A rich kid is forced to join the Navy to make something of himself. Producer: Hal Roach. Director: Fred Newmeyer.

Harold is introduced as “The Boy—Idle heir to twenty millions—And a nerve that would blunt the edge on forked lightning.” At the country club, he gets the attention of a popular girl (Mildred Davis) by saying, “It’s too hot to play croquet; let’s get married.” When she tells Harold he must first ask her father, the father tells Harold that he will not allow her to marry him until he makes something of himself; so Harold joins the navy in order to impress the girl and her father. Stationed in the fictitious kingdom of Khairpura-Bhandanna, he rescues Davis (whose yacht has also arrived there) from the villainous maharajah (Dick Sutherland) and his army of sword-wielding warriors in the film’s frantic climax. Safely back aboard their respective ship and yacht, Harold proposes to his girl using semaphore, and she accepts. Originally intended as a two-reel comedy short, A Sailor-Made Man proved popular in previews in a four-reel rough cut and became Lloyd’s unintentional first feature-length film.

A cowardly boy becomes a hero with the help of a magical talisman that turns out isn’t magic at all.

Producer: Hal Roach. Director: Fred Newmeyer.

Harold is a cowardly young man who runs to his grandmother (Anna Townsend) out of fear when he is asked to participate in the manhunt for a tramp (Dick Sutherland) who has killed a man. The boy finds the courage only after his wise granny gives him a magic talisman that she tells him had helped his equally timid grandfather become a hero in the Civil War. Only after Harold single-handedly captures the killer does his grandmother tell him the truth—the talisman was a fake, nothing more than an old umbrella handle. Harold always had the courage inside him; he just had to find it for himself—a classic Lloyd lesson. The film ends with Harold ridding himself of a bully (Charles Stevenson) and proposing to his girl (Mildred Davis). The film’s brilliantly integrated plot and gags made Grandma’s Boy one of the most influential of silent feature-length comedies. Upon its release Charlie Chaplin called it “one of the best-constructed screenplays I have ever seen” and elements of the film can be seen in Buster Keaton’s masterpiece, The General (1926).

A good-hearted country physician works miracles with his common sense prescriptions and saves a “sick-little-well-girl” from her quack doctor.

Feature. Producer: Hal Roach. Director: Fred Newmeyer.

Harold plays Dr. Jackson (Dr. Jack for short), a small-town doctor who is a friend to everyone and eager to help. He approaches the healing of his patients through psychology And the nontraditional means of joy and excitement rather than medicine. Dr. Jack comes to the rescue of the Sick-Little-Well-Girl (Mildred Davis) who is deliberately coddled by her quack doctor (Eric Mayne).

An unassuming shop clerk arranges a publicity stunt to scale a building but is forced to make the hair-raising climb himself.

Feature. Producer: Hal Roach. Directors: Fred Newmeyer and Sam Taylor.

Harold Lloyd’s most-famous comedy features him as a sales clerk in a department store who finds himself hanging off the hands of a collapsing clock on the side of a skyscraper high above the streets of downtown Los Angeles. Harold’s legendary building climb is breathtaking—and hilariously funny—at the same time. What is even more amazing is that the sequence was achieved without any rear-screen projection or special effects. Lloyd was just as high above ground as one sees him in the film. The fourth—and best—of Lloyd’s five famous “thrill” comedies.

A hypochondriac millionaire, with the help of a giant, thwarts a revolution in a tropical paradise.

Feature. Producer: Hal Roach. Directors: Fred Newmeyer and Sam Taylor.

Harold plays wealthy hypochondriac Harold van Pelham, who travels with his private nurse (Jobyna Ralston) to the fictious island of Paradiso to live blissfully in a warm climate in order to regain his health. In Paradiso, he finds himself in the middle of a revolution, which Harold assumes is being staged as an entertainment for his amusement. With the aide of an eight feet nine inch giant named Colosso (Johan Aasen), Harold crushes the rebellion and the excitement cures him of his imagined ailments. Why Worry? is unquestionably on of Lloyd’s most hilarious comedies.

