Harold Lloyd Available The Boy 1918 Films Review Part 1

New year, new misadventures. Harold Lloyd and company remained busy making new films. While 1917 Lloyd takes about an hour and a half to watch, 1918 Lloyd takes about three hours. Both have lost films that skew knowing how much material they made by length. Some of the six films watched here have better stories than the 1917 bunch. They’re more coherent and longer than before, trending around ten minutes than five. The stories aren’t particularly special, but at least they’re trying. Still, some of these shorts are mindless joke vehicles or don’t do enough with their ideas to really work. An exception is The Big Idea. It doesn’t bite off a story that’s more than it can chew and manages to put Lloyd in more engaging situations that emphasize him as a character and not a blank slate. Snub Pollard, Bebe Daniels, and William Blaisdell appear in many of these films. Snub and Bebe are more muted, the former is underutilized due to the increasing Lloyd-focus these films have and the latter plays just as a pretty face in the background. Blaisdell does a little better, simply due to having more opportunities to play off of Lloyd. He can be fun as this intimidating, brutish type. He’s not any kind of great talent, though neither is Lloyd in these shorts. Despite his moments of being more developed, overall Lloyd does simple gags and makes simple faces, not putting more work into his character.

“The Boy” as a character is a little more fleshed out and consistent. He has a heart of gold in some ways and is very mischievous in others. According to interviews, Harold Lloyd wanted this character to be more relatable and human. At this specific goal, he fails here, though he has improved upon the 1917 films. The Boy sometimes is very knowledgeable on a situation it wouldn’t really make sense in (Take him in “Follow the Crowd” knowing how to maneuver the rooms) or being able to take a torrent of comical situations. The character in some ways seems to be trying to be a more realistic person than other comedy characters of the time were, but the unrealistic moments that seem to exist for the sake of comedy can break this idea. As is, he lacks a strong identity.

Below are thoughts on specific shorts. All include

SPOILERS

Lloyd’s 86th film: The Big Idea

This short focuses on and stays on a simple comedy idea without getting bogged down in too much idiocy, other than Snub’s fortunately very brief subplot. The Big Idea focuses on Harold’s plan to save Bebe’s job. While it could be interpreted as a selfless act, he also does have a crush on her and he’s tricking other people for her benefit. A favorite gag is when Harold sees someone wrote the address of the store on their collar and he secretly corrects an error on it. Also, why would the man write on his own collar? Snub has a convoluted idea in order to get a cop to step off of something his foot is on. Just tell the cop to step to the side! Maybe he thinks just interacting with the policeman will cause him to do something stupid and violent, as Roach cops love to do? Bebe is working at the store, though she was fired. Possibly that was because Harold was absent.

Harold wrote the two xs directly on a painting. Why not on the back? Perhaps he knew the painting would be destroyed by the new owners in search of the money. We only see one person buy more than one item with the xs on it. Surprised more didn’t do that. Maybe they did offscreen as amusingly the thrift store is completely empty pretty quickly. Bebe licking Harold’s thumb so he could leaf through money seemed to suggest she was picking him over Snub, but then she still picks Snub. The plot twist is unexpected and pretty satisfying. Bebe picks Snub possibly because there was $10,000 in that vase, which Snub now owns. Harold is of course defeated. Harold does in some ways feel like more of a joke dispenser than an actual person, but the inventive and relatively relatable story makes this a highlight so far. As an aside, licking a thumb that’s just touched money is so disgusting.

90th film: A Gasoline Wedding

Harold seems furious with a man after he unromantically kisses him, possibly because he doesn’t want to be kissed by a man. Harold not looking at the road causes two people to get attached and be dragged on the pavement. While this isn’t portrayed as a particularly big deal, if that happened in real life I couldn’t imagine how painful that would be. Shorts like this treat the female lead as someone to be taken by men with no real autonomy of their own. Women go with the guy with even slightly more money or resources than another, apparently not caring about people’s feelings or what will actually be good for her. A guy that will flaunt money for a woman may very well move onto the next beautiful woman. Other characters can have a dehumanizing mindset. It’s weird that a father would be okay with a guy literally kidnapping his daughter and forcing her to marry him, as happens here. He also treats it at a point as a race between the man he wants to marry his daughter and Harold.

