..Gary Dretzka
..Noah Forrest
..Leonard Klady
..R.J. Matson
..David Poland
..Douglas Pratt
..Ray Pride
..Michael Wilmington

Of all the gods in the Pantheon of American cinema, Harold Lloyd may be the least known and underappreciated by todays audiences.

At the height of his popularity, in the waning years of Hollywoods Silent Era, the famously bespectacled Third Genius was as much a box-office draw as Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. Indeed, the unassuming kid from Nebraska is reputed to have been the most highly compensated actor of his time not that Mary Pickford or Gloria Swanson had to take in wash to make ends meet.

Had he lived to see the DVD release of The Harold Lloyd Comedy Collection, Lloyd probably could have climbed up the sides of the same buildings he scaled in Safety Last, 82 years earlier, and no one in downtown Los Angeles would remember his name. But, his wasn't the story of a once-famous actor who slipped into despair and poverty after the introduction of talkies.

Lloyd was a fabulously wealthy man, who remained vital and active until his death, in 1971, at the 77. He continued to live in splendor at the lush, 20-acre Beverly Hills estate he built in 1930, surrounded by his leading lady in life and on the screen, Mildred Davis, and their family.

If Lloyd felt overshadowed by Chaplin and Keaton, he only had his own keen business sense to blame.

When Harold asked Hal Roach if he could buy his movies, he really didn't know what he could do with them, explained Suzanne Lloyd, the actor's granddaughter and executive producer of the ambitious seven-disc boxed set. Harold probably did himself a disservice, financially, but, that's how strongly he felt about owning his own work.

Back in the 20s, comedies weren't re-released into theaters, TV was a long way away, and there weren't any film festivals.

Today, the ancillary market for entertainment products is controlled by those who hold the licenses for such material. In 1923, however, ownership rights were allowed to lapse, if only because the paperwork involved was too much of a hassle.

In 1923, Roach already was pre-occupied with the ' comedies, anyway, Suzanne added, during a lunchtime conversation in a noisy Italian restaurant favored by movie folk. Harolds last feature for Roach was Why Worry?, although he did appear as himself in Dogs of War, one of the first of the Our Gang pictures. The movies were sharing the same set, which wasn't unusual in those days.

As manager of the comedian's estate and family manager, Suzanne Lloyd's participation in this and other restoration projects was both a labor of love and personal destiny. It also fulfills one of the goals set by her beloved grandfather, who long ago decided not to exploit his own good fortune by handing over his babies to people who couldn't possibly have the same emotional attachment to them as he had.

Between 1913 and 1929, Lloyd appeared in 200 shorts, two-reelers and features. He had met Roach in San Diego, where both men were working as extras on Rory 'o The Bogs, and, together, they would attempt to launch series based on the characters Willie Work and the Chaplin-inspired Lonesome Luke.

In 1917, Lloyd invented his archetypal Glasses Character, who frequently shared the first name of his mentor. Unlike most of the actors in his orbit, Lloyd didn't come to the movies from vaudeville, where the humor was broad and no one spared the makeup, trademark props or outlandish costumes.

Apart from the lens-less horn-rim glasses and straw boater hat, the various Harolds weren't all that dissimilar from the tens of thousands of otherwise normal-looking guys who bought tickets to his shorts.

The everyday man character, who walked about and found himself in hairy situations, was very appealing to the audiences of his day, explained Charlie Lustman, proprietor of Los Angeles Silent Movie Theater, which will be showing Lloyd's Grandmas Boy (1922), over the Thanksgiving holiday. He performed most of his own stunts, like climbing up the side of the building and hanging from the clock, in Safety Last. Buster Keaton might find himself hanging from a pole, but he didn't scale buildings.

In the 20s, glasses hardly ever were donned as fashion statement, although monocles held a certain charm. Before long, however, the craze spread from college campuses to the Imperial place in distant China.

Today, Lustman suggests, the round glasses tend to make audiences think Harold was more refined or intelligent than Lloyd had intended - a geek, if you will. But, typically, these characters held ordinary jobs a sales clerk, cab driver, soda jerk and could only dream of holding positions of prominence that would be attractive to the girls-next-door the Harolds found most attractive.

As the DVDs make exceedingly clear, Lloyd's genius was in the setting-up and paying-off of sight gags. Sprinkled liberally throughout the course of a movie, the gags relied on precise timing, physical dexterity and the fluidity of a dancer.

Audiences of the day knew to pay strict attention, lest they missed one. DVDs, of course, allow fans to study them in slow-motion, frame-by-frame and supported by the analysis of film historians.

