912-394-5).
Lloyd also provided encouragement and support for a number of younger actors, such as Debbie Reynolds
, Robert Wagner
, and particularly Jack Lemmon
, whom Harold declared as his own choice to play him in a movie of his life and work.
Lloyd kept copyright control of most of his films and re-released them infrequently after his retirement. Lloyd did not grant cinematic release because in the main most theaters could not accommodate an organist, and Lloyd did not wish his work to be accompanied by a pianist: "I just don't like pictures played with pianos. We never intended them to be played with pianos". Similarly, his features were never shown on television as Lloyd's price was high: "I want $300,000 per picture for two showings. That's a high price, but if I don't get it, I'm not going to show it. They've come close to it, but they haven't come all the way up". As a consequence, his reputation and public recognition suffered in comparison with Chaplin and Keaton, whose work has generally been more available.
Also, Lloyd's film character was so intimately associated with the 1920s era that attempts at revivals in 1940s and 1950s were poorly received, when audiences viewed the 1920s (and silent film in particular) as old-fashioned.
In the early 1960s, Lloyd produced two compilation films, featuring scenes from his old comedies, Harold Lloyd's World of Comedy and The Funny Side of Life. The first film was premiered at the 1962 Cannes Film Festival
, where Lloyd was feted as a major rediscovery. The renewed interest in Lloyd helped restore his status among film historians. Throughout his later years he screened his films for audiences at special charity and educational events, to great acclaim, and found a particularly receptive audience among college audiences: "Their whole response was tremendous because they didn't miss a gag; anything that was even a little subtle, they got it right away".
Following his death, and after extensive negotiations, most of his feature films were leased to Time-Life
Films in 1974. As Tom Dardis confirms: "Time-Life prepared horrendously edited musical-sound-track versions of the silent films, which are intended to be shown on TV at sound speed, and which represent everything that Harold feared would happen to his best films".
Through the efforts of Kevin Brownlow
and David Gill
and the support of granddaughter Suzanne Lloyd Hayes, the British Thames Silents
series re-released some of the feature films in the early 1990s on home video, at corrected projection speeds and with new orchestral scores by Carl Davis
. More recently, the remainder of Lloyd's great silent features and many shorts were fully restored, with new orchestral scores by Robert Israel. These are now frequently shown on the Turner Classic Movies
(TCM) cable channel. An acclaimed 1990 documentary (Harold Lloyd: The Third Genius) by Brownlow and Gill, which was shown as part of the PBS
series American Masters
, also created a renewed interest in Lloyd's work in the early 1990s. A DVD
Collection of restored versions of most of his feature films (and his more important shorts) was released by New Line Cinema
in partnership with the Harold Lloyd Trust in November 2005, along with limited theatrical screenings in New York
and other cities in the US, Canada and Europe. Annette Lloyd
has also said that if there is a large-enough show of support by fans, a second collection may be released in the future.
for being a "master comedian and good citizen." The second citation was a snub to Chaplin, who at that point had fallen foul of McCarthyism
and who had had his entry visa to the United States revoked. Regardless of the political overtones, Lloyd accepted the award in good spirit.
on March 8, 1971, in Beverly Hills, California
. He was interred in a crypt in the Great Mausoleum at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California
.
. His was only the fourth ceremony preserving his handprints, footprints, autograph, and outline of his famed glasses (which were actually a pair of sunglasses with the lenses removed), at Grauman's Chinese Theatre
, in 1927. In 1994, he was honored with his image on a United States postage stamp designed by caricaturist Al Hirschfeld
.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
film actor and producer
Film producer
A film producer oversees and delivers a film project to all relevant parties while preserving the integrity, voice and vision of the film. They will also often take on some financial risk by using their own money, especially during the pre-production period, before a film is fully financed.The...
, most famous for his silent
Silent film
A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound, especially with no spoken dialogue. In silent films for entertainment the dialogue is transmitted through muted gestures, pantomime and title cards...
comedies.
Harold Lloyd ranks alongside Charlie Chaplin
Charlie Chaplin
Sir Charles Spencer "Charlie" Chaplin, KBE was an English comic actor, film director and composer best known for his work during the silent film era. He became the most famous film star in the world before the end of World War I...
and Buster Keaton
Buster Keaton
Joseph Frank "Buster" Keaton was an American comic actor, filmmaker, producer and writer. He was best known for his silent films, in which his trademark was physical comedy with a consistently stoic, deadpan expression, earning him the nickname "The Great Stone Face".Keaton was recognized as the...
as one of the most popular and influential film comedians of the silent film
Silent film
A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound, especially with no spoken dialogue. In silent films for entertainment the dialogue is transmitted through muted gestures, pantomime and title cards...
era. Lloyd made nearly 200 comedy films, both silent and "talkies
Sound film
A sound film is a motion picture with synchronized sound, or sound technologically coupled to image, as opposed to a silent film. The first known public exhibition of projected sound films took place in Paris in 1900, but decades would pass before sound motion pictures were made commercially...
