We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
Harold Lloyd's fresh, wholesome conntenance is a trade-mark that will hereafter bring its fun-guarantee to the talking screen.
M'
'OVIE comedians have always built their best gags on action. "Deeds, not words," was the everlasting slogan. It had to be. The movies were limited and when you wanted to say sometlimg you used a subtitle, and too many subtitles were not so good.
So , the comedians created all their gags in terms of pantomime. Entire scenes were hinged on facial expressions and body gestures. It was an art in itself — this getting over ideas by movement — and the boys mastered it thoroughly.
Then, along came the talkies! Not an easy matter to suddenly find you've got to learn an entirely new technique in a few months. Not an easy matter to find that, as well as learning the new, you had to remember the old — and keep them separate and distinct in your mind.
Yet, that — and more — is what Harold Lloyd did!
FOR months he had remained definitely in the camp of the silents. He wanted to be sure that the new development was not just a passing fancy before investing time and money in it. He decided to make another silent picture — and by the time of its completion the fate of sound would, perhaps, be settled.
Well, Welcome, Danger was made as a silent picture, but —
In addition it was made in two fully equipped sound versions: one a hundred per cent talkie ; the other synchronized with sound and music for foreign release!
Behind the making of those latter two films lies the story ot one of the most complete conversions to the idea of sound pictures to be
HAROLD
Harold Lloyd, master gag-man of the screen, feels that dropping the gag of silence will vastly improve his gags
By CHARLESON GRAY
found anywhere in Hollywood. Rather than let others blaze the way with the microphone, Harold elected to do a little pioneering on his own. And thus we find him making the first all-talkie feature comedy, and making it a wow.
|H, I'm sold on synchronization," he admitted. 'It is opening fields of laughter for us that would have simply been undreamed of in the old films. By this I do not mean the laughs to be obtained from dialogue," he hastened to explain. "That is funny enough — but it is literary. It might be as funny if written out as subtitles.
"On the other hand there are thousands of funny sounds ready for us now via the microphone. For instance, in Welcome, Danger we have a 'scare faction.' That is, a series of sequences built up around the scare I get from having the hand of a dead Chinaman laid on my shoulder. As it rests there I am supposed to imagine it is Noah Young, who plays my friend. But, looking across the room, I see Noah motioning to me, and I realize that this hand on my shoulder is not his. I'm scared petrified. And just at that terrible moment
Harold in one of his early hits, Why Worry? Think how much such scenes as this would have gained if made a la talkie. All his future masterpieces of humor will utilize the advantages of the talking screen, gaining greatly thereby in gag posibilities.