As a silent-film-era comedian alongside Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd naturally cannot be ignored in film history.
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On April 20, 1893, a child was born into a family of photographers in Burshad County, Nebraska, where his grandfather gave him the name Lloyd. Lloyd's parents divorced when he was young, and Lloyd has lived with his father ever since. Lloyd moved with his father to Omaha, where he had his first acting experience and training in the San Diego Academy of Dramatic Arts. In 1912, Lloyd began working as an extra in the Edison Company. The following year, he appeared in several comedies produced by The East Films, and also worked as an extra and a supporting role at Universal Pictures.
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In 1914, Lloyd began shooting comedy shorts in which he imitated Chaplin's classic character Charlo. In 1917, he finally had his original role. The character wears a flat-topped straw hat, a pair of glasses on his nose, and a suit.
In August 1919, while filming a movie, Lloyd lost the thumb and index finger of his right hand due to the misuse of real bombs in props, which led to him having to perform only by wearing a special prosthetic glove in later film performances.
The Last Security of 1923 was Lloyd's pinnacle. In the film, lloyd's grip on the hands of the clock to avoid falling from the bell tower has become a classic scene in the history of cinema. It is hard to imagine that such a thrilling scene was achieved through eight fingers.
This scene has also been paid tribute to in many later films, including Jackie Chan's classic masterpiece "Plan A", Martin Scorsese's "Hugo" and so on.
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Around the 1920s, Harold Lloyd, like Chaplin, swept China. However, in 1930, "Not Afraid of Death" released in China, there were many Chinese images, and these images were mostly obscene people, insulting the Chinese. Since then, Lloyd's loss of support for the Chinese market and the love of Chinese audiences have been strongly resisted by the Chinese side.
After the advent of sound films, silent comedies gradually declined. After filming Crazy Wednesday in 1947, Lloyd said goodbye to the screen. Five years later, Lloyd received the Oscar Honors at the 25th Academy Awards. Lloyd died in California on March 8, 1971.
Lloyd made a lot of films in his lifetime. From 1914 to 1947, Lloyd performed nearly 200 comedy films, including silent and sound films. Although he is not as well-known as Chaplin and Keaton in the same period, he still leaves many wonderful fragments for film history.