", between 1914 and 1947. He is best known for his "Glasses Character", a resourceful, success-seeking go-getter who was perfectly in tune with 1920s era America.
His films frequently contained "thrill sequences" of extended chase scenes and daredevil physical feats, for which he is best remembered today. Lloyd hanging from the hands of a clock high above the street in Safety Last!
Safety Last!
Safety Last! is a 1923 romantic comedy silent film starring Harold Lloyd. It includes one of the most famous images from the silent film era: Lloyd clutching the hands of a large clock as he dangles from the outside of a skyscraper above moving traffic. The film was highly successful and critically...
(1923) is one of the most enduring images in all of cinema. Lloyd did many of these dangerous stunt
Stunt
A stunt is an unusual and difficult physical feat, or any act requiring a special skill, performed for artistic purposes in TV, theatre, or cinema...
s himself, despite having injured himself in August, 1919 while doing publicity pictures for the Roach studio. An accident with a bomb mistaken as a prop resulted in the loss of the thumb and index finger of his right hand (the injury was disguised on future films with the use of a special prosthetic
Prosthesis
In medicine, a prosthesis, prosthetic, or prosthetic limb is an artificial device extension that replaces a missing body part. It is part of the field of biomechatronics, the science of using mechanical devices with human muscle, skeleton, and nervous systems to assist or enhance motor control...
glove, though the glove often did not go by unnoticed).
Although Lloyd's individual films were not as commercially successful as Charlie Chaplin's on average, he was far more prolific (releasing twelve feature film
Feature film
In the film industry, a feature film is a film production made for initial distribution in theaters and being the main attraction of the screening, rather than a short film screened before it; a full length movie...
s in the 1920s while Chaplin released just three), and made more money overall ($15.7 million to Chaplin's $10.5 million).
Early life and early roles
Lloyd was born in BurchardBurchard, Nebraska
Burchard is a village in Pawnee County, Nebraska, United States. The population was 103 at the 2000 census.-Geography:Burchard is located at ....
, Nebraska
Nebraska
Nebraska is a state on the Great Plains of the Midwestern United States. The state's capital is Lincoln and its largest city is Omaha, on the Missouri River....
to James Darsie Lloyd and Elizabeth Fraser; his paternal great-grandparents were from Wales
Wales
Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...
. When he was a child, his parents divorced and Lloyd chose to stay with his father, who was always dreaming up grand get-rich-quick schemes that ended in disasters. They eventually ended up in Omaha where Lloyd had his first acting experience in a local stock company. He attended East High School and San Diego High School and received his stage training at the School of Dramatic Art (San Diego). In 1912, his father J. Darsie "Foxy" Lloyd was awarded the then-massive sum of $6,000 in a personal injury judgment (although this was split evenly between Lloyd and his lawyer) after being run over by an Omaha beer truck. Reportedly, on the toss of a coin ("Heads is New York or Nashville or where I decide!, tails is San Diego
San Diego, California
San Diego is the eighth-largest city in the United States and second-largest city in California. The city is located on the coast of the Pacific Ocean in Southern California, immediately adjacent to the Mexican border. The birthplace of California, San Diego is known for its mild year-round...
"), he and Lloyd moved west.
Lloyd had acted in theatre since boyhood, and started acting in one-reel film comedies shortly after moving to California. He soon began working with Thomas Edison
Thomas Edison
Thomas Alva Edison was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and a long-lasting, practical electric light bulb. In addition, he created the world’s first industrial...
's motion picture company, and eventually formed a partnership with fellow struggling actor and director Hal Roach
Hal Roach
Harold Eugene "Hal" Roach, Sr. was an American film and television producer and director, and from the 1910s to the 1990s.- Early life and career :Hal Roach was born in Elmira, New York...
, who had formed his own studio in 1913. The hard-working Lloyd became the most successful of Roach's comic actors between 1915 and 1919.
Lloyd hired Bebe Daniels
Bebe Daniels
Bebe Daniels was an American actress, singer, dancer, writer and producer. She began her career in Hollywood during the silent movie era as a child actress, became a star in musicals like 42nd Street, and later gained further fame on radio and television in Britain...
as a supporting actress in 1914; the two of them were involved romantically and were known as "The Boy" and "The Girl." In 1919, she left Lloyd to pursue her dramatic aspirations. Lloyd replaced Daniels with Mildred Davis
Mildred Davis
Mildred Hillary Davis was an American actress who appeared in many of Harold Lloyd's classic silent comedies and eventually became his wife.-Early life and career:...
in 1919. Lloyd was tipped off by Hal Roach to watch Davis in a movie. Reportedly, the more Lloyd watched Davis the more he liked her. Lloyd's first reaction in seeing her was that "she looked like a big French doll!" Davis retired from acting in 1923, and Jobyna Ralston
Jobyna Ralston
Jobyna Ralston was an American stage and film actress.-Early life and career:Born Jobyna Lancaster Raulston in South Pittsburg, Tennessee in 1899 to parents who named her after famed entertainer of the time, Jobyna Howland...
became Lloyd's co-star.
