Harold Lloyd(1893-1971)
- Actor
- Producer
- Director
Born in Burchard, Nebraska, USA to Elizabeth Fraser and J. Darcie
'Foxy' Lloyd who fought constantly and soon divorced (at the time a
rare event), Harold Clayton Lloyd was nominally educated in Denver and
San Diego high schools and received his stage training at the School of
Dramatic Art (San Diego). Lloyd grew up far more attached to his
footloose, chronically unemployed father than his overbearing mother.
He made his stage debut at age 12 as "Little Abe" in "Tess of
d'Ubervilles" with the Burwood Stock company of Omaha. Harold and his
father moved to California as a result of a fortuitous accident
settlement in 1913. Foxy bought a pool hall (that soon failed) while
Harold attended high school. The pair were soon broke when his father
suggested he try out for a job on a movie being shot at San Diego's Pan
American Exposition by the Edison Company. On the set he first met
Hal Roach who would be the most
influential person in his professional life. Roach (admittedly a poor
actor) told Lloyd that someday he'd be a movie producer and he'd make
him his star.
Soon afterward, Roach inherited enough money to begin a small
production company (Phun Philms, quickly renamed Rolin, with a partner
who he soon bought out) and contacted Lloyd to star in the kinds of
films he wanted to make: comedies. On the basis of a handful of
self-produced shorts starring Lloyd, he managed to land a production
contract with the U.S. branch of the French firm, Pathe, who literally
paid Roach by the exposed foot of film on what films were accepted.
Things were touch and go in the beginning, with improvised scenarios,
outdoor shoots meaning Pathe rejected several of their first efforts,
resulting in missed paydays. During his first contract with Roach he
appeared in "Will E. Work" and then "Lonesome Luke" comedies,
essentially cheap variations of
Charles Chaplin's Little Tramp
character. He abandoned the character in disgust in late 1917, adopting
his "glasses" persona, an average young man capable of conquering any
obstacle thrown at him. He began cementing his new image with
Over the Fence (1917), that
ushered in a prolific number of shorts through late 1921, often
releasing 3 per month. In his "glasses" personification, Lloyd's
popularity grew exponentially with each new release, but Lloyd rapidly
grew dissatisfied with his relationship with his producer. Roach and
Lloyd fought constantly; it's not so much that he didn't want to work
for Roach, he didn't want to work for anyone - a trait he himself
recognized from early on. To be fair, Roach was increasingly
preoccupied with other stars (The "Our Gang" series was launched to
huge success in 1922 and he also produced ''Snub Pollard" shorts,
among others) and although he would always resent Lloyd's attitude and
ultimate defection to Paramount, the loss of his major star wouldn't
financially cripple him. Lloyd had his own quirks; he fell in love with
his first co-star Bebe Daniels, who left
him after it became apparent he was unable to make a commitment
(however the two would remain lifelong friends). Lloyd, in his own way
was decidedly complex: he could be professionally generous (often
allowing debatably deserving directorial credit to members of his crew)
while being notoriously cheap. Yet he practiced little financial self
control in anything that concerned himself. Wildly superstitious, he
engaged in strict rituals about dressing himself, leaving through the
same doors as he entered, and expected his chauffeurs to know which
streets were unlucky to traverse. As his finances improved with age he
happily indulged himself with a myriad of hobbies that would include
breeding Great Danes, amassing cars, bowling, photography, womanizing,
and high-fidelity stereo systems. He was open minded about homosexuals
while being practically Victorian in his ideas about raising his
daughters. He had an enormous libido and rumors abounded about
illegitimate children and according to Roach, chronic bouts with VD.
