Saturday saw the last of a three-part series dedicated to Harold Lloyd’s 120th birthday celebration from The Silent Clowns. The short was Never Weaken (1921) followed by For Heaven’s Sake (1926). Both were chosen to show two aspects of Mr. Lloyd’s “glasses” character as well as to highlight the work of two of his three major leading ladies.
Never Weaken, a three-reel “thrill” comedy, has Harold as an office worker trying to come up in the world. His girlfriend, Mildred (Mildred Davies, eventually the real Mrs. Harold Lloyd) is a worker in the office next to his. They are smitten with each other and he assumes that they will be man and wife. When he sees her jump into the arms of another man who says, “Of course I will marry you!” he is despondent and decides to end his life. Poison is just too distasteful (literally) so he rigs a gun to go off and shoot him when his office door is opened from the outside. Blindfolded and waiting, he is startled when he hears a bang, which was only a light bulb exploding, and suddenly he feels himself soaring into the air. A girder from a nearby construction site has sailed in through his window and carted his chair and him high above the city.
After taking the blindfold off, seeing an angel, which is really statuary as a decoration on another building, the “thrill” portion begins, as he cavorts from one beam to another, having many close calls, and finally making it down to earth again. At that point, he learns what we’ve known all along—the “other man” is really Mildred’s brother who has just been ordained, so of course he’ll be happy to marry her—to Harold!
For Heaven’s Sake has Harold as an uptown swell, J. Harold Manners, who manages to have an expensive car ruined when his chauffer wrecks it. Nonplussed, he goes right out and buys a second expensive car and proceeds to ruin that one as well. Meanwhile, he also manages to ruin Brother Paul’s mission coffee cart by pouring gasoline on a small fire! In making up for that, he gives Brother Paul a check for $1,000—enough to actually start a mission, instead of just another coffee cart.
When he finds his name attached to the mission, he goes right downtown to tear the sign down. (Apparently not knowing the value of a coffee cart versus an actual building, he didn’t realize that he was, indeed, responsible.) When he meets Brother John’s daughter, Hope (Jobyna Ralston, the third of Mr. Lloyd’s leading ladies), he falls for her, and hard. In trying to make sure that the mission has enough clientele, J. Harold goes through a hilarious scene where he gets all sorts of fellas to chase him, then they chase someone else, then they finally chase him to the mission and become quite the congregation.
With J. Harold planning to marry Hope, his uptown swells kidnap him on his wedding day and take him back uptown. After the downtown thugs, decked out in their rented finery, have consumed quite a bit of alcohol, they hightail it uptown, rescue J. Harold from the uptown swells and hilarity ensues as J. Harold shepherds them back to the mission—just in time to marry Hope. All’s well that ends well!
From some of the onstage program notes before the films were shown, we learned that For Heaven’s Sake, while not being one of Lloyd’s favorites, and having portions of it re-shot and re-edited, was extremely popular and made more than $2 million—in 1926. As usual, Ben Model offered great piano accompaniment, though there was one flub when some sheet music fell off of the music desk. Also of note was that there were specific songs referred to in the film—Onward Christian Soldiers (if I’m remembering correctly) and I’m Falling in Love with Someone (by Victor Herbert); Mr. Model eased into and out of them effortlessly through his improvised score. Fun films, with lots of laughs. Happy 120th,
Mr. Lloyd!
Mr. Lloyd!
ConcertMeister
p.s. It was probably the nice weather, but this was the first time that this series was not a full house. There weren't tons of empty seats but there were a few.
Sounds fun!
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