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Harold LloydAmerican comedian and silent film actor
Date of Birth: 20.04.1893
Country:  USA |
Content:
Biography of Harold Lloyd
One of the most popular and influential actors of the silent film era, Harold Lloyd was an American comedian and actor. Alongside Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, Lloyd is known for his silent comedies. He appeared in approximately 200 humorous films, both silent and sound, between 1913 and 1947. His iconic image hanging from the hands of a clock high above the street in the film "Safety Last!" (1923) is one of the most famous images in film history. Lloyd performed most of his own dangerous stunts, despite injuring himself during the filming of "Haunted Spooks" (1920) – an accident involving a bomb led to the loss of his right thumb and index finger, which he concealed with a specially-made prosthesis glove in his films. While Lloyd's individual films were not as commercially successful as Chaplin's, he made many more films (twelve feature-length films in the 1920s compared to Chaplin's three) and they earned more money overall ($15.7 million USD for Lloyd compared to $10.5 million USD for Chaplin).
Early Life and Career
Lloyd was born in Burchard, Nebraska to James Darcy Lloyd and Sarah Elizabeth Fraser. His paternal great-grandparents were from Wales. Lloyd moved to the western United States with his family after his father's failed business venture. He began performing in theater from a young age and started appearing in one-reel (10-12 minute) comedies shortly after moving to San Diego, California in 1912.
Lloyd soon began working with Thomas Edison's film company and eventually partnered with actor and director Hal Roach, who established his own studio in 1913. Lloyd became Roach's most successful comedy actor between 1915 and 1919. He hired Bebe Daniels as a supporting actress in 1914, and they had a romantic relationship and were known to the public as "The Boy" and "The Girl." Daniels left Lloyd in 1919 as she desired more dramatic roles. In the same year, Lloyd replaced Daniels with Mildred Davis, whom Roach recommended after noticing her in a film. Lloyd's first reaction when he saw Davis was, "She looks like a big French doll!"
Film Career
One of Lloyd's early characters, "Lonesome Luke," was his imitation of Chaplin. The main difference was that "Luke" wore clothes that were not too big, but too small. In 1918, Lloyd and Roach developed the "Glasses character" (always referred to as "Harold" in films), a much more mature comedic character capable of evoking great sympathy and emotional depth. Lloyd was the first to show his films to a test audience before releasing them, starting in 1919.
From 1921 onwards, Lloyd and Roach stopped making short films and focused solely on feature-length films (with one exception - a short film was made in 1923 with the children from "Our Gang" during the filming of "Why Worry?"). Lloyd's first feature film, "A Sailor-Made Man" (1921), happened to be feature-length by accident, as the footage ended up being longer than initially planned. However, the test audience loved the film as it was, so nothing was cut. His next film, "Grandma's Boy" (1922), along with Chaplin's "The Kid" (1921), introduced a combination of complex character development and comedy in film.
