Okay, I admit it, I do not have a LaserDisc or DVD of The Freshman. I saw it at UCLA in a jaw dropping 35mm toned print just recently restored by the UCLA Film and Television Archive. The score for the film, commissioned recently from Carl Davis is — a better score simply could not be imagined. Truly magical. I hope that when The Lloyd Foundation finally decides to release The Freshman to the world on video, they have this music going along with it. Bravo!

I just love this movie. I can't even remember where I first saw it. Could it have been at UCLA, way back when, in 16mm at Melnitz Hall with Chauncey Haines playing the organ? Could it have been at Filmex?

Maybe. I had the good fortune to see The Freshman at Royce Hall just the other night. The occasion was the presentation of a restored version of the picture along with a premiere of a "newly revised" score for the film, written by Carl Davis and performed by members of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra.

It's amazing what a little film, some musicians and a lot of damn talent can do. The Freshman isn't the most complicated film in the world, but it has never failed to impress me with its, well, freshness. I always try to see silent films on these special occasions when they are brought out and dusted off, and presented properly — in a theatre, with musicians playing along. The Freshman really benefits from this type of presentation.

© 1925 The Harold Lloyd Corporation.

Harold Lloyd was born in Nebraska in 1893. His father was an apparently unsuccessful frontier photographer — an interest he passed on to his son. The family moved to San Diego, where his father opened a pool hall, and Harold drifted toward showbiz. He spent his childhood running errands and playing small parts for the local theatres. By his 20th birthday, he made his film debut playing an Indian in a film produced for Edison's Motion Picture Patents Company.

In 1913, after moving to Los Angeles and appearing in some short films for the newly formed Keystone Studio, Harold was offered some bit-part work at Universal, where he hooked up with Hal Roach, who at this time was a 20-year-old stuntman. Their friendship lasted beyond their Universal days. Lloyd went back to work for Mack Sennett (who was an old pro — he had been acting in films since 1908!) at his Keystone Pictures.

Roach managed to enter into the picture business as a producer the easy way: he inherited some money, then got his pal Harold to appear in some one-reelers (10 min.). In those days, it was standard operating procedure to have an actor develop a character, and this was the card you played when it came to selling the picture to audiences. They called Lloyd's character Willie Work, but couldn't find any takers.

Doesn't that sound like fun? Make a picture. It bombs. Figure out some way to make another. It's no wonder that all of Lloyd's best films have this goofy "we'll figure it out when we get there" spirit. Harold was hoping that Roach would get back up into the saddle, and he did. He had re-formed his production team, and signed a distribution contract with Pathé, a French-owned outfit that was just beginning to consolidate and focus on the American market (due to World War I).

Lloyd and Roach, taking a page from the Charles Chaplin playbook, created a character they called Lonesome Luke. The 100 or so slapstick shorts they worked on in 1916 and 1917 we not much good (so their creators thought), but they had clicked with the public, so life was good.

But in 1917, Roach had the idea that instead of patterning a character after Chaplin's Tramp (who was decidedly an odd duck), why not pattern a character after a "normal" guy? At the time, Buster Keaton, who was a big Vaudeville star, was just beginning to learn the ropes of the movie business with Fatty Arbuckle in New York.

So out with Lonesome Luke, and in with a character they never really gave a name to. He was — Harold Lloyd. The guy with the glasses. They referred to him as the "Everyman" character. This character caught on with the public, and Lloyd stuck with it for the rest of his career.

The interesting thing to me about the "Everyman" character, or the Harold Lloyd character, is that he is us. For some strange reason, we step into his shoes and the story is almost happening to us. There is never a moment in any of Lloyd's films where Harold does something that we wouldn't do. I mean, he is always getting into scrapes — that is the essence of the drama — but it is never Harold's fault. These weird things just happen. I think the border of the screen disappears more completely with Lloyd, because it is so easy to make this transference into his character.