This is a fun one if you want to see a 1910s gay wedding. The father and company never take the blanket off of Snub’s head until after they’re married. Why? Seeing as they didn’t know it was Snub, he probably never verbally opposed anything going on. He even says, “Well, at least I can cook.” Apparently he doesn’t mind being married to this man. This bit of gay representation is the only particularly interesting thing here.

91st film: Look Pleasant, Please

In the violent world of Hal Roach, why would someone kiss a random woman? There usually is an angry father or partner around the corner. “My husband says he will be down here to murder you shortly.” is a funny line. Why wouldn’t the photographer leave his job? He knew someone was coming to kill him. Expectedly, the upset husband is pretty crazy, literally shooting through a door that may or may not have uninvolved people in it. That’s Roach for you. At the end, it seems Bebe went off with Harold. Why? There’s no reason or motivation for her to leave her husband. The two don’t demonstrate any romantic attraction. If I was Harold, I’d worry about him wanting to find and shoot me.

A lot of the short is very ‘random’. Some of the jokes don’t make any sort of sense and feel like filler. Take Harold with the older woman he was photographing. There are good moments, like Harold leaning on a scale to make an item more expensive. It’s also amusing to see such anarchy break out in the room. There’s such a big mess by the end. The premise and execution are about too dumb to get into the film, but there’s some smirk-worthy moments.

94th film: On the Jump (One minute excerpt)

Wasn’t very funny, but we only saw a brief clip. It doesn’t seem any different from the usual.

95th film: Follow the Crowd

The jokes once again can be very random and the story a little hard to follow. Harold is able to fight some people by taking advantage of the unique doors and openings in the room. However, he’s never been here before, so how could he know of them? Him tricking them and doing things with the door is pretty clever and is decently funny. The rest of the movie is pretty boring. The disjointed quality makes it believable this film has lost portions. There’s also a little blackface for good measure.

97th film: It’s a Wild Life

This is more pretty poor and mindless jokes. Harold relaxing on the car step is a fun gag. Also, him rubbing his knife on the bottom of his shoe is so disgusting. Probably worse than Bebe licking Harold’s thumb earlier.

98th film: Hey There!

Harold brings chaos everywhere he goes. This one embraces the “him having no life other than to do jokes” aspect. The jokes are sometimes even supernatural for the purpose of humor and Harold is this human cartoon that knows he’s a cartoon that’s been placed in this situation for insanity to happen. Some of the gags are pretty good, like Harold just pranking a guy by walking around and going under him as he walks. There’s also Harold’s hat moving a little on its own. One of the stranger gags is after Bebe accidentally pokes Harold, he bites her. This one is a little better, but still not too funny. Finally, what did the letter say?

Harold Lloyd Available The Boy 1917 Films Review

In 1917, Harold Lloyd ditched his character “Lonesome Luke” for a new one. Either by the shorts or by fans, the new character is called “Harold”, “The Boy”, and “the glasses character”. In a way, he wasn’t named. Most of these films don’t address such a thing. Thus, it’s debatable if these adventures are supposed to feature the same person or not, or if only some do. It seems that these films weren’t intended to portray a single continuity. If it did, there’d be a lot of Bebe Danielses and Snub Pollards wandering around, as many couldn’t be the same character. In the bundle of films we’ll be looking at, two films feature him with a random name. Lloyd isn’t always playing the same type of character. He might be more athletic in one and wimpish in another. In some, he is moral and others mischievous. What is the reason these are considered “Boy” films? Fortunately, every “The Boy” film from 1917 survives. Thus, we can get a decently solid look at the early developments of this stage of Harold Lloyd’s career.

