How come Harold Lloyd quit movie biz

[kelly]

Hey guys I been watching Harold Lloyd on TCM alll day today I wonder how come Harold didn't go on with his career in MOVIES I think he stuck with it he be like geeky vesion of screwball comedies

Was his idea quit the business or movie business quit him

[robin]

Kelly, he quit. He made several sound comedies in the 30's and 40's, but he was a businessman who became even more successful than in his movie career.

He was very strong on family life - his family meant everything to him - and after the coming of talkies he, from what I've read, lost interest in movies.

[kelly]

SO he quit for family sound like that he made money with last of his movies so he decided call it career just spent as businessman RIGHT

[robin]

Kelly, Harold disliked the talkies - almost as much as Charlie Chaplin - but when friends started to catalogue his films in the early 1960's he made a comeback, delivering lectures on college campus's. He was a quite remarkable man, the epitomy of what you call The American Dream.

I can only admire him from a distance, but to me he was a REAL star.

[kelly]

I think back in da day he wasn't really appreciate until 1960s A his movies weren't available he kept close tied on his films I only start hearing about Harold Lloyd like late 1980s when they brought them on VHS which I have one collection the qulaity wasn't that great until his granddaughter who own the estate made a deal with TCM and I think he made another comeback 30 years he died when TCM have world premire thingy on him on their channel back in 2003 or 05

[Hedvig]

I think he was really popular in his day though, a serious rival to Chaplin in the box office during the 20's, unlike Buster Keaton. My dad told he his parents used to show 8mm films of Harold Lloyd. I'm pretty sure that here at least, he was popular and remained so even after the silent era ended and he stopped making films. Now it's a different story, mostly because his movies seldom get shown, but if there was to be a revival I bet he would regain his position as one of the most popular silent film comedians. He's never been a favourite of mine personally, but I can see how his gags could be famous and work well on a crowd of people.

As to why he retired, I know he did a few sound films but maybe sound just wasn't his medium.

[kelly]

I once saw Harold Lloyd at silent movie festival at USC Campus I find it kinda cool there is generation of my generation Generation X are going man Harold was good in his time make me proud

[Hedvig]

Yes indeed. Some of his films really hold up well today too. Safety last is next on my list of films to see.

[classicmovieman]

Lloyd quit basically because his films stopped making money. In the 20s they made huge sums, it was common for him to make million dollar plus grosses which was huge in those days. He reinvested the profits in his movies which he financed and produced himself, also building his estate at Greenacres.

It started to go wrong when he was caught on the hop by the arrival of sound. Lloyd was enthusiastic about sound certainly much more that Chaplin was at least in the early days and abandoned the silent version of Welcome Danger and redid it as a talkie.

It was probably a fateful decision, the result was overlong and the pacing was off, technically it wasn't great suffering from a lot of problems the early talkies had. Nevertheless Welcome Danger was a big box office success but after it Lloyd's profits declined with each film.

Probably his character's optimism didn't fit the times and it was very difficult to bring that character into sound. Initially he tried to mix the sight gags which were his forte with dialogue but increasingly abandoned that for a set script. Now the films he made were no longer unique or not what an audience expected of Lloyd. He wasn't to me suited to screwball comedy. The Cat's Paw (1934) was the first Lloyd film which lost money and after that he was no longer his own producer but employed simply as an actor.

[kelly]

You might be right I hear a he lost interet b he felt his movie wasn't selling hey one thing about Harold he presever his movies

[robin]

He missed a trick in not releasing his films for the Robert Youngson silent comedy compilation films of the late 50's and early 60's - because those re-activated most of the other silent comedians like Laurel and Hardy, Harry Langdon, Charley Chase, Snub Pollard, Ben Turpin, Buster Keaton et al.

[snorrem]

I wonder who put life to the theory that Lloyd's lack of success from the early 30's on had partly to do with the Depression? I'm not really sure if I quite buy that. Certainly Lloyd's I'll-do-everything-for-a-great-career-attitude that had coined many of his silent films did not fit the new era, as so many people were now simply lucky to find a job, but without having experienced that era myself, mind you, I do think most people could still identify with the desire to succeed, in whatever it may be. Neither Movie Crazy, The Cat's Paw, Professor Beware nor, from what I remember, The Milky Way put Lloyd in a light where a business career was what mattered to him. To use Movie Crazy as an example, in 1932 people could probably still believe in a boy who desperately wanted to become a movie star. Lloyd's features were still doing reasonably well at the box-office up till the time of The Cat's Paw --which, while interesting, admittedly was a rather odd film-- but "reasonably well" was pretty poor compared to Lloyd's greatest triumphs in the silent era.

