If you like this Carl Davis score, you should check out "A Hard Act to Follow" (avail. on YT), his masterpiece accompanying Kevin Brownlow's excellent bio of Buster Keaton. Davis also did a fantastic score to Keaton's early full-length film, "Our Hospitality." :)
Saw "Safety Last" many years ago, in a THEATER, in a beautiful 35mm print. Everyone who left that theater was babbling happily: that movie gave all of us a real high!
Harold Lloyd just had a very lovable quality... a guy you'd like to know. His dark features and long nose carried and read well on the screen. Long arms and athletic ability added to the comedy. Then when he showed sentiment, you were won over 100%.
Considering that this documentary is more than 30 years old, there should be even less people today who knows who Harold Lloyd was. But considering we now have internet and things like RU-vid and Wikipedia, it is also possible that more people have heard about him now than when the documentary was made.
Always remember seeing Harold Lloyd way back in the 70s as a kid, there was something so amazing about his antics that it was forever burnt into my memory.
Pretty sure most of the interviews for these series were filmed pre-1980, so Brownlow and Gill must have known they'd be making these documentaries for a while. Either that, or they built part of the docs around unused interviews!
@@leemendham4788 the latter, I'm sure. Brownlow and Gill did extensive interviews for their 13 part series Hollywood. Brownlow is the consummate film historian.
Ages ago I watched this entire programme on PBS. I already knew of Harold Lloyd, but not a lot about him. Anyone interested in comedy, the history of film, or just entertainment in general should watch this great documentary.
When I was a child, television showed old Harold Lloyd chapters, of course translated into Spanish, the same as the Fat and Skinny Movies, (Laurel and Hardy), as well as the Abbott and Costello comedy movies ... I grew up watching them on TV, And when I was an Adult, And I traveled to the USA for work, and it seemed, that the New Generations had never heard, or seen their programs, Minus their Movies ... the GOLDEN AGE of their Comedians and comedians , it seemed just an old lost memory ...for My is a strange thing, but for them that sad, not having memory ... Today I am 60 years old, and the things that amused me as a child are things that no one else had the opportunity to observe
Thanks soooo much for sharing this, Harold Lloyd has been on my top list of amazing performers since i got introduced to his movies in the early 80's. UK's BBC2 used to have a Harold Lloyd clips show and i feel in love with the guy back then.Its a tragedy how few people have any idea he ever existed.
Modesty that's why....fellow people of Welsh blood were the same way, like Alfred Russell Wallace, George Henry Thomas, George Everest, Frank Lloyd Wright. Never making a fuss about what they achieved.
Thanks to Harold's amazing granddaughter, Suzanne, Harold is coming back to silent movie houses, TCM, and other wonderful things in the future. True talent like Harold's will never die, thanks to fans like you, Blowfeld20k. And yes, Harold was quite, and is, lovable! :)
I'm in Uk, I used to watch Harold Lloyd, it would be on BBC2 at 5pm/6pm weekdays, Brilliant, Great Memories, I think when it finished i remember Fresh Prince of Belair replaced it.
The last of Thames TV's silent movie documentaries, following Hollywood, Unknown Chaplin, and Buster Keaton: A Hard Act to Follow. Sadly, you don't see this depth of research so often nowadays.
I completely agree. I desperately yearn for the old days. I think the '80s was a golden age for quality documentaries. Now they tend to be less detailed and more biased to cater for the politically correct.
I was able to watch a number of silent films in my college film classes, and the BEST SIGHT GAG that I ever saw in any film was the one in which Harold Lloyd ties a rope around his waist, with the other end attached to a giant's aching tooth! Then, after he runs to the end of it, the giant's tooth PULLED him BACK!!!
Harold Lloyd was awesome and not forgotten! at least not by me! I grew up in the 70s watching him and Buster Keaton, not to mention Chaplin! I would think the city clock movie is something any self respecting movie buff would have seen and enjoy watching again and again!
Thank you very much for sharing. It takes me back to school days when I used to watch HL's fabulous clips - haven't seen the Thames TV jingle for a few decades til tonight!
Harold Lloyd is a great comic genuis, wealthy, smart and next to Chaplin the wealthiest. Unfortunate talkies he never caught the same gold except his movie, The milky way. We all have favorites, Keaton his mine, Laurel and Hardy.
