Trivia and Quotes
Quotes
 [on Bebe Daniels] She`s a wonderful individual and I can understand why she`s tremendously revered in Great Britain. She`s very warm-hearted and she has a habit of giving -- never lost it!
[on his horn-rimmed glasses] At a cost of 75 cents they provide a trademark recognized instantly wherever pictures are shown.
OTHER
Comedy comes from inside. It comes from your face. It comes from your body.
Career
I do not believe the public will want spoken comedy. Motion pictures and the spoken arts are two distinct arts.
Movies
In a feature picture I like quite well, the one in which I`m hanging on a clock, Safety Last! (1923), and which is probably one of our most popular, we did the final scenes of that climb first. We didn`t know what we were going to have for the beginning of it. We hadn`t made up the opening and after we found that we had, in our opinion, a very, very good thrill sequence, something that was going to be popular and bring in a few shekels, we went back and figured out what we would do for a beginning, and then worked on up to what we already had.
Movies
[in 1970] My humor was never cruel or cynical. I just took life and poked fun at it. We made it so it could be understood the world over, without language barriers. We seem to have conquered the time barrier, too.
Movies
[when asked whether the transition from silents to sound made any problems because of his voice, as with so many other stars from the era] I had to work a little on my voice because I hadn`t used it for years. I went to a voice coach for about five days, and then he said, "Good-bye, you just weren`t using it right".
Career
[when asked why he abandoned his Lonesome Luke character and that type of character] Charlie [Charles Chaplin] had the market cornered on that. He had it down to a science.
Career
Trivia
A famous story involved Lloyd and composer Gaylord Carter for the scoring of his film Safety Last (1923) for a later release in the 1960s. He was present during the recording session; during the sequence from the film in which he is scaling the side of a building, he loses his grip and catches hold of the hands of an enormous clock. During this moment, Carter at the organ swang into the song "Time on My Hands" - which prompted Lloyd to give Carter a mock stern glance and declare, "Gaylord, *I`ll* do the jokes!".
Great-uncle of Bentley Mitchum (Robert Mitchum`s grandson).
He and his wife Mildred Davis are mentioned twice in the Drake Bell song "End it Good" off of his 2006 album "It`s Only Time".
His hobbies included 3-D photography. He took hundreds of stereo images of Hollywood stars such as Marilyn Monroe, John Wayne, Sterling Holloway, Richard Burton and Roy Rogers. Many of these photos are reproduced in the book "3-D Hollywood: Photography by Harold Lloyd", which was edited by his granddaughter, Suzanni Lloyd Hayes, and comes with a 3-D viewer.
Lloyd was extremely superstitious. His daily routines were dictated by his superstitions: he maintained that certain streets were unlucky and his chauffeurs were instructed to avoid them. He would habitually enter and exit rooms from the same doors and dress and undress in precise reverse order.
While never credited as a writer through his entire career, Lloyd was in fact the driving force behind all of his movies, from Grandma`s Boy (1922) throughout the silent era. He came up with most of the stories and gags and structured them together with his team.
After Lloyd`s career as an actor deserted him in 1938, he immersed - some would say drowned - himself into one hobby after another. While he bred Great Danes and collected cars earlier in life, he would later indulge himself in marathon movie nights several times each week, and become rabidly interested in photography (which allowed himself intimate contact with innumerable models) and later, in hi-fidelity sound systems. He placed standing orders for the entire catalogs of several record companies, amassing an enormous record collection.
Aside from two talking films, The Milky Way (1936) & The Sin of Harold Diddlebock (1947) (AKA "The Sin of Harold Diddlebock"), all films from 1922 through Grandma`s Boy (1922), were owned by Lloyd. Many of the pre-1920 shorts were lost in a nitrate explosion in his film vault in 1943 and are now considered lost. A limited number of films rights were sold to Time-Life in 1998, and released on VHS format. The estate rejected offers to release them to DVD up until 2005, when they accepted an offer from New Line (some have also been restored and shown periodically on TCM). His films are set to be released on DVD somewhere in the next two years (2006-2007) (The two talking films are in the public domain, and all films before 1922 are owned by KINO having passed from Pathe and Roach)
He adopted daughter Marjorie Elisabeth Lloyd in 1929, when she was five years old.
He is the great-great uncle of Casper Van Dien and Grace Van Dien.
Head of jury at the Berlin International Film Festival in 1960.
His actual autographs prior to 1936 are quite rare. His father, `J. Darcie `Foxy` Lloyd`, was given the job as the official fan mail corresponder within the Harold Lloyd Corporation. Foxy`s signature is easy to recognize - it`s right out of the 19th century and quite florid. HL`s signature is much plainer and common. His father retired to Palm Springs in 1936. HL found it impossible to dodge autograph seekers when he began whirlwind movie/bowling nights around Los Angeles as his acting career wound down about the same time. Real pre-1936 autographs exist mainly on contracts and extremely personal correspondence to Bebe Daniels.
Parts of Westworld (1973) were shot at his estate, GreenAcres. He had expressed a desire to see his home preserved in some capacity related to his career, but his will strangely neglected any funding for the enormous estate. His heirs briefly opened it as a tourist attraction (and filming location) but this failed to generate adequate income and it was later sold.
Sam Taylor was the most important director for him.
Was immortalized in "Futurama" (1999) episode S03E08: That`s Lobstertainment. In this episode we find out that Dr. Zoidberg has an uncle who was a silent actor, Harold Zoid.
Was once one of the 10 richest entertainers in the world.
A 1919 accident with a prop bomb which turned out to be a live bomb, cost him the thumb and forefinger of his right hand. In subsequent films, he wore a glove and prosthetic device to hide it. Remarkably, he was able to do many of his gags (he employed a stunt man for serious stunts) convincingly afterward.
According to the book, "The History Of Pulitzer Prize Winning Plays", Lloyd was originally slated to play the lead role of Elwood P. Dowd in Mary Chase`s Broadway stage play "Harvey". Lloyd turned the part down, and it then went to Frank Fay.
Excelled at thrill comedy which had his characters in jepoardy with dangerous stunts (i.e. the clock hanging scene in Safety Last! (1923).)
Frequently played characters named Harold.
His home, "GreenAcres" has 44 rooms, 26 bathrooms, 12 fountains, 12 gardens and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
In the prime of his career, Lloyd`s most famous role was the "Glasses" character, a young eager all-American man who was out to succeed in life and absolutely no physical obstacle would stand in his way as he risked life and limb to achieve his goals.
Interred at Forest Lawn, Glendale, California, USA, in the Great Mausoleum, Begonia Corridor.
Lloyd`s "Glasses character" was the inspiration for Superman`s identity as Clark Kent. Like that character, Lloyd found that he could hide his identity simply by taking off the glasses.
One of the 36 founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS).
Pictured on one of ten 29¢ US commemorative postage stamps celebrating stars of the silent screen, issued 27 April 1994. Designed by caricaturist Al Hirschfeld, this set of stamps also honored Rudolph Valentino, Clara Bow, Charles Chaplin, Lon Chaney, John Gilbert, Zasu Pitts, Theda Bara, Buster Keaton, and Keystone Kops.
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