Most traumatically, he suffered the loss of his right thumb and
forefinger in an accidental prop bomb explosion on August 14, 1919,
just as his career was starting to take off. Lloyd would go to great
lengths to hide his disability, spending thousands on flesh-colored
prosthetic gloves and hiding his right hand whenever knowingly
photographed, even long after his career ended. Upon his recovery he
completed work on
Haunted Spooks (1920) and
successfully renegotiated his contract with Pathe, which began a career
ascent that would rival Chaplin's (indeed, Lloyd was more successful,
considering grosses on total output as Chaplin's output soon dwindled
by comparison). Lloyd began feature film production with the 4-reel
A Sailor-Made Man (1921). It
began as a 2-reel short but contained, in his words, "so much good
stuff we were loathe to take any of it out." It became a huge hit and
continued to release hit features with ever increasing grosses but
split with Hal Roach (who retained lucrative re-issue rights to his
earlier films) after completing
The Freshman (1925), one of his
finest films. Pathe's U.S. operations quickly unraveled after their
U.S. representative, Paul Brunet returned to France, and Lloyd made a
decisive move (Roach himself would also leave Pathe, opting for a
distribution deal with MGM - Mack Sennett,
also distributed by Pathe, would be financially ruined). After weighing
various attractive offers, Lloyd signed an advantageous contract with
Paramount and racked up another hit with
For Heaven's Sake (1926), one
of his weakest silent features, yet it grossed an incredible $2.591
million, nearly equaling "The Freshman" and astonishing even himself.
Lloyd could do no wrong throughout the 1920s, he consistently earned at
or near $1.5 million per film with his Paramount contract, and seemed
invincible. He married his second co-star
Mildred Davis on February 10, 1923
and she retired from acting (replaced by
Jobyna Ralston). He built a huge 32-room
mansion he christened, "Greenacres" that took over 3 years to complete
and the couple eventually had 3 children. His final silent film,
Speedy (1928), shot on location in New
York, was one of the few major hits of the sound transition period and
remains (as do most of Lloyd's films) thoroughly enjoyable today. The
advent of sound proved problematic for the comedian. His films were
gag-driven and his writing team was wholly unaccustomed to converting
their type of comedy into dialog. While his first sound effort (began
as a silent),
Welcome Danger (1929) grossed
nearly $3 million, by any standard it's a bad film, and marked a
serious decline in Lloyd's screen persona; he became a talking
comedian. Ironically, as bad as the film is, it would prove to be the
last solid hit of his career. His next talkie,
Feet First (1930), included a climb
reminiscent (but technically superior to that) of his hit
Safety Last! (1923), only being in
sound, it contained every grunt and groan and proved painful to watch.
With a gross of less that $1 million, Lloyd would see slightly over
$300,000, his smallest feature paycheck to date, and it became clear he
was in trouble. Lloyd fought back with
Movie Crazy (1932). Generally
regarded as his finest talkie, it grossed even less than "Feet First."
Lloyd left Paramount for Fox and suffered his first outright flop with
his next feature,
The Cat's-Paw (1934), which grossed
$693,000 against a negative cost of $617,000 ---resulting in red ink on
a net basis. The miracle Harold Lloyd needed to salvage his career
would never happen, but he refused to go down without a fight.
Amazingly, the public was oblivious to his decline, and he was widely
considered as one of the few silent comedy stars to have made a
successful transition through the first decade of sound. But to those
within the industry, the numbers didn't add up. Back at Paramount on a
2-movie deal, Lloyd starred in
The Milky Way (1936), a
better-than-average comedy that pulled a world-wide gross of $1.179
million, but it had production budget exceeding $1 million, resulting
in a $250,000 loss for the studio. Paramount was livid, demanding a
personal guarantee from Lloyd on anything over $600,000 for his next
film, Professor Beware (1938).
The comedian soon discovered he couldn't complete the film within the
required budget and did something unprecedented --for him at least-- he
invested his own money. The final production cost was $820,275 - and it
grossed a mere $796,385 - and as a result of a complex payment deal,
Lloyd ended up personally losing $119,400 on its initial release (he
would eventually recoup the bulk of his losses over the next 35 years).