Chaplin is grossly over-rated. His best film was 'Monsieur Verdoux', 'The Great Dictator' was ok but the rest merely meh. Lloyd, Keaton and even Laurel&Hardy were vastly superior to Chaplin.
many many moons ago the bbc played Harold Lloyd films at the end of childrens tv/start of early evening programs, between 5 and 6, and theywere great :)
You mean Chaplin's video clips on RU-vid gets many more million views then anyone else. It's like that for a reason. Chaplin will and always be the king of silent comedy.
I think one reason may be that Chaplin is the oldest, born in 1889, followed by Lloyd born in 1893, followed by Buster Keaton, 1895. The three greats. Who's the best is all one's opinion. For me, no one had the balls Keaton had.
It must have cost them a lot to pull those stunts, especially time... It was a pure HARD WORK personified....this films were short hundred years ago with little or no technology, every bit look so real and close up... I wonder how they do that, better than today's CGI movies..REST IN PEACE TO ALL THESE MEN MEHN...
Indeed. For a time he made more money than Chaplin, Keaton or Laurel and Hardy. The Lloyd estate in newly developed Beverly Hills, CA., was larger than Chaplin's or Keaton's or even Pickfair of Douglas and Mary and certainly larger than Valentino's home. As to comparisons, it's really apples to oranges. Charlie C, created a character, the tramp. He never relied on thrill comedy, but situational comedy and character. later on he showed he could produce morality tales, "Modern Times" and then in sound, "The Dictator". HL as a kid under Hal Roach's direction did a knock-off of Chaplin but dropped it when he put on his glasses and boater straw hat. Chaplin doing his tramp character was not like us. Harold, most certainly to women I suspect, was the boy down the block. A lovable nerd who got the cute girl. Two very different styles. As to Keaton, I can't warm to his work at all. Terrific stunts and all. That deadpan expression and less than great plotlines. Nope.
I appreciate comments on Lloyd, by far his movies made the most money of all the silent clowns in the 1920s, his the boy next door stuck with the audience, his predictable humour was appreciated by his audience for sure. Keaton is an acquired taste when compared to Chaplins Tramp and Lloyd's glasses character. Keaton in my opinion was way ahead of the curve in his comedies, you have to think and observe closely to understand the joke, like the Rod Serling for science fiction, or like Ernie Kovacs, for TV. Rule breakers that created outside of box from the normal. Keaton was also one, if the greatest film directors and performers of the silent era. Keaton is by far noted as one of the greatest influences on comedians that followed after, plus if see list of greatest films ever, or greatest silent films, he has several listed.
I was reading some reviews of "Grandma''s Boy" on Old Fulton NY Postcards and it was as if nothing like it had ever been on screen before. The praise was off the charts and unanimous. In Brooklyn, it was supposed to run for two weeks but they had to change that to five. I had never heard of the film, but at the time it was the as if the heavens over Hollywood parted, and these five reels dropped down. HL was pretty much top of the charts that year, and it wasn't even a "thrill" film.
To all those responding to my comments on Harold Lloyd, breath, I prefer Keaton, sorry, not saying he wasn't a genius, he was, and he didn't have picadillos like Keaton which held him back at that time. Keaton was a visionary, Lloyd was the comedian of the time, roaring 20s type. It's just preference man, how many present day comedians or past mention Lloyd as an influence. None. Doesn't mean for his time he wasn't loved. He was, his movies made most money.
“Three men funny enough to carry comedy through seven reels - and only three so far. Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd. […] The three rely on specialties: Chaplin on his supreme talent as an actor, Lloyd upon droll ’gags’ . When you leave a Chaplin picture, you remember how great he was, when you leave a Lloyd picture you remember how clever the picture was, and when you leave a Keaton picture you remember the jokes. Chaplin makes characters, Lloyd makes situations, and Keaton makes anecdotes on the screen.“ Carl Sandburg 1924 (from The Movies Are, a collection of his movie critiques in the Chicago Daily News, which I highly recommend to any and every silent film lover and film history buff in general)
These Lloyd shorts are full of the same gags that remind me of Bugs Bunny cartoons. Surely, they must have been inspired and influenced over there at Warner Bros. Cartoons.
I grew up in 1970's England and we were spoon fed old black and white Hollywood films, Buster Keaton was good, Charlie Chaplin was better but Harold feckin Lloyd was outstanding, we all talked about Harold and never missed a film, the only ones to come close were Laurel and Hardy but they were just comedy :)
