Speedy

Monday April 11, 7pm, The Paramount, Seattle "New York, where everybody is in such a hurry that they take Saturday's bath on Friday so they can do Monday's washing on Sunday." A soda jerk takes his girl on a date, then saves her granddad's horse-trolley from crooked businessmen. Harold "Speedy" Swift (Harold Lloyd) could hold down a job if it didn't interfere with baseball. During a stint as a cabby he drives Babe Ruth to work, nearly killing them both and gets fired when he sits behind his boss at the game. Pop Dillon can't work and laments, "The folks at City Hall said that as long as my car runs once every twenty-four hours, the car n' track is mine." Speedy and the neighbors step in to save the day in the hair-raising finale. In his eleventh and final silent feature, Harold Lloyd made the most of bustling New York locations, including Coney Island's magnificent Luna Park and Yankee Stadium. Cutie-pie Ann Christy plays Jane, with Bert Woodruff as the gruff-but-lovable old man, but the dog nearly steals the show! "The House of Hits!" Starring Harold Lloyd, "The fastest, Funniest Feller in the Films," Speedy opened at Seattle's United Artists Theatre (formerly the Liberty) on 1st Avenue, Thursday, April 5, 1928 for the "First Showing Anywhere in the Wide, Wide World!" Jan Sofer and The United Artists Orchestra provided live musical accompaniment and performed an overture of popular tunes, "In the Song Shop." "Grab a seat in Harold's snicker special. He guarantees a laugh in every bump and a thrill in every rattle!"

I really wasn't that familiar with Harold Lloyd until I saw this silent. I wasn't going to watch it at first, but I got immersed in it almost immediately! What glorious and successful use of slapstick! I'm not even into slapstick that much, but this one had me "rolling in the aisles," or should I say my living room chair. Mr. Lloyd had a knack of making fun of himself, which to me is the essence of anything comical. I guess that's why I don't watch anything too recent, since so much comedy these days is either at somebody else's expense, or just plain stupid. Here we have the hero, Lloyd, trying to do something nice for someone else, while having absolute perseverance throughout impossible trials and tribulations. That makes it even better. No violence, thank goodness! Mr. Lloyd was a genius, and he ranks with Buster Keaton in bringing timeless laughs.

SPEEDY might not be as tight as his other masterpieces- it's a bit episodic, yet those scenes on Coney Island are lovely all the same, and the way they set up a little home inside the truck is poetic. This is the last silent of Lloyd, and it reflects the helplessness towards progression and the nostalgia of the good old past, which is the essence of what makes this film so wonderfully rich and graceful. That attempt of saving the last horse-drawn tram as goal(instead of personal achievement), and especially the help from the civil war veterans and on-lookers(instead of himself as an all-able hero) is atypical of Lloyd, but makes this film warmer, special, and very lovely.

Unlike some of his films in which Lloyd plays an underdog until his final self-assertion, here Lloyd plays a would-be Horatio Alger type who nevertheless is fired from one job to another, yet who is ingenious in handling every minor problem that arises, such as finding seats on the subway while still failing at every job. Highlights: The taxi ride with a terrified Babe Ruth; the old geezers defeating a bunch of hired toughs; a dog who comes close to stealing the show; a climactic mad dash across New York in a horse-drawn trolley; a tender not mawkish romance; and always the Lloyd charm and calculating innocence.

A delightful Harold Lloyd piece in which, in a nice change of pace, his character is a self-assured, confident young man living in New York during the roaring twenties, who loves baseball as much as he loves his girlfriend. Trouble is afoot however, when business tycoons try to buyout his father-in-law's lone horse and buggy track for their development. Things turn unlawful when goons are hired to try and thwart the buggy's run, which must be made at least once every 24 hours, or Pop can lose his license. Everything plays out in the traditional Lloyd way, with wonderful gags and set pieces, but the biggest treat of all is the roughly twenty minute escape Lloyd takes with his girl to Coney Island. Wonderfully shot, it is truly a pleasure to see Coney Island in it's hey day. As well, Babe Ruth does a nice turn playing himself. A must see.