Picture Play Magazine (Mar-Aug 1927)

74 Leaving 'Em Laughing One of this country's most successful captains of industry employs the system, and it works. His name is Harold Lloyd. By Malcolm H. Oettinger FOR a man getting fifteen thousand dollars a week, he isn't all that he might be. He isn't as rare as you'd expect. For a comedian at the top of the heap, he isn't funny in his suite at the Ritz. For purposes of scholarly analysis, he's no story. If there is to be anything chronicled about Harold Lloyd, it can hardly take an original turn. Harold is one of those modest, moderate, everyday, pleasant young men making fifteen hundred a year, and hoping for a raise next week. The only difference is that Harold makes more than fifteen hundred a day. After you read report after report of these stellar bodies being unspoiled children at home among their books and swimming pools, you begin to get a little suspicious. And who shall blame you ? But it's the truth about Mrs. Lloyd's boy. There is nothing esoteric, temperamental, or exotic about him. He's a regular business man — temperate, energetic, diffident ; average in every respect. Of course every one can't make comedies that shake the universe with loud laughs. But that's the only exceptional thing that Lloyd does. Probably it is enough. He is the up and doing young man you read, or do not read, about in the advertisements captioned, "Another Raise, Maw !" He is the neat but not gaudy young man who never sits with his feet on his desk, telling the seedy man opposite how he got on by hard work and Hairsmooth. He is the unostentatious, successful merchant prince, pushing buttons, answering phones, dictating letters, tossing off checks. Lloyd cannot be considered as an artist. There is absolutely nothing of the artist in his make-up or manner. He is the epitome of regularity, the apostle of common sense. When we met in his suite at the Ritz he told me how hard comedy came to the manufacturer, analysed his product thoughtfully, showed me his line, sold me his philosophy. His favorite comedies were "Grandma's Boy" and "Safety Last," altogether opposite in method, but similarly successful in snaring the elusive snicker, to say Photo by Komman Harold Lloyd's success is largely due to his appeal to the maiority. The troubles of the young husband in "Hot Water" were funny because they were common experience. nothing of ringing the bell at the box-office window. "The Kid Brother" he regards as composed of equal parts of sentiment and snap, combining the best features of "Safety Last" and "Grandma's Boy." "But it isn't as good as they were, in 'my opinion," he said. "I mean, it didn't come up to expectations. We had twice as many gags and sequences planned, worked out, and even shot, as we actually used. We took a little over six months to do 'The Kid Brother.' I mean, we went slowly, purposely, because the one before it disappointed me, and we wanted 'The Kid Brother' to be better. I made especial efforts to turn out a good one this time." When talking about himself he employs a naively modest device, referring to himself in the third person. "In this last picture," he will say, for example, "appeal was made to slapstick humor as well as to those who like quiet comedy. He was in love with the girl, and bashful, you know. But he was scrapping enough in the melodramatic part to get the men and boys. I mean, he was figured to get all parts of the audience. We were afraid he'd get in trouble in 'For Heaven's Sake' on account of the religious angle. Religion and comedy don't mix." Although Lloyd's hesitant speech seems to belie the fact, he is nevertheless a shrewd judge of values, a canny analyst of film fare. He sits in his laboratory dissecting his pictures, speeding up gags, determining what will click and what won't, devising new means of getting giggles. There is nothing essentially funny about Lloyd. In this respect he differs from Langdon, Chaplin, and, on a lower plane, Keaton. These comic fellows evoke anticipatory smiles and chuckles immediately upon their appearance ; Lloyd lures laughter only through situation. Parallel cases on the musical-comedy stage are found in Bobby Clark, Harpo Marx, or Ed Wynn, who cause laughter upon entering, while Willie Collier, Raymond Hitchcock, or Will Rogers must build to it. Lloyd makes a serious business of building laughs. He makes no pretense at its being unrestrained or natural or irrepressible. He builds comedy situations as mechanically as a carpenter builds a henhouse. [Cont'd on page 114]