From 1915 to 1917, Lloyd and Roach created more than 60 one-reel comedies.
Silent shorts and features
By 1918, Lloyd and Roach had begun to develop his character beyond an imitation of his contemporaries. Harold Lloyd would move away from tragicomic personas, and portray an everyman with unwavering confidence and optimism. The "Glasses Character" (often named "Harold" in the silent films) was a much more mature comedy character with greater potential for sympathy and emotional depth, and was easy for audiences of the time to identify with. The Glasses Character is said to have been created after Roach suggested that Harold was too handsome to do comedy, without some sort of disguise; previously, he had worn a fake mustache as the Chaplinesque "Lonesome Luke". Unlike most silent comedy personas, "Harold" was never typecast to a social class, but he was always striving for success and recognition. Within the first few years of the character's debut, he had portrayed social ranks ranging from a starving vagrant in From Hand to MouthFrom Hand to Mouth
From Hand to Mouth is a 1919 short comedy film featuring Harold Lloyd. A print of the film survives in the film archive of the British Film Institute.-Cast:* Harold Lloyd - The Boy in the Glasses* Mildred Davis - The Girl...
to a wealthy socialite in Captain Kidd's Kids
Captain Kidd's Kids
Captain Kidd's Kids is a 1919 short comedy film featuring Harold Lloyd. Prints of this film exist in the film archives of the UCLA Film and Television Archive and Filmoteca Española.-Cast:* Harold Lloyd - The Boy* Bebe Daniels - The Girl...
.
Grandma's Boy (1922 film)
Grandma's Boy is a 1922 Family comedy film starring Harold Lloyd. The film was highly influential, helping to pioneer feature-length comedies which combined gags with character development.-Plot:...
, which, (along with Chaplin's The Kid
The Kid (1921 film)
The Kid is a 1921 American silent dramedy film written by, produced by, directed by and starring Charlie Chaplin, and features Jackie Coogan as his adopted son and sidekick. This was Chaplin's first full-length movie...
), pioneered the combination of complex character development and film comedy, the highly popular Safety Last!
Safety Last!
Safety Last! is a 1923 romantic comedy silent film starring Harold Lloyd. It includes one of the most famous images from the silent film era: Lloyd clutching the hands of a large clock as he dangles from the outside of a skyscraper above moving traffic. The film was highly successful and critically...
(1923), which cemented Lloyd's stardom (and is the oldest film on the American Film Institute's List of 100 Most Thrilling Movies), and Why Worry?
Why Worry?
Why Worry? is a 1923 American comedy silent film starring Harold Lloyd. It was made shortly after and within the same year as Lloyd's most well-known film today, Safety Last!.- Plot :...
.
Lloyd and Roach parted ways in 1924, and Lloyd became the independent producer of his own films. These included his most accomplished mature features Girl Shy
Girl Shy
Girl Shy is a 1924 romantic comedy silent film starring Harold Lloyd and Jobyna Ralston. The movie was written by Sam Taylor, Tim Whelan and Ted Wilde and was directed by Fred C...
, The Freshman
The Freshman (1925 film)
The Freshman is a 1925 comedy film that tells the story of a college freshman trying to become popular by joining the school football team. It stars Harold Lloyd, Jobyna Ralston, Brooks Benedict and James Anderson. It remains one of Lloyd's most successful and enduring films.The movie was written...
(his highest-grossing silent feature), The Kid Brother
The Kid Brother
The Kid Brother is a 1927 American Classic comedy silent film starring Harold Lloyd. It was successful and popular upon release and today is considered by critics and fans to be one of Lloyd's best films, integrating elements of comedy, romance, drama, and character development...
, and Speedy
Speedy (film)
Speedy is a 1928 silent film that was one of the films to be nominated for the short-lived Academy Award for Best Director of a Comedy. It starred famous comedian Harold Lloyd in the eponymous leading role, and it was his last silent film to be released in theatres. The film was written by Albert...
, his final silent film. Welcome Danger
Welcome Danger
Welcome Danger is a Comedy film directed by Clyde Bruckman and starring Harold Lloyd in his first talkie. Harold plays a student who helps the San Francisco police investigate a crime wave in that city's Chinatown district.-Cast:*Harold Lloyd...
was originally a silent film but Lloyd decided late in the production to remake it with dialogue. All of these films were enormously successful and profitable, and Lloyd would eventually become the highest paid film performer of the 1920s. They were also highly influential and still find many fans among modern audiences, a testament to the originality and film-making skill of Lloyd and his collaborators. From this success he became one of the wealthiest and most influential figures in early Hollywood.
Talkies and transition
In 1924, Lloyd formed his own independent film production company, the Harold Lloyd Film Corporation, with his films distributed by PathéPathé
Pathé or Pathé Frères is the name of various French businesses founded and originally run by the Pathé Brothers of France.-History:...
and later Paramount
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film production and distribution company, located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. Founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Viacom, it is America's oldest existing film studio; it is also the last major film studio still...
and Twentieth Century-Fox. Lloyd was a founding member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is a professional honorary organization dedicated to the advancement of the arts and sciences of motion pictures...
