The Beginnings of Harold Lloyd by Robert Florey
published in Cinémagazine on December 29, 1922
Cinemamagazine of December 29, 1922
It is at the Algonquin Hotel , located almost at the corner of Sixth Avenue and 4th Street, that all the major film stars passing through New York stay. In the immense hall of this New York caravanserai, you will meet all the personalities of the “moving-picture-business”. The Algonquin Hotel is a real little Hollywood; Moreover, its owner, Mr. Frank Kays, is the friend of all the screen celebrities and he never goes more than a year without coming to Hollywood himself, to visit his many friends. Douglas and Mary are always very happy to make available to this charming man one of the apartments in their Beverly Hills property, the “Pickfair”. Moreover, it was at “Pickfair”, where I was also the host, that I had the opportunity to make the acquaintance of Mr. Frank Kays , and at that time, I had promised him to come down to his house every time I pass through New York.
Arriving at the Algonquin , I felt like I was in the lobby of the Hollywood Hotel . Directors, stars, managers, cameramen were gathered there. I recognized all the good friends from Hollywood who were taking advantage of the off season in the California studios to come and breathe a little air on Fifth Avenue. Now, as the fast elevator took me to the floor that had been designated for me, I felt a hand placed on my shoulder. I turned around…
Dressed in a loose brown coat, a gigantic checkered cap pulled down to my eyes, I recognized my old friend Harold Lloyd .
— I’m going up to 17° , he said to me, and you?
“I’m only going to the 11th floor, but I’ll accompany you to the 17th ,” I replied. — How long ago did you arrive in New York, Harold ? — No, only for two days; I will stay for about fifteen and then return to Los Angeles. I’m waiting in New York for the premiere of Doctor Jack , my latest strip .
Cinemamagazine of December 29, 1922
We had arrived at the 17th floor and Harold kindly decided that he would accompany me to the eleventh, so as not to be out of politeness to me. Then, as we arrived at the eleventh floor, and the driver forgot to stop, we went back down to the mezzanine… I must tell you, before going any further, that we made the trip to the mezzanine about six or seven times on the 17th floor and finally, Harold said to me: “ By the way, “old chap” why don’t you come into my house for five minutes? »
I followed Harold .
His servant stripped him of his coat, jacket and waistcoat.
— I have to put on my tuxedo, because I’m going to the Ziegfield Folies this evening , to see “The New Amsterdam “, the new revue that Florence Ziegfield has just launched . If you feel like it, come with us, I have a dressing room. Ready will be with us. ( Ready is Harold ‘s publicity man .)
I accepted with enthusiasm. After an excellent dinner at the Vanderbilt , we went to the theater. The cowboy Will Rodgers who, for years and years, has been the “highlight” of the Ziegfield Folies programs (his act consists of a few lasso exercises, during which he comments in his own way on all the events of the week) had learned that Harold would come that same evening. So he gave him a surprise… As soon as Will entered the stage, having fun with his lasso, he said to the audience:
– I am very happy to see here, this evening, the most charming and charming boy. most popular of the Hollywood film colony, my dear friend Harold Lloyd who is seated in the right proscenium… I am proud to be a friend of Harold Lloyd , we were inseparable for a long time when I was filming there – down, in this distant California, for Goldwyn and I can tell you that Harold Lloyd is indeed the most serious boy in the colony.,.
In the room all heads turn towards our dressing room and long cheers force Harold to greet the audience.
— Never has a scandal splashed the name of Harold Lloyd , continues Rodgers in his drawling, nasal voice , never, ever . (Further applause). By the way, I’ll tell you why. That’s because Harold was never stupid enough to get caught… And then, between us, I’m going to tell you one more secret. When a husband enters his house through the front door, Harold exits through the back door… And there you have it! !
Having said this, Rodgers did a pirouette and fled backstage while the spectators laughed. Needless to add, isn’t it, that poor Harold laughed heartily and found the joke a little strong.
It was towards the “ Lambs Club ” that we headed around midnight. Despite the light rain and the thick fog that fell on New York, Harold insisted on taking a few steps in the street. For the hundredth time I asked him the question he never had time to answer me in Los Angeles !
— Harold , tell me about your real life, but not the one that friend Ready tells journalists… No, the real one, for the “Friends of Cinema” in my country.