At the relatively young age of 45, Harold Lloyd's Hollywood career was
effectively over. Still immensely wealthy from a conservative
investment strategy, and always hyperactive, he sought out ways to
occupy his time, dragging his kids on marathon movie nights all across
Los Angeles and falling back on his many hobbies. Foxy, who had handled
the bulk of his correspondence (almost all Lloyd's pre-1938 autographs
were actually signed by Foxy) and had carefully documented his press
clippings since his acting career had began, retired to Palm Springs in
1938, leaving a void in Lloyd's life. He produced two pictures for RKO,
A Girl, a Guy, and a Gob (1941),
and a Kay Kyser vehicle,
My Favorite Spy (1942) which must
have looked good on paper but went nowhere at the box office. This
ended his career as a producer. He would sign a $25,000 deal with
Columbia in 1943 for a comeback project that never materialized. In
1944, Lloyd was approached by director
Preston Sturges who envisioned a
first-rate vehicle for him entitled,
The Sin of Harold Diddlebock (1947).
The production launched Sturges' new California Pictures, was financed
by Howard Hughes, and initially
released by United Artists. It proved to be a nightmare for
everyone concerned. Its $1.7 million production cost proved to be an
insurmountable obstacle preventing it from profitability and the
eccentric Hughes withdrew it from circulation, later retitling it "Mad
Wednesday," re-editing and re-releasing it as an RKO feature in 1951 to
an even more dismal box office. Lloyd would also zealously protect
ownership of his material and was quite litigious. He successfully sued
MGM over their unauthorized poaching of his gags on a
Joan Davis vehicle,
She Gets Her Man (1945) (sadly
an action that put the final nail in the professional coffin of the
hopelessly alcoholic Clyde Bruckman).
With his career at an end, Harold renewed his interest in photography
and became involved with color film experiments. Some of the earliest 2
color Technicolor tests had been shot at Greenacres in 1929. In the
late 1940s he became fascinated with color 3D still photography and
often visited friends on film sets. Throughout the late 40s and well
into the 1960s Lloyd indulged himself with glamor models. At his death,
his collection of 3D stills numbered 250,000 (the vast majority of
which are nudes). Recently his granddaughter published an elaborate
book of photos carefully excised from the collection. In the late 1940s
Lloyd became an active member of the Shriners (he'd joined originally
in 1924) and an effective administrator for their Los Angeles crippled
children's hospital. Harold is reported to be the only actor that owned
most of the films he appeared in (sadly many of the earliest ones were
destroyed in a nitrate fire in a vault at Greenacres in 1943). This
ownership gave him the ability to withhold his films from being shown
on television; Lloyd feared incorrect projection speed and commercials
would damage his reputation. As a result, a generation of film fans saw
very few of his films and his reputation was diminished. He did release
2 compilation films, of which the first,
World of Comedy (1962) was very
successful. Mildred descended into alcoholism in the 1950s and died in
1969. Lloyd occupied his time with extensive travel (he thoroughly
enjoyed speaking engagements where he could interact with students on
the subject of silent film) and continued his pathological passion for
his hobbies through the end of his life. He became interested in high
fidelity stereo systems and habitually ordered several record
companies' entire annual catalogs, eventually amassing an LP collection
rivaling most record stores. He enjoyed cranking music to volumes that
caused the inlaid gold leaf on Greenacres' ceilings to rain down on
anyone below. Conversely, he balked at modernizing anything inside the
mansion, seeing improvements and redecorating as things that would
survive him, and thus a complete waste of money. Lloyd was diagnosed
with a recurrence of cancer by his brother-in-law, Dr. John Davis
(Jack Davis, who starred in early
"Our Gang" shorts) and died on March 8, 1971. His son,
Harold Lloyd Jr. was an alcoholic
homosexual and died soon afterward. Although Lloyd left an estate
valued at $12 million (in 1971 dollars), he failed to make a provision
for the maintenance of Greenacres, a blunder that would seriously
complicate his estate. His granddaughter Suzanne Lloyd has been largely
responsible for restoring his reputation of late, working to preserve
his surviving films; many have been issued on HBO Video, Thames Video.