A lot of these shorts feel like joke vehicles. Many are around five minutes and thus you can’t really invest yourself in them. The comedy is reasonably generic and low brow. “Harold wants a girl so in order to get her, he does something silly. Snub, a cop, or someone else wants to stop him for whatever reason. People hit each other.” This sort of thing might be more enjoyable if you were seeing one a week, but it’s hard to believe people didn’t get bored. There are two better ones, which are worth watching. Bliss and The Flirt feature more character moments that make the lead feel more realistic and the environment closer to something that could actually exist. Neither are brilliant, but are steps in the right direction.

While a lot of these shorts are very bad, they benefit from being so short. They want you to laugh, so if they fail then we can quickly move on. The ones that are around ten minutes and have more going on story-wise aren’t particularly offensive. They have similar comedy to the shorter films. There’s also the positive of the directing being a little better due to Hal Roach not filling that role. There’s a little more punch to the angles and framing. The main negative is that the three leads; Harold Lloyd, Bebe Daniels, and Snub Pollard, don’t have personalities most of the time. Daniels looks pretty and the other two get into fights or other kerfuffles. They aren’t down to Earth in really any way most of the time and they don’t stick out from other comedy clowns. If this was the only era of Harold Lloyd available, he might be seen historically as any ol’ disposable comedian.

Below are thoughts on specific shorts. All include

SPOILERS

Lloyd’s 75th film: Over the Fence

Through circumstances hard to understand, Ginger (Harold Lloyd) quickly becomes a baseball player, without having proved himself at all. Later, Ginger is very fast and is also able to overpower a large group of men. Lloyd apparently wanted to replace Lonesome Luke with a more realistic character, and this is what we get first time around. Ginger steals baseball tickets from someone and Snitch (Snub Pollard) following steals those tickets from Ginger. Ginger doesn’t check to see if he still has them until he and Bebe are at the game. Amusing in its stupidity, Snitch shows up and Bebe goes with him because he has the tickets. Why would Ginger want to be with Bebe after she left him because another man had slightly more than him, baseball tickets? One big difference between Ginger/The Boy and Luke in what little I’ve seen is that Ginger gets the girl here. If Luke never did get the girl, maybe Harold Lloyd wanted to get a new character so he could?

76th film: Pinched

This was weirdly hard to follow. There’s a lot of intertitles, so maybe it isn’t complete? This short features incompetent police, another commonality of the series. One of the better gags is when Harold buys a cop’s baton so he can hit him over the head, then takes the money back. For some reason Harold dresses as a woman and hits on the cop. It’s a very random-feeling gag. The ending is funny, with Harold breaking out of jail only to appear in front of lawmen.

77th film: By the Sad Sea Waves

Harold becomes a lifeguard, for no discernible reason. What follows has an especially big issue of feeling like story beats were picked at random, down to Harold deciding to be a lifeguard instead of him being one from square one. Notable moments include Harold unfortunately kissing a girl without consent, Harold going to save a drowning Bebe without us seeing it, and it starting to feel like these filmmakers think cops are all really dumb.

78th film: Bliss

An amusing gag includes Harold taking a cop’s badge and scaring him away by pretending to be one. The cop is dumb enough to buy it. The cop doesn’t reappear, with this just being thrown in. A better direction for this short would be to follow Harold with the badge and the cop getting into shenanigans over that, but Harold gave the badge back after that initial joke. Harold possibly convinced a man to sell him a tuxedo by kissing him. Film degradation makes it hard to know what was going on. Another great gag is Harold taking advantage of the man’s hole in his pocket. When he pays the coin, he is able to get it back. Bebe’s dad is so violent. It’s strangely humorous seeing him throw a bunch of guys around like ragdolls, with some obvious dummies for good measure. Hal Roach can’t resist some pointless violence. Occasionally there are strange gags that aren’t necessarily funny. Harold hangs his clothes on a wall and they fall down. It wasn’t established why he wouldn’t notice the lack of a hook. Later, Harold sees a man who lifts his arm to put a spoon in his mouth, but he can’t lift his arm enough. Harold then puts the guy’s arm in a trombone. Who thought of that? Finally, how did Harold pay for that cab if he had no money?