Cinemamagazine of December 29, 1922
Harold bit the end of a huge Havana, lit it, took me by the arm and spoke:
— I was born in Burchard (Nebraska). I was barely a year old when my parents left this village to live in a town in Utah. For about ten years, my parents went from town to town. When they had crossed the entire American continent and arrived at San Diego, they could not go any further, because in front of them was the Pacific Ocean and, moreover, they did not want to return to their not… They therefore settled in San Diego, which is located, as you know, about 100 miles from Los Angeles. During this time I had learned the alphabet in the state of Utah, learned to read in Iowa, to write in Oregon, to count in Colorado. My first knowledge of geography had been instilled in me in Arizona, and that of History in… Salt Lake City, I believe… My education, until the age of ten, was done in an incalculable number of schools .
“ In San Diego, my father opened a small shop and I became his helper; This did not prevent me from taking college courses and being part of a troupe of budding artists, who gave amateur performances in the evening. I also happened to work at the theater selling programs and sour candies! ! I was even an usher and second controller at the “chicken coop” as you say in French (rather, in slang). In this way I could attend all the performances “without a purse”… When I wanted to see the artists up close, I got hired as an electrician’s helper or a machinist’s helper… I was 14 years old when Mr. Connor founded the first drama school in San Diego. I soon became his favorite student, then his “second”. So I had four occupations: school, my father’s shop, selling programs and sweets at the theater and my lessons with the honorable Mr. Connor . I therefore became an “artist” or more precisely “intelligent extra”. We played every evening, plus two mornings a week and we rehearsed in the morning, because the program changed every eight days. Apart from that I followed college classes quite regularly and I founded a sports society! As you can see, I had no shortage of things to do in this tedious city…
“ If, in college, I was a very mediocre student, on the other hand, on the “stages”, I began to distinguish myself in composition roles. At 16 I was already playing 75 year olds!
“ It would have been easy for me to continue my studies, but my life was changed overnight by the simple appearance in San Diego of a film company, the Edison Moving Pictures Company . I became a regular actor, earning $35 a week. It happened that I played five different roles in the same day, in turn I was the policeman, the bandit, the journalist, the old general, the Indian or the cowboy, the traitor or the child, finally You know what it is ! I abandoned college, my father’s shop, Mr. Connor , my sports company and the theater to follow the “ Edison Company ” which was going to settle a little further north, on the Coast in Los Angeles. .
“ After having, in one year, played more than 500 roles for “ Edison ”, I moved under the flag of a new company which had just been founded, “ Keystone ” .
Cinemamagazine of December 29, 1922
We arrived in front of the “Lambs Club” and went straight to the smoking room. Fortunately, given the rather late hour, no one was there, which allowed me to hear the end of Harold ‘s story .
— At Keystone , where Sennett presided, I met a young boy of my age named Hal Roach . One day when Roach was ill I had the chance to play a role that had been assigned to him and it brought me closer to him. We became inseparable. Roach wanted to become a stage director, so when his uncle died a few months later, leaving him a small inheritance, he left Keystone to form his own company. He then asked me if I wanted to work in his troop at a salary of 50 dollars a week. This happened in 1916. I was only supposed to play comic roles, but for such a large salary I would have happily agreed to play the role of… a hippopotamus if necessary! I signed a contract with Hal Roach.
“ However, in 1916, the general public could only conceive of one comic for the screen: “ Charlie Chaplin ”. And because Charlot wore a small mustache and a costume that was too baggy, the public thought that all the other comedians had to be like him… I didn’t want to imitate Charlot , but I was still obliged to stick to tastes. public. However, I wanted to bring a little originality to my roles: Charlot having clothes that were too baggy, I took extremely short and narrow clothes as well as a small mustache different from his. I became “ Lonesome Luke ” and performed over 150 inept pranks in one game. I made a film in two or three days, and these productions, although bad, earned me a certain popularity. They never gave me personal satisfaction .
I felt that this type of work would not take me far and I was seriously considering creating another “type”, a new silhouette. One day I saw a comedian on stage wearing big tortoiseshell glasses and I thought I would bring this genre to the screen .
Cinemamagazine of December 29, 1922
“ From then on, I began to study comic situations very seriously. This, my old Bob, will no doubt seem quite contradictory to you, but I assure you that it is not . The hardest thing in the world is to make people laugh. I work day and night, I study constantly, I think from morning to evening to find what makes the audience laugh. I always wonder why people laugh when you don’t do anything to make them laugh and why they don’t laugh when you try to make them laugh… No matter where I am, I observe people and watch them laugh , I also look for the exact reason why they are laughing. It’s a huge job .
When I had finished “ Lonesome Luke ” I decided that the public should no longer laugh at my films, because of the eccentricity of my clothes, no, their hilarity must be provoked by a natural surprise or by a prank or action that they did not expect. People like to make fun of the victim of a prank, they like to laugh when a ridiculous adventure happens to one of their fellow men, did you see them laughing earlier at “ Ziegfield ” when Will made fun of Me ? People laugh instinctively, anywhere.
