Presented by the Music Box and the Silent Film Society of Chicago, this series of double features ($10.50 admission) showcases new prints from the silent and early sound career of slapstick master Harold Lloyd. Screenings are Friday through Thursday, July 1 through 7, at the Music Box, 3733 N. Southport, and all silent programs feature live organ accompaniment by Jay Warren, Dennis Scott, or Mark Noller. For more information call 773-871-6604 or visit www.musicboxtheatre.com.
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Unlike Chaplin or Keaton, Lloyd came to film as a dramatic actor and played several comic characters before donning his famous spectacles and settling into a persona more like himself: a young rube determined to make something of himself in modern America. The hair-raising sequences of him hanging from buildings struck a chord at the dizzying height of the Jazz Age and made him overall a bigger earner than either of his contemporaries. But his poignant performance in The Freshman (1925, 76 min.), widely considered his best picture, proves that he was also a gifted comic player. Embarrassment was always his forte, and the story’s emotional centerpiece is a priceless sequence in which he arrives at a homecoming dance in a tuxedo that isn’t quite finished. (Fri 7/1, 9:30 PM; Sat 7/2, 4 and 9:30 PM)
Lloyd’s career in talkies was typical of the great silent comedians: he managed the transition well enough, but his persona suddenly seemed out of place in the bleak early years of the Depression. His sound comedies were praised by critics but failed commercially, and by the end of the 30s he’d retired. Movie Crazy (1932, 95 min.) is a back-lot comedy with Lloyd as an aspiring movie star, best known for a sequence in which he takes to the dance floor mistakenly wearing a magician’s coat. (Tue 7/5, 7 PM) In The Cat’s Paw (1934, 100 min.) he plays a naive young man persuaded to run for mayor of a corrupt town. (Tue 7/5, 5 and 9 PM)