[robin]

He should have made his silent films available to Robert Youngson, because that - considering that he was still alive at the time, unlike a lot of the others -would have catapulted his name to the top of the house.

His 1930's films were weak because, in my opinion, he was playing characters that by then were too young for him.

He should have left things at the end of the silent era. it's not that he needed the money.

[snorrem]

Lloyd liked to have control over his own films, which is understandable. However, he might have stretched it too far for his own good. I'm still curious why Lloyd wasn't gained any attention in the Youngson-compilations, as Lloyd only owned his films made from 1922 and forward. Youngson was perfectly free to use excerpts from Lloyd's films made prior to that time, just as he was free to use excerpts of Chaplin-films made before 1918.

[robin]

Snorrem - a very good point. I wasn't aware of Lloyd's pre-1922 films being available to Youngson, so why didn't he use them?

It has also occured to me that he also never used any Larry Semon films in those compilations, which is also rather strange.

I've heard it said, but never confirmed, that Youngson - for some reason or other - favoured the Hal Roach stuff over all the others.

But as Harold Lloyd was a Roach employee.......the mind boggles!

[diane]

Harold Lloyd has another fan - me!!! I had only seen "The Kid Brother" back in
the 70s - I can remember it was funny and a western. Last Christmas I bought
"Girl Shy" and even though I have seen it 3 times it makes me laugh so much,
I wonder will I ever get tired of it. I don't think Buster Keaton's movies moved
me in that way. Harold has something for everyone. I thought the titles were
witty, the scenes were hilarious (especially between Harold and the old man)
and the chase scene at the end was sidesplitting. I have ordered "The Freshman"
and hopefully later will order "Speedy" , "Safety Last" and "The Kid Brother".

[robin]

Diane, why don't you buy the 9 disc set - The Definitive Collection - I have it, and if it's available here in the UK then it must be available anywhere else.

It has all his features on it, with the exception of Mad Wednsday, plus selected shorts and other various bits.

[snorrem]

Mar 3, 2010 21:37:35 GMT -6 robin said:

Diane, why don't you buy the 9 disc set - The Definitive Collection - I have it, and if it's available here in the UK then it must be available anywhere else.

It has all his features on it, with the exception of Mad Wednsday, plus selected shorts and other various bits.

Just a slight correction:

The set also excludes Harold's first talkie Welcome Danger (probably considered too weak for inclusion - though it's included in the UK version of the set) and his second to last film Professor Beware, which hasn't got any dvd release at all that I know of.

[robin]

Quite so. Forgive me, there are so many goodies on this set that I overlooked Professor Beware!

[gagman66]

"A Spoonful of Sugar Helps The............................................."





"Yikes, Census Takers!!!!"




Harold, Mildred and Baby-"I DO: (1921)




With Jobyna Ralston in THE FRESHMAN (1925)


It's amazing to know that few people ever recognized H L without the glasses. He could routinely walk down a busy street and seldom did anyone look twice. Minus the specs he literally slipped into anonymity and blended into the crowd. No wonder he inspired the character of Clark Kent in the comics. And Harold was actually quite a handsome fellow in his youth.

Very nice photo here of Mrs. Lloyd and He. Now either Mildred was extremely short, or Harold was quite tall? While I knew that H L was much taller than Chaplin and Keaton, I didn't think that He was this much taller. Though Harold always played the little man type on screen in reality, He wasn't so little as his contemporaries were.





The Lloyd's 1926

[Midge]

With or without glasses, I think Harold was very good-looking. Harpo Marx had a similar experience. When he went out in public as himself, without his curly blond wig, no one recognized him. That could be a wise strategy for movie stars who value their privacy.

[robin]

Midge, Harold's glasses had no lenses in them!

[Midge]

Robin, that make sense since the glasses were only props, and besides, glass lenses would have reflected the movie lights.