Several have been superbly restored with new musical accompaniments and
are shown periodically on TCM.
'Foxy' Lloyd who fought constantly and soon divorced (at the time a
rare event), Harold Clayton Lloyd was nominally educated in Denver and
San Diego high schools and received his stage training at the School of
Dramatic Art (San Diego). Lloyd grew up far more attached to his
footloose, chronically unemployed father than his overbearing mother.
He made his stage debut at age 12 as "Little Abe" in "Tess of
d'Ubervilles" with the Burwood Stock company of Omaha. Harold and his
father moved to California as a result of a fortuitous accident
settlement in 1913. Foxy bought a pool hall (that soon failed) while
Harold attended high school. The pair were soon broke when his father
suggested he try out for a job on a movie being shot at San Diego's Pan
American Exposition by the Edison Company. On the set he first met
Hal Roach who would be the most
influential person in his professional life. Roach (admittedly a poor
actor) told Lloyd that someday he'd be a movie producer and he'd make
him his star.
Soon afterward, Roach inherited enough money to begin a small
production company (Phun Philms, quickly renamed Rolin, with a partner
who he soon bought out) and contacted Lloyd to star in the kinds of
films he wanted to make: comedies. On the basis of a handful of
self-produced shorts starring Lloyd, he managed to land a production
contract with the U.S. branch of the French firm, Pathe, who literally
paid Roach by the exposed foot of film on what films were accepted.
Things were touch and go in the beginning, with improvised scenarios,
outdoor shoots meaning Pathe rejected several of their first efforts,
resulting in missed paydays. During his first contract with Roach he
appeared in "Will E. Work" and then "Lonesome Luke" comedies,
essentially cheap variations of
Charles Chaplin's Little Tramp
character. He abandoned the character in disgust in late 1917, adopting
his "glasses" persona, an average young man capable of conquering any
obstacle thrown at him. He began cementing his new image with
Over the Fence (1917), that
ushered in a prolific number of shorts through late 1921, often
releasing 3 per month. In his "glasses" personification, Lloyd's
popularity grew exponentially with each new release, but Lloyd rapidly
grew dissatisfied with his relationship with his producer. Roach and
Lloyd fought constantly; it's not so much that he didn't want to work
for Roach, he didn't want to work for anyone - a trait he himself
recognized from early on. To be fair, Roach was increasingly
preoccupied with other stars (The "Our Gang" series was launched to
huge success in 1922 and he also produced ''Snub Pollard" shorts,
among others) and although he would always resent Lloyd's attitude and
ultimate defection to Paramount, the loss of his major star wouldn't
financially cripple him. Lloyd had his own quirks; he fell in love with
his first co-star Bebe Daniels, who left
him after it became apparent he was unable to make a commitment
(however the two would remain lifelong friends). Lloyd, in his own way
was decidedly complex: he could be professionally generous (often
allowing debatably deserving directorial credit to members of his crew)
while being notoriously cheap. Yet he practiced little financial self
control in anything that concerned himself. Wildly superstitious, he
engaged in strict rituals about dressing himself, leaving through the
same doors as he entered, and expected his chauffeurs to know which
streets were unlucky to traverse. As his finances improved with age he
happily indulged himself with a myriad of hobbies that would include
breeding Great Danes, amassing cars, bowling, photography, womanizing,
and high-fidelity stereo systems. He was open minded about homosexuals
while being practically Victorian in his ideas about raising his
daughters. He had an enormous libido and rumors abounded about
illegitimate children and according to Roach, chronic bouts with VD.