Chaplin's tramp character allowed us to see ourselves in a different light. One where things aren't perhaps going so well. This is what makes his films so profoundly moving. Chaplin's Tramp at the end of Modern Times (1930) doesn't have a pot to piss in, but he gets the girl in the end, and he is eternally grateful for her.

Keaton, on the other hand, discovered the technique of remaining emotionally limited while at the same time displaying the most outrageous cunning and inventiveness. All of the incredible "Boxcar, wasn't there a boxcar here a minute ago?" stuff from The General (1927), and the climbing out on the cowcatcher with the log to clear the tracks — it's trilling, because much of the time, you just wing it.

But Lloyd's schtick is really rather interesting to me because his films are every bit as funny, but they are more of window into the world of the 1920s. His films don't take place on Easy Street or Anytown. Very often, the places in Lloyd's films are real cities that are named on the screen. And the character he plays is so often shown being late for work and "what are we going to do about that? I know! Let's hijack an ambulance!"

But there are similarities. Early in The Freshman, Harold is in his room, daydreaming of the college he is about to enter. He is looking at last year's yearbook. There is a shot of the page, a picture of a handsome fellow with his head jerked up. The caption reads, "The Most Popular Man on Campus." A shot of Harold is looking at this. Closer in on the picture. The man's face dissolves into Harold's. It is so ridiculous, Harold with his glasses and chin jerked up. There is no way this is ever going to happen! But you know how he feels.

© 1925 The Harold Lloyd Corporation.

Meanwhile, in Chaplin's The Gold Rush (1925), Charlie and Big Jim are stuck in a hut in a snowstorm, and they are starving. Big Jim looks over at Charlie, there is a lap dissolve, and Charlie has turned into a yummy-looking chicken! Same idea. Completely different settings and situations.

Chaplin does a bit in the film where he is so hungry he boils his shoes in order to eat them. Very funny, but it is not something that we can picture ourselves doing. Harold goes to the "Fall Frolic" in a hastily sewn tuxedo, which begins to fall apart while he's out on the dance floor. That is something that could happen to any one of us!

It is this quality to Harold Lloyd's films that make them so watchable. The scene on the train, where Harold sits down in the dining car next to Peggy (Jobyna Ralston), is similarly low-key and fun, with his becoming interested in her crossword puzzle. Harold's reaction to the fact that he and Peggy have been suggesting to each other terms of endearment to fit in the crossword puzzle and some old lady asking them, "Isn't love wonderful?" is almost too over-the-top to play. Can you imagine doing a scene like that today? For starters, Peggy wouldn't be working a crossword puzzle, and Harold wouldn't completely freak out and stumble wildly out of the dining car just because some old lady suggests they are lovers. It's a charming scene, and somehow takes you back to that time without giving you a campy sense of laughing at it.

Then you have Harold's arrival at the train station and the great scene where is he is dropped off at the school auditorium in the Dean's car — so he finds himself on stage with a kitten under his sweater. All of this is just wonderful. How in heck did they get that kitten to stick its head up through Harold's sweater? I think that this must get the biggest laugh in the picture. We have had the time to build up to a really funny moment, and here it is. A scene with the maximum amount of embarrassment for Our Hero.

Harold ends up blowing all of his money on sodas (!) for the gang, so he is forced to rent a room in a boarding house, which is looked after by none other than Peggy (the girl of Harold's dreams), whom he met on the train. I love the way they arrange this scene with them recognizing each other, and then, to reinforce the point for the audience (who has already figured it out), the say to each other via titles, "You. . ." Peggy notices that Harold has made a mess of trying to sew a button on his shirt (which I suppose is a foretaste of the fact that his suit falls apart later at the "Fall Frolic" — did they even think of such things back then?).

Peggy is introduced to the audience as "The kind of girl your Mother must have been." Even though Peggy is dressed like a throwback, has none of the chic of the flapper types attending Tate College, and seems rather on the prim side, she is none the less adorable from our standpoint today. She sort of fits the cliché of the silent comedy Heroine: no wonder Clara Bow was able to blow this out of the water with her performances in films like Mantrap (1926) and It! (1927).