Even then, only the sharpest of eyes will be able to pick up the prosthetic glove worn by Lloyd in all of the movies made after the near-fatal explosion of a prop bomb, in 1919, which took his thumb and forefinger. After shaking off the initial shock, Lloyd would continue to climb buildings, engage in fisticuffs with bullies, participate in epic chases, and, even, attain perfection as a 300-level bowler.

In the wake of The Jazz Singer, the novelty of listening to the actors in talkies left little room for the patience required of audiences for the enjoyment of Lloyd's more subtle gags. He never lost his passion for the medium, but Lloyd eventually turned his attention to other pursuits, including 35mm and stereoscopic photography, bacteriology and microscopy, experimentations with Technicolor, travel, art and automobile collecting, breeding Great Danes, golf and bowling, civic and charitable work (especially for the burn units at Shrine Hospitals).

When television arrived, with its insatiable appetite for entertainment products, Hollywood studios opened their vaults to fill the void. Comedy being the least valued of artistic commodities, little attention was paid by license holders to the integrity of their titles.

Harold owned the films, and didn't want to put them on television, which he hated, said his granddaughter, who grew up at Green Acres. He couldnt stand watching his movies on television because they'd cut to a commercial in the middle of a gag, completely ruining it. There was no way to recapture the impact of the gag, which hed taken so much time setting up.

Boomer babies would become as familiar with Chaplin, Keaton, Fatty Arbuckle, Laurel & Hardy and the various Our Gang casts now dubbed The Little Rascals as they were with Froggy the Gremlin and Howdy Doody. With the exception of some poorly maintained public-domain titles, Lloyd's work went mostly unseen until the 60s, when he released two documentary compilations, which were shown at Cannes, college campuses and art houses.

After his death, the job of restoring the films still held in Lloyd's name fell to his estate and heirs.

"I had fights with some of the lawyers for the executors of the state, who had made deals that allowed companies to cherry-pick the library of eight of the top titles," said Suzanne, who recalls frequent visits to Green Acres by Hedda Hopper, Loretta Young, Colleen, King Vidor, Cary Grant, Jack Lemmon, Peter Sellers, Tab Hunter, Debbie Reynolds, Robert Wagner (Mary Pickford was Aunt Mary, she made great cookies ). "I had to wait 12 years for those licensing deals to expire. Those companies weren't interested in video, or a theatrical release they wanted to do television and make a documentary.

"I did a domestic deal with Turners TMC, which Harold would have loved, because he didn't like commercials. I used the licensing fee and some other money to score 23 of the movies."

Meanwhile, she'd been working with restorers at UCLA and the Packard Humanities Institute, whose talents are on full display in the DVDs and prints made for theatrical distribution by Sony. Unfortunately, enough copies of un-restored public-domain titles - some better than others - remain in distribution to confuse the less-astute consumer.

"Some of our films are in the public domain, as well, but theyve been restored and re-scored, and theyre really beautiful," points out Suzanne, who also edited the books, "Harold Lloyd's Hollywood Nudes in 3D!" and "3-D Hollywood."" Another reason we had to wait was for the rights to the eight cherry-picked titles to return to our hands. We didn't want to have those films out there in poor condition, while these others went out restored.

"That would be too much of a hodge-podge. Instead, I waited for the kids to come home, where I could clean them up, put new party dresses on them and take them to the dance."

She credits New Line Home Entertainment for doing the heavy lifting on the DVD package.

"My challenge now is to get the DVDs in front of people who arent familiar with Harold, especially children (who will detect in Harry Potter, a homage to Lloyd)," allows Suzanne, who compares her grandfather's appeal to that of Jimmy Stewart, Tom Hanks and Cary Grant, in Bringing Up Baby (she might have added Clark Kent, as well). "He's been under the radar for so long. When people who aren't familiar with these movies see them in the way they were intended to be seen -- on big screens and with musical accompaniment -- they walk out of the theater amazed."

Indeed, Lustman expects the usual sell-out crowd for the screenings of Grandma's Boy. When classic silent films are shown at his Fairfax-district theater, theyre presented in a similar environment to those in their original runs.

In addition to vaudeville-style acts and shorts, the film will unspool to the accompaniment of organist Bob Mitchell. At 93, Mitchell is old enough to remember watching Grandma's Boy in its original release.

Referring to a time early in Lloyd's life, when his father wanted to move from Nebraska, but left the decision to his actor son as to which direction they would take from home, Lustman said, "We're just fortunate that the coin he flipped came up tails, and he came to California, instead of New York."

November 16, 2005
- Gary Dretzka

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