They will have fun seeing a can of paint fall from a scaffolding onto the head of a walker, not even thinking that they could have just as easily received the can on their head… They laugh when they see a big gentleman slipping in the street on a banana peel, they often laugh cruelly, but naturally. A grotesque, unexpected action of this kind amuses them.
This is why I decided to abandon the “ Lonesome Luke ” genre. Besides, in life, no one wears grotesque clothes like the ones I wore in these films; have you never seen people throwing cream pies or custard pies at each other’s heads in a restaurant? Policemen do not fight with bandits by throwing bricks at each other…
“ Take for example, my new kind, my tortoiseshell glasses. You can’t walk a hundred steps down the street without meeting a man who wears glasses, you wear them yourself!.,. This is therefore normal and is however enough to give me a special “type”, a “Trademark”. Equipped with my glasses enough to give me a “gender”, I decided to dress properly, like anyone else. My appearance on the screen was therefore natural, and the adventures that happened to me seemed more likely, more capable of happening to anyone. Do you catch me?
“ Only then did the painful part of my work begin. No longer having the comic aspect, I had to be comic naturally .
“ Maison Pathé d’Amérique distributed my films and, when my friend Roach explained to the director. Mr. Brunet , that I had decided to change my gender, it was something terrible…
“—We have launched the Lonesome Luke films on the market , we are not going to launch, now, Mr. Harold Lloyd , who is an unknown… All our advertising is done, we would have to start all over again from A to Z. is impossible. Tell Lloyd he can only be Lonesome Luke . Besides, his idea will have no success with the public … »
This is how the management of Pathé d’Amérique expressed itself…
“—All right! I replied, my contract is finished with you. I am leaving. I just have some interesting offers from another company…
” When they realized my imminent departure and that, one way or another, the series of “ Lonesome Luke ” would be discontinued, the management de Pathé , decided to try to launch “ Harold Lloyd, the man with the tortoiseshell glasses.. . »
“ We immediately began shooting a new series of films and the success came immediately, resoundingly. My salary was significantly increased. To avoid hearing the public declare: “Oh! he is no longer as good as he used to be”, or again: “Oh! he always does the same thing” I played different characters while carefully keeping my glasses on.
Cinemamagazine of December 29, 1922
Regarding the latter, I must tell you that they gave me a lot of trouble. They were subject to a very special study. These glasses naturally do not have lenses, they only consist of a simple tortoiseshell frame. But this frame is designed with care. If, for example, the rims of the glasses had been too big, they would have covered my eyebrows, and thereby taken away a means of expression. The upper part of these glasses was mounted so as to reach below my eyebrows and the frame was made so as not to hide any of the features of my physiognomy .
It’s rare, when I start a film, that I know exactly the script I’m going to shoot. I start with a general idea and it is by turning that we find the ideas, the “gags”. The public likes to be surprised, my old Bob, besides, isn’t that the case for you yourself? If something unexpected happens to you, aren’t you stimulated by it? Suppose someone tells you an anecdote (this is a guess, because there is no longer any way to tell you one since you know them all) and you guess the “fall”, you lose all interest in it . story and you don’t even listen to the narrator. In a film, you can easily predict events, but if, instead of the action you are guessing, another unforeseen and a hundred times more comical action occurs, you burst out laughing .
We must always show the public unexpected situations, funnier than those they anticipate. You should never present a ridiculous scene that is satisfied with being ridiculous, without any appreciable comic result. The public would be disappointed. Whereas if your ridiculous scene ends with a conclusion other than the expected one, your success is certain. Suppose I come to meet you in the street, with a beatific smile on my lips, and after asking you about your health I quietly tell you that your house is on fire.
This will feel even worse than getting punched in the nose by Jack Dempsey … Consider the opposite situation.
You’re waiting for some bad news and it’s excellent news that’s coming to you. You are doubly happy .
“ This is what I always put into practice, by always making the spectators believe that I am going to get into a very dangerous situation… When they are ready to pity my misfortune, my discomfiture and my disappointments, I escape from the situation in a comical way that no one expects… “
At this moment, the boy from “Lambs” came to interrupt this story.
— They’re asking for Mr. Harold Lloyd on the phone…
Harold says to me:
— You see, here’s another surprise that I didn’t expect… Who can possibly be calling me here at 3 o’clock in the morning?
Robert Florey ( New York, November 20, 1922)
*
At the time this article appears, Harold Lloyd is playing in Paris in Un Heureux Husband (I Do) by Hal Roach at the Montrouge-Palace in the 14th arrondissement.
Source :
Cinémagazine: Ciné-Ressources / La Cinémathèque Française