Most traumatically, he suffered the loss of his right thumb and
forefinger in an accidental prop bomb explosion on August 14, 1919,
just as his career was starting to take off. Lloyd would go to great
lengths to hide his disability, spending thousands on flesh-colored
prosthetic gloves and hiding his right hand whenever knowingly
photographed, even long after his career ended. Upon his recovery he
completed work on
Haunted Spooks (1920) and
successfully renegotiated his contract with Pathe, which began a career
ascent that would rival Chaplin's (indeed, Lloyd was more successful,
considering grosses on total output as Chaplin's output soon dwindled
by comparison). Lloyd began feature film production with the 4-reel
A Sailor-Made Man (1921). It
began as a 2-reel short but contained, in his words, "so much good
stuff we were loathe to take any of it out." It became a huge hit and
continued to release hit features with ever increasing grosses but
split with Hal Roach (who retained lucrative re-issue rights to his
earlier films) after completing
The Freshman (1925), one of his
finest films. Pathe's U.S. operations quickly unraveled after their
U.S. representative, Paul Brunet returned to France, and Lloyd made a
decisive move (Roach himself would also leave Pathe, opting for a
distribution deal with MGM - Mack Sennett,
also distributed by Pathe, would be financially ruined). After weighing
various attractive offers, Lloyd signed an advantageous contract with
Paramount and racked up another hit with
For Heaven's Sake (1926), one
of his weakest silent features, yet it grossed an incredible $2.591
million, nearly equaling "The Freshman" and astonishing even himself.
Lloyd could do no wrong throughout the 1920s, he consistently earned at
or near $1.5 million per film with his Paramount contract, and seemed
invincible. He married his second co-star
Mildred Davis on February 10, 1923
and she retired from acting (replaced by
Jobyna Ralston). He built a huge 32-room
mansion he christened, "Greenacres" that took over 3 years to complete
and the couple eventually had 3 children. His final silent film,
Speedy (1928), shot on location in New
York, was one of the few major hits of the sound transition period and
remains (as do most of Lloyd's films) thoroughly enjoyable today. The
advent of sound proved problematic for the comedian. His films were
gag-driven and his writing team was wholly unaccustomed to converting
their type of comedy into dialog. While his first sound effort (began
as a silent),
Welcome Danger (1929) grossed
nearly $3 million, by any standard it's a bad film, and marked a
serious decline in Lloyd's screen persona; he became a talking
comedian. Ironically, as bad as the film is, it would prove to be the
last solid hit of his career. His next talkie,
Feet First (1930), included a climb
reminiscent (but technically superior to that) of his hit
Safety Last! (1923), only being in
sound, it contained every grunt and groan and proved painful to watch.
With a gross of less that $1 million, Lloyd would see slightly over
$300,000, his smallest feature paycheck to date, and it became clear he
was in trouble. Lloyd fought back with
Movie Crazy (1932). Generally
regarded as his finest talkie, it grossed even less than "Feet First."
Lloyd left Paramount for Fox and suffered his first outright flop with
his next feature,
The Cat's-Paw (1934), which grossed
$693,000 against a negative cost of $617,000 ---resulting in red ink on
a net basis. The miracle Harold Lloyd needed to salvage his career
would never happen, but he refused to go down without a fight.
Amazingly, the public was oblivious to his decline, and he was widely
considered as one of the few silent comedy stars to have made a
successful transition through the first decade of sound. But to those
within the industry, the numbers didn't add up. Back at Paramount on a
2-movie deal, Lloyd starred in
The Milky Way (1936), a
better-than-average comedy that pulled a world-wide gross of $1.179
million, but it had production budget exceeding $1 million, resulting
in a $250,000 loss for the studio. Paramount was livid, demanding a
personal guarantee from Lloyd on anything over $600,000 for his next
film, Professor Beware (1938).
The comedian soon discovered he couldn't complete the film within the
required budget and did something unprecedented --for him at least-- he
invested his own money. The final production cost was $820,275 - and it
grossed a mere $796,385 - and as a result of a complex payment deal,
Lloyd ended up personally losing $119,400 on its initial release (he
would eventually recoup the bulk of his losses over the next 35 years).