79th film: Rainbow Island

This one is weirdly light on jokes. It’s as if you’re supposed to find the situation inherently funny. The runtime is mostly dedicated to a disposable story. Some of it is told through intertitles, which can pull you out of the immersion. Snub and Harold once again act like a duo, as they did in Clubs Are Trump. This one follows the duo winding up on an island with scary natives. Welcome to yet another outdated trope. One of the stranger moments is that apparently Snub and Harold were out at sea for at least ten days without any sign of food or water.

80th film: The Flirt

This one has more inventive gags than some of the other films, like Harold having a hole in a newspaper for looking at girls. Later, a woman looks at him and he looks back with a donut as if it were a monocle. Earlier on, Snub minds the Boy looking at the cashier girl, without it making sense why. Only we find out at the end that she’s Snub’s wife. That’s a fun thing to toss in the pot. This short taps into a little more the “human appeal” that Lloyd has had in his most famous work. Here he is a person with an understandable human emotion and he sometimes acts the part. He lights up and loosens up when seeing a girl, jumping up on a stool to talk. While this movie doesn’t have a lot of “human moments”, it’s a step in the right direction compared to how cartoonish Lloyd sometimes takes these films. This is damaged by things like Harold throwing a banana peel on the ground (why would he do that?) and a man becoming literally so upset about not getting his food that he starts firing a gun in the restaurant. Neither are very realistic, though the latter is funny.

81st film: All Aboard

A clever gag was Harold blowing in a phone with his tears in it and the tears flying in the face of the person on the other end. This one tries to have a more fleshed out narrative, telling a story instead of hyper-prioritizing gags. It’s not particularly incompetent at this, but the movie just doesn’t really come together, just being quite dull. It’s fun to see Harold rob Snub. Don’t let fictional Harold Lloyd near your money. He will take it!

82nd film: Move On

The comedy in this short is among the less-thought out. You could imagine Hal Roach and friends realizing they needed a short really fast, so made this one up on the spot. A man sneaking into Bebe Daniel’s baby carriage for no reason is an odd joke. A police officer is once again incredibly violent for no reason. Lloyd’s character is named “Chester Fields”.

83rd film: Bashful

Harold drinks a punchbowl at a party. Now no one can have any! Why was he such a jerk there? Harold claiming to be a father and accidentally being given a black child got a chuckle from me. The scenes in this one sometimes cut so quickly that you can’t really take in a joke, not that the jokes here are anything worth appreciating, really.

84th film: Step Lively

At first, this one is reasonably compelling. Harold is so desperately hungry that he tries to steal a sausage and after a dog takes it, chases after them; possibly to get the sausage back. There’s a lot of expected jokes of people running around and hitting each other afterwards. To top it off is a bench appearing in-between a cut. One-reel 1910s editing at its finest. I can’t stop thinking about how disgusting The Boy’s clothes must be after hiding in a trash bin.

OVERVIEW

The modern releases of Harold Lloyd films are reminiscent of Beavis and Butt-Head: The Mike Judge Collection. Judge edited some episodes of his show and excised others, with the earlier episodes more likely to be excluded for not being good enough in his view. Praises and DVDs of Harold Lloyd focus on his 1920s era usually, with highlights from the 10s and 30s. That would certainly be a better introduction to Lloyd than to start from the beginning in 1915. With him and Beavis and Butt-Head, the earlier installments were less interesting and original than what came later. A lot of these 1917 films are terribly dull and only have much value to hardcore fans. There are gems, though. Someone that wants just the decent early Lloyd films should see Bliss and The Flirt. That being said, these films’ historical significance means one can’t be too sorry to have them and it’s in a sense a shame there are lost films or films that are hard to find, but those factors are also built-in ways to make it so people find the golden age first.