.
Released a few weeks before the start of the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
, Welcome Danger
Welcome Danger
Welcome Danger is a Comedy film directed by Clyde Bruckman and starring Harold Lloyd in his first talkie. Harold plays a student who helps the San Francisco police investigate a crime wave in that city's Chinatown district.-Cast:*Harold Lloyd...
was a huge financial success, with audiences eager to hear Lloyd's voice on film. Lloyd's rate of film releases, which had been one or two a year in the 1920s, slowed to about one every two years until 1938.
The films released during this period were: Feet First
Feet First
Feet First is a 1930 comedy film starring Harold Lloyd, a very popular daredevil comedian during the 1920s and early 1930s. It was Lloyd's second & most popular sound feature. It is also one of his 'thrill' comedies, involving him climbing up a tall building. Harold Lloyd was one of very few...
, with a similar scenario to Safety Last which found him clinging to a skyscraper at the climax; Movie Crazy
Movie Crazy
- Plot :Harold Hall, a young man with little or no acting ability, desperately wants to be in the movies.After a mix-up with his application photograph, he gets an offer to have a screen-test, and goes off to Hollywood. At the studio, he does everything wrong and causes all sorts of trouble...
with Constance Cummings
Constance Cummings
Constance Cummings, CBE was an American-born British actress, known for her work on both screen and stage.Born Constance Halverstadt in Seattle, Washington, the daughter of Dallas Vernon Halverstadt, a lawyer, and his wife, Kate Logan Cummings, a concert soprano. she began as a stage actress,...
; The Cat's-Paw
The Cat's-Paw
The Cat’s-Paw is a 1934 comedy film starring Harold Lloyd and directed by Sam Taylor. It was one of the great silent film comedian’s few sound films....
, which was a dark political comedy and a big departure for Lloyd; and The Milky Way
The Milky Way (1936 film)
The Milky Way is a 1936 comedy film starring Harold Lloyd. Directed by comedy veteran Leo McCarey, the film was written by Grover Jones, Frank Butler and Richard Connell based on a play of the same name by Lynn Root and Harry Clork which was presented on Broadway in 1934.An example of the popular...
, which was Lloyd's only attempt at the fashionable genre of the screwball comedy film
Screwball comedy film
The screwball comedy is a principally American genre of comedy film that became popular during the Great Depression, originating in the early 1930s and thriving until the early 1940s. It is characterized by fast-paced repartee, farcical situations, escapist themes, and plot lines involving...
.
To this point the films had been produced by Lloyd's company. However, his go-getting screen character was out of touch with Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
movie audiences of the 1930s. As the length of time between his film releases increased, his popularity declined, as did the fortunes of his production company. His final film of the decade, Professor Beware, was made by the Paramount staff, with Lloyd functioning only as actor and partial financier.
On March 23, 1937, Lloyd sold the land of his studio Harold Lloyd Motion Picture Company to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The location is now the site of the Los Angeles California Temple
Los Angeles California Temple
The Los Angeles California Temple , the tenth operating and the second-largest temple operated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, is on Santa Monica Boulevard in the Westwood district of Los Angeles, California...
.
Lloyd produced a few comedies for RKO Radio Pictures in the early 1940s but otherwise retired from the screen until 1947. He returned for an additional starring appearance in The Sin of Harold Diddlebock
The Sin of Harold Diddlebock
The Sin of Harold Diddlebock is a 1947 comedy film written and directed by Preston Sturges, starring the silent film comic icon Harold Lloyd, and featuring Jimmy Conlin, Raymond Walburn, Rudy Vallee, Arline Judge, Edgar Kennedy, Franklin Pangborn and Lionel Stander...
, an ill-fated homage to Lloyd's career, directed by Preston Sturges
Preston Sturges
Preston Sturges , originally Edmund Preston Biden, was a celebrated playwright, screenwriter and film director born in Chicago, Illinois...
and financed by Howard Hughes
Howard Hughes
Howard Robard Hughes, Jr. was an American business magnate, investor, aviator, engineer, film producer, director, and philanthropist. He was one of the wealthiest people in the world...
. This film had the inspired idea of following Harold's Jazz Age
Jazz Age
The Jazz Age was a movement that took place during the 1920s or the Roaring Twenties from which jazz music and dance emerged. The movement came about with the introduction of mainstream radio and the end of the war. This era ended in the 1930s with the beginning of The Great Depression but has...
, optimistic character from The Freshman into the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
years. Diddlebock opened with footage from The Freshman (for which Lloyd was paid a royalty of $50,000, matching his actor's fee) and Lloyd was sufficiently youthful-looking to match the older scenes quite well. Lloyd and Sturges had different conceptions of the material and fought frequently during the shoot; Lloyd was particularly concerned that while Sturges had spent three to four months on the script of the first third of the film, "the last two thirds of it he wrote in a week or less". The finished film was released briefly in 1947, then shelved by producer Hughes. Hughes issued a recut version of the film in 1951 through RKO under the title Mad Wednesday. Such was Lloyd's disdain that he sued Howard Hughes, the California Corporation and RKO for damages to his reputation "as an outstanding motion picture star and personality", eventually accepting a $30,000 settlement.