At the relatively young age of 45, Harold Lloyd's Hollywood career was
effectively over. Still immensely wealthy from a conservative
investment strategy, and always hyperactive, he sought out ways to
occupy his time, dragging his kids on marathon movie nights all across
Los Angeles and falling back on his many hobbies. Foxy, who had handled
the bulk of his correspondence (almost all Lloyd's pre-1938 autographs
were actually signed by Foxy) and had carefully documented his press
clippings since his acting career had began, retired to Palm Springs in
1938, leaving a void in Lloyd's life. He produced two pictures for RKO,
A Girl, a Guy, and a Gob (1941),
and a Kay Kyser vehicle,
My Favorite Spy (1942) which must
have looked good on paper but went nowhere at the box office. This
ended his career as a producer. He would sign a $25,000 deal with
Columbia in 1943 for a comeback project that never materialized. In
1944, Lloyd was approached by director
Preston Sturges who envisioned a
first-rate vehicle for him entitled,
The Sin of Harold Diddlebock (1947).
The production launched Sturges' new California Pictures, was financed
by Howard Hughes, and initially
released by United Artists. It proved to be a nightmare for
everyone concerned. Its $1.7 million production cost proved to be an
insurmountable obstacle preventing it from profitability and the
eccentric Hughes withdrew it from circulation, later retitling it "Mad
Wednesday," re-editing and re-releasing it as an RKO feature in 1951 to
an even more dismal box office. Lloyd would also zealously protect
ownership of his material and was quite litigious. He successfully sued
MGM over their unauthorized poaching of his gags on a
Joan Davis vehicle,
She Gets Her Man (1945) (sadly
an action that put the final nail in the professional coffin of the
hopelessly alcoholic Clyde Bruckman).
With his career at an end, Harold renewed his interest in photography
and became involved with color film experiments. Some of the earliest 2
color Technicolor tests had been shot at Greenacres in 1929. In the
late 1940s he became fascinated with color 3D still photography and
often visited friends on film sets. Throughout the late 40s and well
into the 1960s Lloyd indulged himself with glamor models. At his death,
his collection of 3D stills numbered 250,000 (the vast majority of
which are nudes). Recently his granddaughter published an elaborate
book of photos carefully excised from the collection. In the late 1940s
Lloyd became an active member of the Shriners (he'd joined originally
in 1924) and an effective administrator for their Los Angeles crippled
children's hospital. Harold is reported to be the only actor that owned
most of the films he appeared in (sadly many of the earliest ones were
destroyed in a nitrate fire in a vault at Greenacres in 1943). This
ownership gave him the ability to withhold his films from being shown
on television; Lloyd feared incorrect projection speed and commercials
would damage his reputation. As a result, a generation of film fans saw
very few of his films and his reputation was diminished. He did release
2 compilation films, of which the first,
World of Comedy (1962) was very
successful. Mildred descended into alcoholism in the 1950s and died in
1969. Lloyd occupied his time with extensive travel (he thoroughly
enjoyed speaking engagements where he could interact with students on
the subject of silent film) and continued his pathological passion for
his hobbies through the end of his life. He became interested in high
fidelity stereo systems and habitually ordered several record
companies' entire annual catalogs, eventually amassing an LP collection
rivaling most record stores. He enjoyed cranking music to volumes that
caused the inlaid gold leaf on Greenacres' ceilings to rain down on
anyone below. Conversely, he balked at modernizing anything inside the
mansion, seeing improvements and redecorating as things that would
survive him, and thus a complete waste of money. Lloyd was diagnosed
with a recurrence of cancer by his brother-in-law, Dr. John Davis
(Jack Davis, who starred in early
"Our Gang" shorts) and died on March 8, 1971. His son,
Harold Lloyd Jr. was an alcoholic
homosexual and died soon afterward. Although Lloyd left an estate
valued at $12 million (in 1971 dollars), he failed to make a provision
for the maintenance of Greenacres, a blunder that would seriously
complicate his estate. His granddaughter Suzanne Lloyd has been largely
responsible for restoring his reputation of late, working to preserve
his surviving films; many have been issued on HBO Video, Thames Video.
Several have been superbly restored with new musical accompaniments and
are shown periodically on TCM.