Harold Lloyd Available Lonesome Luke Films (1916-1917) Review

Frame from “Clubs Are Trump”

Harold Lloyd has been one of my favorite comedians of the golden age of Hollywood for many years now. Despite this, I’ve overlooked his shorts era, only catching a few here and there. Now is the time to rectify that. Most of this era involves Hal Roach Studios, with every 1915-mid 1917 Lloyd film being directed by Hal Roach, who ultimately would not direct very much later on. Sadly, most of Lloyd’s shorts before he became the “Boy” character are lost, with many, many Boy films also missing. Even of what’s survived from his first prominent character of “Lonesome Luke”, very little is available to watch. Of the fifteen Lonesome Luke installments that are not lost, only four are accessible. While it’s impossible to truly read Luke’s character due to any developments being essentially lost, we can get a view of what he might’ve been like by the four films that survive. Roughly, each of these films are ten after the other. The last available installment is the second-last Luke film ever made.

Lloyd’s 41st film: Luke Joins the Navy (1916)

The four minutes of this film suggest a funny romp. Gags like the woman running around chasing someone or Luke being pushed by some sailors are funny as is and with more scenes and better pacing could be even better. Sadly, not much can be gleamed from the character of Luke. While hopes aren’t high this actually happened, ideally he would’ve been characterized more in the full movie. He’s a blank slate. There certainly isn’t a story worth investing in, there probably wouldn’t be even if the whole thing survived. As is, Luke Joins the Navy isn’t something you need to watch, but is not at all a bad or unfunny way to kill a few minutes. As long as you can forgive the pacing and things like guys in movies wanting to date a girl that is so quick to leave them for another man or a friend of Luke’s seemingly being introduced very suddenly.

50th film: Luke’s Movie Muddle, aka The Cinema Director (1916)

This one is pretty solid. It features sharper gags that take whatever they can from this simple comedy premise. It’s a clever gag to have Luke working at a theater and serving almost every role there. Luke can be read into more as a man who is frustrated by aspects of his work and is mixed in how good he is at it. A favorite element is how he is nicer to female customers than males and gets distracted from work when seeing them. An amusing moment is Luke holding a sign for Pathé Exchange, the distribution company for these films in an apparent bit of self-advertising.

The ultimate downfall of the short is that Luke is very much like Charlie Chaplin, even looking similar. The film as a whole could pass as a Keystone Studios affair, with their movies having incredibly flat directing. If you can forgive those issues, this is a breezy movie to watch. This one doesn’t feel incomplete and can be enjoyed as a cohesive experience and not as a fragment best looked at as a historical document. That being said, there is rough editing and minor continuity errors, but that was very common in films by Hal Roach and other movies of the time. Interestingly, Muddle features a recurring theme in Roach movies of characters being very prone to violence after a problem with someone. That trope survives in one of the earliest available films by Roach.

66th film: Lonesome Luke, Messenger (1917)

The plot had potential, with character goals being well defined, but it’s very thin and the movie is more about excess comedy. That being said, the comedy is generally funny and consistent. The bicycle-related gags are absolutely hysterical and seem like they’d be hard to pull off. Other than that, one favorite part is that Luke and his associate, Snub Pollard, are mailmen, but then quickly are recruited for unrelated jobs, with them being mailmen not relevant. It’s like they were going to go on a mailman adventure, but got pulled into another story. The plot gets going after Luke is distracted by girls, just like last time. He even says to “forget the packages” they were supposed to deliver. The pacing is so fast for most of the runtime that a lot of the humor can’t breathe or hit very hard. Maybe a small amount of footage is lost? While you can respect the methodology of “let’s constantly throw jokes at the screen as fast as possible”, they would work better with slightly slower pacing. Overall, this one is worth a watch despite its problems due to just how many good gags there are.