Marriage and home life
Lloyd married his leading lady, Mildred DavisMildred Davis
Mildred Hillary Davis was an American actress who appeared in many of Harold Lloyd's classic silent comedies and eventually became his wife.-Early life and career:...
, on Saturday, February 10, 1923. Together, they had two children: Gloria Lloyd (born 1923), and Harold Clayton Lloyd, Jr.
Harold Lloyd Jr.
Harold Clayton Lloyd, Jr. was an American actor and singer.-Career:The second child and only son of the silent film comedian Harold Lloyd and actress Mildred Davis, Lloyd made several B-movies in the 1950s and 60s, including The Flaming Urge and Frankenstein's Daughter...
, (1931–1971). They also adopted Gloria Freeman (1924–1986) in September 1930, whom they renamed Marjorie Elizabeth Lloyd, but who was known as "Peggy" for most of her life. Lloyd, for a time, discouraged Davis from continuing her acting career. He later relented, but by that time her career momentum was lost. Davis died in 1969, two years before Lloyd's death. Lloyd's son was gay, and according to Annette D'Agostino Lloyd
Annette D'Agostino Lloyd
Annette D'Agostino Lloyd is a silent film historian and author of numerous books on silent film and television, particularly on the life and works of actor Harold Lloyd...
(no relation) in the book Harold Lloyd: Master Comedian, Harold Sr. took this in good spirit. Harold Jr. died from complications of a stroke.
Harold Lloyd Estate
The Harold Lloyd Estate, also known as Greenacres, is a large mansion and landscaped estate located in the Benedict Canyon section of Beverly Hills, California. Built in the latter 1920s by silent film star Harold Lloyd, it remained Lloyd's home until his death in 1971. The estate originally...
", was built in 1926–1929, with 44 rooms, 26 bathrooms, 12 fountains, 12 gardens, and a nine hole golf course. The estate left the possession of the Lloyd family in 1975, after a failed attempt to maintain it as a public museum.
The grounds were subsequently subdivided, but the main house and the estate's principal gardens remain and are frequently used for civic fundraising events and as a filming location, appearing in films like Westworld
Westworld
Westworld is a 1973 science fiction-thriller film written and directed by novelist Michael Crichton and produced by Paul Lazarus III. It stars Yul Brynner as a lifelike robot in a futuristic Western-themed amusement park, and Richard Benjamin and James Brolin as guests of the park.Westworld was the...
and The Loved One
The Loved One (film)
The Loved One is a 1965 black comedy film about the funeral business in Los Angeles, which is based on The Loved One: An Anglo-American Tragedy , a short satirical novel by Evelyn Waugh...
. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places
National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places is the United States government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects deemed worthy of preservation...
.
Radio and retirement
In October 1944, Lloyd emerged as the director and host of The Old Gold Comedy Theater, an NBCNBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...
radio anthology series, after Preston Sturges, who had turned the job down, recommended him for it. The show presented half-hour radio adaptations of recently successful film comedies, beginning with Palm Beach Story with Claudette Colbert
Claudette Colbert
Claudette Colbert was a French-born American-based actress of stage and film.Born in Paris, France and raised in New York City, Colbert began her career in Broadway productions during the 1920s, progressing to film with the advent of talking pictures...
and Robert Young
Robert Young (actor)
Robert George Young was an American television, film, and radio actor, best known for his leading roles as Jim Anderson, the father of Father Knows Best and as physician Marcus Welby in Marcus Welby, M.D. .-Early life:Born in Chicago, Illinois, Young was the son of an Irish immigrant father...
.
Some saw The Old Gold Comedy Theater as being a lighter version of Lux Radio Theater
Lux Radio Theater
Lux Radio Theater, a long-run classic radio anthology series, was broadcast on the NBC Blue Network ; CBS and NBC . Initially, the series adapted Broadway plays during its first two seasons before it began adapting films. These hour-long radio programs were performed live before studio audiences...
, and it featured some of the best-known film and radio personalities of the day, including Fred Allen
Fred Allen
Fred Allen was an American comedian whose absurdist, topically pointed radio show made him one of the most popular and forward-looking humorists in the so-called classic era of American radio.His best-remembered gag was his long-running mock feud with friend and fellow comedian Jack Benny, but it...
, June Allyson
June Allyson
June Allyson was an American film and television actress, popular in the 1940s and 1950s. She was a major MGM contract star. Allyson won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress for her performance in Too Young to Kiss . From 1959–1961, she hosted and occasionally starred in her own CBS anthology...
, Lucille Ball
Lucille Ball
Lucille Désirée Ball was an American comedian, film, television, stage and radio actress, model, film and television executive, and star of the sitcoms I Love Lucy, The Lucy–Desi Comedy Hour, The Lucy Show, Here's Lucy and Life With Lucy...
