When I was a kid, I wanted to be a stunt man and my hero was Harold Lloyd.
Buffalo's PBS station, channel 17, aired Harold Lloyd shorts on Friday nights. He played an everyman in spectacular peril.
He did his own stunts. Most famous is his hanging off a clock face in Safety Last. It's a great image. But the entirety of Safety Last shows some amazing stunts as Harold Lloyd, in real life, climbs a building. The story behind the climb is also very funny -- he's covering for a buddy who wants to be a human fly. He had an incredible gift for comic timing, storytelling, putting together a sight gag, and he performed absolutely amazing stunts.
In his day, Harold Lloyd was more successful than Charlie Caplin and Buster Keaton and produced more film than the two others combined. Lloyd's enormous popularity made him the richest entertainer in Hollywood. But he has not enjoyed the kind of renaissance of other screen icons.
The Harold Lloyd estate has been extremely cautious about distributing his material. Since the 70's it has been almost impossible to find any Harold Lloyd films at all.
This is finally changing.
A DVD set, The Harold Lloyd Comedy Collection, is a three-volume set with 29 of his best features and shorts (he did hundreds).
Bob Mondello has an excellent review of the collection on All Things Considered.
Charlie Chaplin's style is like ballet.
Buster Keaton's style is like dour, funny poetry.
Harold Lloyd's style is like the best Warner Brothers cartoons -- hero prevails in a dangerous world of construction sites, cars and precariously high places.
Harold Lloyd is mostly unknown today. I hope his long-overdue appreciation will follow the release of this DVD set.
-- McLir
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