Then there are all the scenes with the football coach (Pat Harmon), and the mascot dog, culminating in one of my favorite bits, where he has to be pulled out of a cab because he is so tired. Upon being introduced to some new people in this state, he is compelled to do his little "step right up and call me 'Speedy'" jig.

On to the "Fall Frolic" at the hotel, and all the great bits there. It's fun to watch Harold in a tuxedo (when it is not falling apart). He looks so wonderful in "evening clothes" and watching him wheel around the dance floor is a treat.

It seems a bit tacked on, but one of the gang (a strange looking actor named Brooks Benedict) is making a pass at Peggy, who is working at the hotel cigar stand. Fortunately, Harold happens by, sees this, and throws Benedict against the wall, telling him to watch his step. Benedict stands up, and throws the picture into a totally different gear, by savagely telling Harold that everyone thinks he is a dope, and worse than that, that despite all of his hard work, he didn't make the Tate football team. There are such sadists in the world. To make a picture about college without an appearance by a real creep just wouldn't be right.

Harold breaks down in Peggy's arms. She bucks him up, telling him just what every guy needs to hear: Be Yourself. It's interesting that Lloyd felt that this scene didn't work, and that it was out of place in a Harold Lloyd comedy, so he excised the scene from the film for years and years. His granddaughter Suzanne Lloyd, who is the member of the Lloyd family who has undertaken the safekeeping of the Lloyd films, says that she struggled with the notion of putting the scene back in the film.

She struggled, because, she reasoned, if he took it out, he must have had a reason. The film was released with the scene in place, but Lloyd took it out in later years (when he always liked to show it at colleges). She decided in favor of restoring the scene.

© 1925 The Harold Lloyd Corporation.

Harold gets a chance to be the Hero in the Big Game, he is told by the coach that he is only the waterboy, but because the Tate College team is getting stomped, the coach has to finally relent and allow Harold to play. I love his dizzy silliness after getting sacked a couple of times. His teammates have to grab him by the belt and swing him around to the proper side of the line of scrimmage. . . It's just wonderful. Running the wrong way, pulling the laces out of the football in order to pull it away nonchalantly while the opposite team piles onto where it used to be — these are all just the most marvelously idiotic things that only someone who is fundamentally at odds with the game would come up with.

Another thing I like about Lloyd's films is his unflinching use of titles and hand written notes. There is a wonderful bit in one of his short films (I forget which) where he is writing out a suicide note. Then he begins to fret over the spelling. The camera shows us the suicide note becoming more and more smudged with pencil schmutz as he neurotically strives toward the perfect suicide note.

Anyway, Peggy has seen Harold triumph from the stands, so afterward, as Harold is hoisted onto the shoulders of the crowd as a genuine football hero, poor Peggy is shuffled of to the side. Will Harold throw her over? She manages to scribble a tiny note, and passes it to him.

They need to have some time to decompress from the giddy heights of the scene, so once in the locker room, they have one of the teammates pull Harold over to a window, where we observe everyone (including the Coach) trying to imitate the "Speedy" jig!

After this, the atmosphere is a tad mellower, and this gives us the proper mood to observe Harold open the note from Peggy. It's written in haste around the margins of a page from the football game program. In order for him to read it, Harold must turn it at just the spot where it says, "I love you." It works perfectly.

Lots of times in silent comedies, in order to show that a character is thinking of Her to the Point of Distraction, they show somebody doing this while something else is happening to them, but they are not noticing — because they are in love. Lloyd was really great at cooking up these things. After reading Peggy's note, Harold looks up, breaths sort of a "gee whiz" sigh, then leans against the wall, which happens to contain a shower handle, so the shower turns on his head, but he is not noticing. No big deal, really, but it's the type of good-natured thing that abounds in this film.

Harold Lloyd's films I hope will always be with us. I have been seeing rather a lot of silent films recently, and I have to say that all of what have been considered the classics over the years really are the best, and the most pleasant of films to watch. People like to surround themselves with older architectural forms, antiques, old blues music — why not older movies more often? Beats me.

06.03.02