, Ralph Bellamy
Ralph Bellamy
Ralph Bellamy was an American actor whose career spanned sixty-two years.-Early life:He was born Ralph Rexford Bellamy in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Lilla Louise , a native of Canada, and Charles Rexford Bellamy. He ran away from home when he was fifteen and managed to get into a road show...
, Linda Darnell
Linda Darnell
Linda Darnell was an American film actress.Darnell was a model as a child, and progressed to theater and film acting as an adolescent. At the encouragement of her mother, she made her first film in 1939, and appeared in supporting roles in big budget films for 20th Century Fox throughout the 1940s...
, Susan Hayward
Susan Hayward
Susan Hayward was an American actress.After working as a fashion model in New York, Hayward travelled to Hollywood in 1937 when open auditions were held for the leading role in Gone with the Wind . Although she was not selected, she secured a film contract, and played several small supporting...
, Herbert Marshall
Herbert Marshall
Herbert Marshall , born Herbert Brough Falcon Marshall, was an English actor.His parents were Percy F. Marshall and Ethel May Turner. He graduated from St. Mary's College in Old Harlow, Essex and worked for a time as an accounting clerk...
, Dick Powell
Dick Powell
Richard Ewing "Dick" Powell was an American singer, actor, producer, director and studio boss.Despite the same last name he was not related to William Powell, Eleanor Powell or Jane Powell.-Biography:...
, Edward G. Robinson
Edward G. Robinson
Edward G. Robinson was a Romanian-born American actor. A popular star during Hollywood's Golden Age, he is best remembered for his roles as gangsters, such as Rico in his star-making film Little Caesar and as Rocco in Key Largo...
, Jane Wyman
Jane Wyman
Jane Wyman was an American singer, dancer, and character actress of film and television. She began her film career in the 1930s, and was a prolific performer for two decades...
, and Alan Young
Alan Young
Alan Young is an English-Canadian actor and voice actor, best known for his role as Wilbur Post in the television series Mister Ed and as the voice of Scrooge McDuck in Disney films, TV series and video games...
, among others. But the show's half-hour format—which meant the material might have been truncated too severely—and Lloyd's sounding somewhat ill at ease on the air for much of the season (though he spent weeks training himself to speak on radio prior to the show's premiere, and seemed more relaxed toward the end of the series run) may have worked against it.
The Old Gold Comedy Theater ended in June 1945 with an adaptation of Tom, Dick and Harry
Tom, Dick and Harry (1941 film)
Tom, Dick and Harry is a comedy film directed by Garson Kanin, written by Paul Jarrico, and starring Ginger Rogers, George Murphy, Alan Marshal, and Burgess Meredith. The film was released by RKO Radio Pictures....
, featuring June Allyson
June Allyson
June Allyson was an American film and television actress, popular in the 1940s and 1950s. She was a major MGM contract star. Allyson won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress for her performance in Too Young to Kiss . From 1959–1961, she hosted and occasionally starred in her own CBS anthology...
and Reginald Gardiner
Reginald Gardiner
Reginald Gardiner was an English-born actor in film and television and a graduate of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in Britain. His parents wanted him to be an architect and he studied at it but he wanted to be an actor and eventually got his way.He started as a super on stage and eventually...
and was not renewed for the following season. Many years later, acetate discs of 29 of the shows were discovered in Lloyd's home, and they now circulate among old-time radio collectors.
Lloyd remained involved in a number of other interests, including civic and charity work. Inspired by having overcome his own serious injuries and burns, he was very active as a Shriner with the Shriners
Shriners
The Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine, also commonly known as Shriners and abbreviated A.A.O.N.M.S., established in 1870, is an appendant body to Freemasonry, based in the United States...
Hospital for Crippled Children. He was a Past Potentate of Al-Malaikah Shrine in Los Angeles, and was eventually selected as Imperial Potentate of the Shriners of North America for the year 1949-50.
He appeared as himself on several television shows during his retirement, first on Ed Sullivan
Ed Sullivan
Edward Vincent "Ed" Sullivan was an American entertainment writer and television host, best known as the presenter of the TV variety show The Ed Sullivan Show. The show was broadcast from 1948 to 1971 , which made it one of the longest-running variety shows in U.S...
's variety show Toast of the Town June 5, 1949 and again on July 6, 1958. He appeared as the Mystery Guest on What's My Line?
What's My Line?
What's My Line? is a panel game show which originally ran in the United States on the CBS Television Network from 1950 to 1967, with several international versions and subsequent U.S. revivals. The game tasked celebrity panelists with questioning contestants in order to determine their occupations....
on April 26, 1953, and twice on This Is Your Life
This Is Your Life
This Is Your Life is an American television documentary series broadcast on NBC, originally hosted by its producer, Ralph Edwards from 1952 to 1961. In the show, the host surprises a guest, and proceeds to take them through their life in front of an audience including friends and family.Edwards...
