Wid's weekly (1923)

ix SATURDAY JT -^^-WEEKLY — IX xc± NOVEMBER 3, 1923 A Whiz of a Comedy Why Worry Hal Roach — Pathe Length 7 Reels DIRECTORS . Fred Newmeyer and Sam Taylor AUTHOR . Sam Taylor, Teddy Wilde and Tim Wehlin. CAMERAMAN . W alter Lundin GET ’EM IN . After Harold’s recent knockouts this should pull exceptionally big business. PLEASE ’EM . I consider this absolutely sure fire for any audience anywhere. WHOOZINIT . Harold, a good new girl, a young giant, and good supporting cast. SPECIAL APPEAL . The title gives you some trick exploitation possibilities, and you can also talk about the eight-foot-six giant in this. STORY VALUES . They have burlesqued South American revolution story similar to Fairbanks’ “Americano.” TREATMENT .... The timing of gags was wonderfully well done, and the gags and titles were excep¬ tionally good. CHARACTERIZATIONS . They made the stuff just twice as funny by the serious manner in which they played it. ARTISTIC VALUES . Photography generally was very good, and they really created good tropical town atmosphere. Boys, here’s another whiz. Harold Lloyd has stepped right out in the past year or so, until today lie certainly stands at the head of the class for consistent comedy performances. Of course, this sort of feature comedy stuff calls for organization, because it is fundamentally gags, timing and titles. They started this with a great idea, and then crowded it full of wonderful hokum, taking each gag and developing it hv repetition and timing so that it earned its full quota of laughs. Basically, they use the old South American revolu¬ tion story, similar to the one which Fairbanks made as the “Americano,” and burlesque it, with a bit of “Grandma’s Boy” added, through having Harold, a young millionaire, believing himself to be an invalid until he found that he could whip half the army. We are introduced to a newT leading lady, Jobyna Ralston, and she gets away to a flying start in this, because she has many close-ups in which she registers most attractively. A young Norwegian, who stands eight feet six and weighs 500 pounds, works through the most of this with Lloyd, and they certainly get a ton of laughs out of this young man. This young fellow is big enough that it seems quite real to have him stick his shoulders through the adobe walls of the houses, and at different Absolutely Sure Fire intervals he manages to whip about 500 or maybe 1000 men. They also get an awful lot of fun out of having the giant throw some cannons about, and when they finally strap a cannon on his back it is a comedy highspot that will bring down any house. They registered a lot of mighty good gags, with these helped by titles, before they brought the giant into it, but the use of the giant provided enough unusual sequences that they kept this thing building right up to the final tag. The construction was excel¬ lent for comedy purposes, because they would let it down just enough here and there to give the laughs better value when they swung into the action again. You may find some of your fans disagreeing as to whether this is better than “Grandma’s Boy” or “Safety Last,” but I can guarantee to you that there will he a goodly percentage inclined to believe that this is as good, or better, than the recent Lloyd successes. Certainly there is nothing more you could ask. The title of this gives you some good exploitation opportunities, and personally I believe that this will roll about as much money in at the box office, and turn out about as high a percentage of pleased patrons, as anything that has come along in many months. Here in Los Angeles they put out some twentyfour sheets saying: “Harold Lloyd says real estate will double in value, so why worry?” You probably cannot use that same slogan in your community, but you can easily figure out some very timely argument that will attract everyone’s attention, and then present Harold Lloyd as passing some opinion on it, tagging the thing off with “Why Worry?” 1 imagine that of all the people working in pic¬ tures today Harold Lloyd is about as well liked as any one individual. Harold has a clean-cut, pleasing per¬ sonality that wins him friends constantly, and his stuff has never been quite as rough as that of some of the other comics. Of course, the feature comedy proposition is really an organization matter. It could not he said that this would have the same value with someone else doing Lloyd’s stuff, because Harold makes many points by his expressions and his serious playing of the burlesque stuff, yet the working out of gags is a task of tremen¬ dous importance, and really I believe that most of our dramatic continuity writers could learn a lot about construction by close association with our comedy gag men, or at least some study of their methods. When it comes to tempo and cutting, a comedy like this registers values that make some of our socalled dramatic successes look sick. Tt is generally recognized in show business that getting a laugh by pantomime is some achievement, and when you realize that comedy organizations like Lloyd’s have to build a new series of gags for each feature, or at least turn many of the old ones into new form, then you can understand something of their task.