SPOILERS

The “violence” theme continues with everyone turning against Luke to the point that almost all the characters in the film run after him at the end. This is the second film where Luke showed interest in getting a girl and both times he didn’t. Of course he is Lonesome Luke, but it’s interesting to see such a handsome man in this era not be able to get with a girl. At least with Charlie Chaplin, he made himself look older to cover his incredibly good looks.

73rd film: Clubs Are Trump (1917)

The longest film here. Of the roughly fifty shorts ahead of me before the Harold Lloyd golden era, this is the only two-reeler. The next longest is fourteen minutes. When this was released, there were already shorts being released with Lloyd’s next character, “The Boy”, though all the Lukes were filmed before the Boys. For the record, I watched this with foreign language intertitles, but the story made sense still. If Movie Muddle felt like a Keystone movie, this one is hard to believe it wasn’t. There’s even bumbling cops and a park as the location. A Chaplin at Keystone film called The Fatal Mallet comes to mind when the characters in Clubs are hitting each other over the head. The comedy is very dull and the story drags immensely due to the long runtime. While the other three shorts were too fast, this has the opposite problem. Snub Pollard has had lesser roles in this series, but here he is essentially just as prominent as Lloyd. He gets a lot to do. The main positive is that we get to see both of their characters become more defined throughout this one short, though only a little. In tandem with that is the pacing getting faster overtime, which results in the ending being less boring than before.

SPOILERS

Snub and Luke don’t make themselves likable when they sit at the bench of guys and their girlfriends and try to take their girlfriends. Throughout the film, the women don’t show much emotions and don’t appear to mind men literally taking them as if they are something to be won by them. At one point, a group of them all follow just two men because I guess they feel they are the manliest? This film ups the violence, with numerous cops, cavemen, and random people all being prone to attacking others, sometimes over nothing. One guy walks out of frame holding Luke and Snub, then we cut to a shot of a lake and he throws them in. It would’ve made more sense to start the gag in frame with the lake, so it didn’t have to be filmed like that. One favorite moment is when the duo trick the cop into getting stuck in the tree so they can beat him. It’s satisfying to see someone who assaulted them for no reason, for apparent affection, get comeuppance. They lash out, which makes sense in this universe where police are prone to hitting people.

One of the “nicer” moments is when after working together to defeat a common threat, Snub and Luke shake hands, which helps to show why they may be together, due to these moments of getting along. Despite them wanting women, they seem at their best and most comfortable together. One of the intertitles translates to, “Two feminine men”, in reference to Luke and Snub. When the two awake from their dream, they’re snuggling because they are imagining being with women. A cop sees them and is offended. I guess the problem is he thinks they’re gay? The two even at one point lock arms and walk away together. This added element may be coincidental, but it’s fun to see it in a fictional world of bitterness.

Seeing as there’s this constant “competing” for women, and the women follow whoever has knocked someone else out, the violence could be seen as a way of asserting dominance/masculinity. “I’m the real man because I can hit you!” This is amplified in the caveman segments, which suggests the 1910s characters are acting “like cavemen”. No one ends up with the women (probably due to the script forgetting about them), which suggests this doesn’t work. The main character is literally named “Lonesome Luke”. Luke and others lose for their behavior of bothering couples and getting into childish fights.

OVERVIEW

If you’ve seen Chaplin, these films can be really frustrating due to the cribbing of his act. It’s not even like Lloyd is on the Billy West level of Chaplin impersonating. It’s nice to see that Lloyd could inject personality into Luke, instead of him phoning it in. It’s possible that the first fortyish films were more generic, due to the various elements having less going on, in which case I can’t be too sorry about not having to watch them. The last film here is interesting in terms of the development of Hal Roach. Due to the film focusing on a comedy duo essentially, you can imagine that if Laurel and Hardy were making movies together at this point, this would’ve been a film of theirs. Many have criticized Roach’s directing and his inexperience is very prevalent here.