: on March 10, 1954 for Mack Sennett
Mack Sennett
Mack Sennett was a Canadian-born American director and was known as the innovator of slapstick comedy in film. During his lifetime he was known at times as the "King of Comedy"...
, and again on December 14, 1955 on his own episode. During both appearances, Lloyd's hand injury can clearly be seen.
Lloyd studied colors, microscopy
Microscopy
Microscopy is the technical field of using microscopes to view samples and objects that cannot be seen with the unaided eye...
, and was very involved with photography
Photography
Photography is the art, science and practice of creating durable images by recording light or other electromagnetic radiation, either electronically by means of an image sensor or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film...
, including 3D photography and color film experiments. Some of the earliest 2-color Technicolor
Technicolor
Technicolor is a color motion picture process invented in 1916 and improved over several decades.It was the second major process, after Britain's Kinemacolor, and the most widely used color process in Hollywood from 1922 to 1952...
tests were shot at his Beverly Hills home (These are included as extra material in the Harold Lloyd Comedy Collection DVD Box Set). He became known for his nude photographs of models, such as Bettie Page
Bettie Page
Bettie Mae Page was an American model who became famous in the 1950s for her fetish modeling and pin-up photos. She has often been called the "Queen of Pinups"...
and stripper Dixie Evans, for a number of men's magazines. He also took photos of Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe was an American actress, singer, model and showgirl who became a major sex symbol, starring in a number of commercially successful motion pictures during the 1950s....
lounging at his pool in a bathing suit, which were published after their deaths. In 2004, his granddaughter Suzanne produced a book of selections from his photographs, Harold Lloyd's Hollywood Nudes in 3D! (ISBN 1-57912-394-5).
Lloyd also provided encouragement and support for a number of younger actors, such as Debbie Reynolds
Debbie Reynolds
Debbie Reynolds is an American actress, singer, and dancer.She was initially signed at age 16 by Warner Bros., but her career got off to a slow start. When her contract was not renewed, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer gave her a small, but significant part in the film Three Little Words , then signed her to...
, Robert Wagner
Robert Wagner
Robert John Wagner is an American actor of stage, screen, and television.A veteran of many films in the 1950s and 1960s, Wagner gained prominence in three American television series that spanned three decades: It Takes a Thief , Switch , and Hart to Hart...
, and particularly Jack Lemmon
Jack Lemmon
John Uhler "Jack" Lemmon III was an American actor and musician. He starred in more than 60 films including Some Like It Hot, The Apartment, Mister Roberts , Days of Wine and Roses, The Great Race, Irma la Douce, The Odd Couple, Save the Tiger John Uhler "Jack" Lemmon III (February 8, 1925June...
, whom Harold declared as his own choice to play him in a movie of his life and work.
Renewed interest
Also, Lloyd's film character was so intimately associated with the 1920s era that attempts at revivals in 1940s and 1950s were poorly received, when audiences viewed the 1920s (and silent film in particular) as old-fashioned.
In the early 1960s, Lloyd produced two compilation films, featuring scenes from his old comedies, Harold Lloyd's World of Comedy and The Funny Side of Life. The first film was premiered at the 1962 Cannes Film Festival
Cannes Film Festival
The Cannes International Film Festival , is an annual film festival held in Cannes, France, which previews new films of all genres including documentaries from around the world. Founded in 1946, it is among the world's most prestigious and publicized film festivals...
, where Lloyd was feted as a major rediscovery. The renewed interest in Lloyd helped restore his status among film historians. Throughout his later years he screened his films for audiences at special charity and educational events, to great acclaim, and found a particularly receptive audience among college audiences: "Their whole response was tremendous because they didn't miss a gag; anything that was even a little subtle, they got it right away".
Following his death, and after extensive negotiations, most of his feature films were leased to Time-Life
Time-Life
Time–Life is a creator and direct marketer of books, music, video/DVD, and multimedia products. Its products are sold throughout North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia through television, print, retail, the Internet, telemarketing, and direct sales....
Films in 1974. As Tom Dardis confirms: "Time-Life prepared horrendously edited musical-sound-track versions of the silent films, which are intended to be shown on TV at sound speed, and which represent everything that Harold feared would happen to his best films".
Through the efforts of Kevin Brownlow
Kevin Brownlow
Kevin Brownlow is a filmmaker, film historian, television documentary-maker, author, and Academy Award recipient. Brownlow is best known for his work documenting the history of the silent era. Brownlow became interested in silent film at the age of eleven. This interest grew into a career spent...
and David Gill
David Gill (film historian)
David Ian Gill was born in Papua New Guinea, the son of Cecil Gill, a missionary doctor. His uncle was the sculptor Eric Gill. The family returned to England in 1933 where Gill attended the Belmont Abbey School, Hereford...
and the support of granddaughter Suzanne Lloyd Hayes, the British Thames Silents
Thames Silents
Thames Silents is a series of releases of films from the silent era produced by the British ITV contractor Thames Television...
series re-released some of the feature films in the early 1990s on home video, at corrected projection speeds and with new orchestral scores by Carl Davis
Carl Davis
Carl Davis CBE is an American born conductor and composer who has made his home in the UK since 1961. In 1970 he married the English actress Jean Boht....