A stuttering, girl-shy tailor writes “The Secret’s of Making Love.” When the book gets published, he’s shy no more and goes after the girl he loves.

Feature. Producer: Harold Lloyd. Directors: Fred Newmeyer and Sam Taylor.

Harold is a shy tailor’s apprentice who has a pronounced stutter and is afraid of girls. He spends his lonely evenings writing a book called The Secret of Love Making until he is galvanized into action when he discovers that the girl he loves (Jobyna Ralston) is about to marry a bigamist. What follows is arguably the greatest race-to-the-rescue sequence of the entire silent cinema. The film’s ending was the inspiration for Mike Nichol’s The Graduate (1967)

A confirmed bachelor finds himself living with a new wife and her family, and panics when thinks he’s accidentally killed his mother-in-law.

Feature. Producer: Harold Lloyd. Directors: Sam Taylor and Fred Newmeyer.

A hilarious domestic-life comedy begins with Harold with an armful of packages and a live turkey on a streetcar, followed by a disastrous spin in his new car with his in-laws, and ending with haunted house-type thrills provoked by his mother-in-law (Josephine Crowell).

A collegiate patsy finds love and unwittingly becomes a football hero.

Feature. Producer: Harold Lloyd. Directors: Sam Taylor and Fred Newmeyer.

Harold Lloyd’s most popular comedy is arguably his funniest film. It was also his most commercially successful silent comedy feature. Harold plays college freshman Harold Lamb who longs to be the Big Man on Campus. His metamorphous from college zero to college hero in the climactic football game is one of the high points of silent film comedy.

A man with a mansion falls for a miss with a mission.

Feature. Producer: Harold Lloyd. Director: Sam Taylor.

Lloyd plays J. Harold Manners, a millionaire playboy who inadvertently contributes to a skid row mission (which is then named in his honor). He meets and falls in love with Hope (Jobyna Ralston), the mission pastor’s daughter, when he visits the mission to protest his name being used. Under her influence, Manners makes parishioners out of all the seedy characters and tough men of the neighborhood. When his idle club friends abduct him on his wedding day (believing they are preventing him from making a foolish mistake), Harold (with his inebriated groomsmen in tow) must race back to the mission so as not to miss his own wedding. The race-to-the-rescue sequence that climaxes For Heaven’s Sake on the double-decker open-top bus is one of Lloyd’s most memorable sequences.

The runt of the family comes to the rescue of his brutish big brothers

Feature. Producer: Harold Lloyd. Directors: Ted Wilde and J.A.Howe.

The Kid Brother is Harold Lloyd’s masterpiece and Lloyd’s favorite of all his films. Harold is a country boy who is the “Cinderella” of the Hickory family. Shy and bespectacled, his wit and ingenuity are not appreciated by his physically robust but none- too-bright father and brothers. When Mary arrives with the traveling road show, Harold needs all his quick wits and courage to defeat the villains, win the girl of his dreams and finally gain his father’s approval.

A baseball crazy young man who can’t hold down a job saves the last New York

horse-drawn streetcar from extinction.

Feature. Producer: Harold Lloyd. Director: Ted Wilde.

Speedy, Lloyd’s last silent film, is a superb valedictory to the silent era. “Speedy” was Harold’s real-life nickname (given to him by his father) and the film is appropriately fast- paced. Lloyd plays Harold “Speedy” Swift, a baseball-crazy young man who cannot hold a job. His employment misadventures include work as a soda jerk and a cab driver. Harold’s girlfriend, Jane (Ann Christy), lives with her grandfather, “Pop” Dillon (Bert Woodruff), who owns New York City’s last horse-drawn streetcar. A gang hired by a railroad monopoly steals the horse and streetcar. By stopping Pop’s streetcar from operating more than twenty-four hours, the rail monopoly hopes to steal away his franchise. Speedy ultimately finds the car and manages to get it back on track in time to make the daily run, saving Pop’s franchise. Filmed partly on location in New York, the film features a memorable cameo from baseball legend Babe Ruth and a wild chase scene in downtown Manhattan, where Harold must hurtle the horse-drawn streetcar pell-mell through chaotic city traffic.