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Harold Clayton Lloyd was born in Burchard, Nebraska, USA, on April 20, 1893, the second son to James Darsie Lloyd and Elizabeth Fraser. During his childhood, he lived, at various times, in the towns of Pawnee City, Humboldt, Beatrice and Omaha, Nebraska, and Fort Collins, Durango and Denver, Colorado.
The reason for this nomadic existence was his father's difficulty in keeping a job; it was this inconsistency that led Elizabeth to divorce her husband, nicknamed "Foxy," in 1910.
The two boys (elder brother Gaylord was born in 1888, and died in 1943) shuffled between mother and father for a time, before making permanent home with Foxy.
Throughout Harold's childhood, he shared with his mother a passion for the theatre, and engaged in amateur theatrics for most of his adolescence.
In 1906, young Harold had met the single greatest influence on his histrionic art: actor and mentor John Lane Connor, who took the youngster under his wing and ingrained in him the desire for perfection which was to stay with Lloyd for the rest of his life. With each role Harold played, his notices got stronger, and his zeal for theatrics grew alongside.
In 1912, Foxy, now working for the Singer Sewing Machine Company, had an accident, which produced a monetary settlement of three thousand dollars. With this money, the Lloyd men could really live, but the question was… where?
The flip of a coin sent the men to San Diego, California, where Connor had established a dramatic school, which Harold joined immediately, as both a student and an instructor.
Later that year, after the dramatic school closed, Harold and some of the other students took roles in The Old Monk's Tale, a production of The Edison Company. This brief role as a Yaqui Indian was the film debut of Harold Lloyd, and was followed by sporadic extra work with Edison, Keystone and Universal.
While at Universal City, Lloyd met a fellow extra, Hal Roach, who would later establish his own production house, The Rolin Film Company, and take on Lloyd as principal talent. Together, the young men would learn how to make films, and would grow to virtually define film comedy in the process.
Harold Lloyd's first real comedy character was Willie Work, whose appearance was directly patterned after the Tramp, portrayed by Charles Chaplin. With this character, at least six films were released, though many more were made.
The next character, Lonesome Luke, varied the Tramp theme somewhat, by employing tight clothes, two-dot mustache, and wide smile. Lloyd was never happy with this persona, though seventy-one films were released, to the delight of Roach and distributor, Pathe.
A newer, better, and more unique character was in Lloyd's mind, as early as 1916, but it was a year later, after threatening to quit, that Roach allowed Lloyd to try out the new persona, dubbed The Glasses Character.
This role, which put a normal-looking boy onto the screen, with the single defining characteristic being a pair of lenseless horn-rimmed glasses, came to change the standard definition of comedy at the time.
No more did a character have to be quirky, grotesque, or out-of-the-ordinary in order to be funny: Lloyd proved that.
From the beginning, the new character found favor with audiences. With each film, as was true in Harold's early theatre days, reviews got more and more favorable. In April 1919, Lloyd signed a contract for a series of longer, and more sophisticated, two reel comedies, at a greater salary. Life seemed to be just starting for the comic.
Then came August 24, 1919, a day that found Harold posing for publicity stills at Witzel's Photographers, Los Angeles. One shot called for Lloyd to light a cigarette from a prop bomb, striking a sassy, devil-may-care pose. The prop, though, so resembled a real bomb that an actual real bomb got mixed in with the fakes -- the real bomb was handed to Lloyd. He lit the already-lit cigarette onto the wick, but found that the excessive smoke prohibited a good picture. As he signaled for a new wick, the bomb exploded.
The force of the blast temporarily blinded Lloyd, and severed the thumb and forefinger from his right hand, and kept him out of the studio for almost seven months.
Thanks to the input of former glove salesman Sam Goldwyn, Lloyd's impairment was covered within a prosthetic glove. At no time did Lloyd ever discuss the loss of the fingers, even in his 1928 autobiography, An American Comedy, or in numerous interviews and oral histories. The reason for this was that, at no time, did Lloyd want his fans to know about the disability, for he did not want his audiences to come to see him out of pity, or sympathy, or curiosity.
He wanted people, simply, to laugh with him. Rather remarkable, considering the box office potential...
The films kept on coming. Two reelers grew to three reelers, then to feature length with A Sailor-Made Man in 1921.
Eleven silent features were released between 1921 and 1928. Seven sound features followed from 1929 through 1947.
All the films took The Glasses Character to new heights, exploring a wide array of situations, but all featuring the optimistic go-getter whose enthusiasm got him out of scrape after scrape. Obstacles were laughed at, while the audiences rolled in the aisles.
The sound era saw a decline in Lloyd's popularity, mainly because the optimism of the character lost the appeal of Depression audiences.
Lloyd married his leading lady, Mildred Davis, on February 10, 1923, and together they raised three children. Gloria, born in 1923, still lives in California. Peggy, adopted in 1930, died in 1986. Harold, Jr., born in 1931, died three months after his father in 1971.
The Lloyd family lived in Beverly Hills at Greenacres, their spectacular sixteen-acre estate.
Throughout his life, Lloyd investigated, and mastered, a staggering number of hobbies, among them stereo photography, bowling, dog breeding, color research, magic, tennis, golf, painting, microscopy, and handball.
In 1924, he and his father joined The Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine, known as "The Shriners". In 1949, Harold was elected Imperial Potentate, the highest national office. During his year-long term, and to the end of his life, he worked tirelessly on behalf of The Shriner's Hospitals for Crippled Children, and helped more people than he ever realized.
In 1962, Lloyd released the first of two compilation films, entitled Harold Lloyd's World of Comedy, which re-introduced his beloved Glasses Character to new generations. At this time, as well, he began touring colleges and high schools, showing his films to young audiences, who marvelled at his comic antics. This brought Lloyd a great deal of joy in his later years.
Mildred Davis, Lloyd's wife of forty-six years, died on August 18, 1969, at 68. The next year, Lloyd was diagnosed with prostate cancer, and underwent surgery and cobalt treatments.
Harold Lloyd's final public appearance found him in London, at the Cinema City Exhibition celebrating the seventy-fifth anniversary of film. He showed his classic, The Kid Brother, to the cheers of appreciative audiences, who did not know how sick he really was.
Harold Clayton Lloyd died, at home at Greenacres, on March 8, 1971, at 77. He was entombed in the Great Mausoleum at Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glendale, California.
In 1984, the mansion at Greenacres was named to the National Registry of Historic Places.
In 1994, Harold Lloyd was one of ten Silent Screen Stars memorialized on a twenty-nine cent postage stamp, along with Rudolph Valentino, Clara Bow, Charles Chaplin, Lon Chaney, John Gilbert, ZaSu Pitts, the Keystone Cops, Theda Bara,and Buster Keaton.
As generations to come are introduced to Harold Lloyd's work and legend, he will continue to live on, and will continue to represent the American Success Story.
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