. More recently, the remainder of Lloyd's great silent features and many shorts were fully restored, with new orchestral scores by Robert Israel. These are now frequently shown on the Turner Classic Movies
Turner Classic Movies
Turner Classic Movies is a movie-oriented cable television channel, owned by the Turner Broadcasting System subsidiary of Time Warner, featuring commercial-free classic movies, mostly from the Turner Entertainment and MGM, United Artists, RKO and Warner Bros. film libraries...
(TCM) cable channel. An acclaimed 1990 documentary (Harold Lloyd: The Third Genius) by Brownlow and Gill, which was shown as part of the PBS
Public Broadcasting Service
The Public Broadcasting Service is an American non-profit public broadcasting television network with 354 member TV stations in the United States which hold collective ownership. Its headquarters is in Arlington, Virginia....
series American Masters
American Masters
American Masters is a PBS television show which produces biographies on the artists, actors and writers of the United States who have left a profound impact on the nation's popular culture. It is produced by WNET in New York City...
, also created a renewed interest in Lloyd's work in the early 1990s. A DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
Collection of restored versions of most of his feature films (and his more important shorts) was released by New Line Cinema
New Line Cinema
New Line Cinema, often simply referred to as New Line, is an American film studio. It was founded in 1967 by Robert Shaye and Michael Lynne as a film distributor, later becoming an independent film studio. It became a subsidiary of Time Warner in 1996 and was merged with larger sister studio Warner...
in partnership with the Harold Lloyd Trust in November 2005, along with limited theatrical screenings in New York
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
and other cities in the US, Canada and Europe. Annette Lloyd
Annette D'Agostino Lloyd
Annette D'Agostino Lloyd is a silent film historian and author of numerous books on silent film and television, particularly on the life and works of actor Harold Lloyd...
has also said that if there is a large-enough show of support by fans, a second collection may be released in the future.
Academy Award
In 1953, Lloyd received a special Academy AwardAcademy Awards
An Academy Award, also known as an Oscar, is an accolade bestowed by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers...
for being a "master comedian and good citizen." The second citation was a snub to Chaplin, who at that point had fallen foul of McCarthyism
McCarthyism
McCarthyism is the practice of making accusations of disloyalty, subversion, or treason without proper regard for evidence. The term has its origins in the period in the United States known as the Second Red Scare, lasting roughly from the late 1940s to the late 1950s and characterized by...
and who had had his entry visa to the United States revoked. Regardless of the political overtones, Lloyd accepted the award in good spirit.
Death
Lloyd died at age 77 from prostate cancerProstate cancer
Prostate cancer is a form of cancer that develops in the prostate, a gland in the male reproductive system. Most prostate cancers are slow growing; however, there are cases of aggressive prostate cancers. The cancer cells may metastasize from the prostate to other parts of the body, particularly...
on March 8, 1971, in Beverly Hills, California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
. He was interred in a crypt in the Great Mausoleum at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California
Glendale, California
Glendale is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States. As of the 2010 Census, the city population is 191,719, down from 194,973 at the 2000 census. making it the third largest city in Los Angeles County and the 22nd largest city in the state of California...
.
Walk of Fame
Harold Lloyd has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of FameHollywood Walk of Fame
The Hollywood Walk of Fame consists of more than 2,400 five-pointed terrazzo and brass stars embedded in the sidewalks along fifteen blocks of Hollywood Boulevard and three blocks of Vine Street in Hollywood, California...
. His was only the fourth ceremony preserving his handprints, footprints, autograph, and outline of his famed glasses (which were actually a pair of sunglasses with the lenses removed), at Grauman's Chinese Theatre
Grauman's Chinese Theatre
Grauman's Chinese Theatre is a movie theater at 6925 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood. It is on the historic Hollywood Walk of Fame.The Chinese Theatre was commissioned following the success of the nearby Grauman's Egyptian Theatre which opened in 1922...
, in 1927. In 1994, he was honored with his image on a United States postage stamp designed by caricaturist Al Hirschfeld
Al Hirschfeld
Albert "Al" Hirschfeld was an American caricaturist best known for his simple black and white portraits of celebrities and Broadway stars.-Personal life:Born in St...
.
External links
- Official site - the official site of Harold Lloyd
- HaroldLloyd.us — a site with articles and information, maintained by Annette D'Agostino LloydAnnette D'Agostino LloydAnnette D'Agostino Lloyd is a silent film historian and author of numerous books on silent film and television, particularly on the life and works of actor Harold Lloyd...
- Harold Lloyd Forum part of ComedyClassics.org
- Harold Lloyd Photos at Silent Ladies & Gents
- BBC Radio Interview with Suzanne Lloyd (2002)
- Harold Lloyd in The Sin Of Harold Diddlebock at The Internet Archive