Silent movies - Lonesome Luke, Messenger

Have you ever heard of Lonesome Luke? Chances are good that you know the actor who adopted a different and much more widely known persona after Luke, but will you recognize him?
Today I have a short from 1917 for you - Lonesome Luke, Messenger.

Here's the "plot".

Luke and Snub are messengers.
 

One day, they are supposed to deliver some big parcels to a girls' seminary school.
Luke gets "invited" in by one of the girls and immediately thrown out again by the matron which only increases his and Snub's urge to get back in.

That's no stuntman rolling down the stairs!

Snub makes it in as a contractor asks him if he wants to fill in for his "paper hanging assistant" who's late.
Luke finally manages by posing as a lineman and announcing that it's "free telephone sample day".
As you can imagine wallpaper, glue, ladders, and cables allow for ample slapstick action.

It's pure chaos from here - people trying to escape from one another, running here and there, crawling down chimneys, dangling on telephone wires, and in the end everyone chases Luke!

Pouting girls, but Luke hasn't given up yet.

The first escape.

Aaaand he's back.

The second escape. Nice jump!

From the autobiography: "The cunning thought behind all this, you will observe, was to reverse the Chaplin outfit. All his clothes were too large, mine all too small. My shoes were funny, but different; my mustache funny, but different. Nevertheless, the idea was purely imitative and was recognized as such by audiences, though I painstakingly avoided copying the well-known Chaplin mannerisms. ... Not only was the get-up imitative, but it was an offense to the eye originally. I cleaned it up as time went on until it was self-respecting before it died, but I do not like to recall it ...
I was convinced both that the character had gone as far as we could take him and that I had a better."

And he had. Did you recognize him?
It's Harold Lloyd before he came up with the "glass character" that we think of when we hear his name today.

Actually, the look with the glasses - which didn't have lenses, by the way - became so iconic that it seems every time someone else wears round glasses in a silent movie, people comment "He looks like Harold Lloyd!" although the glasses are the only similarity. People even had a hard time recognizing Lloyd if he didn't wear them.

Back to Lonesome Luke, though.
67 films were produced between 1915 and 1917 - one reelers took them about a week to make -, but most of them are lost now. I read in a post that only 14 of them survived, in a later comment on a video it said they found some more and are now up to 18. Still not that much.
If you think that today's short doesn't sound like much, you are right. However, you have to keep in mind that this was in 1917. The idea of films and of comedy in particular were still very different then ... or was it? To be honest, seeing some of today's comedy it really doesn't feel like that sort of humor is gone completely.
Take falls, for example. Why have been home video shows with people falling into lakes, off chairs or stages, etc. been so popular? Schadenfreude. Falls were a big thing in silent movies, and as you know by now, the actors often did their stunts themselves. How about Lloyd rolling down those stone steps? I sometimes have a hard time watching these things and yell "ouch" a lot, but I know enough people who'd still find that as hilarious as an audience over 100 years ago.

Luke was popular with the audience, but Lloyd wanted more than chases and pratfalls.
Actually, before starting to read his autobiography I hadn't known that his beginnings were not in being a comedian, but a stage hand, grip, stage manager, assistant electrician, etc. - at a young age - but also playing small and then bigger roles.
"Hence I knew my theater from Shakspere to the xylophone players." (That's no typo, there used to be different spellings for the Bard.)
Then his father moved to California, Harold started working as an extra in movies and met Hal Roach who was another extra at the time but then started producing at the Bradbury mansion (torn down in 1929 for a parking lot).
Do you recognize the stairs?

Picture by Lemuel S. Ellis, ca. 1887, via The Huntington Digital Library

I can see how someone who had worked theatrical ambitions from early on might get bored with Luke eventually, and of course Harold Lloyd will stay "The Boy with the Glasses" for most of us which I'm sure he would prefer.


Sources and further reading:

1. Harold Lloyd with Wesley W. Stout: An American Comedy. New York : Dover Publications, 1971 (unabridged republication, with minor corrections, of the 1928 work)
2. Trav S. D.: Lonesome Luke's Lively Life: Hal Roach, Harold Lloyd and the Rolin Film Co. On: Travalanche, July 31, 2025
3. John Bengtson: Harold Lloyd Takes A Chance on Court Hill. On: Chaplin-Keaton-Lloyd film locations (and more), January 1, 2014
4. John Bengtson: Lady Cops (and Harold Lloyd) Reveal 1914 Lost LA Treasures. On: Chaplin-Keaton-Lloyd film locations (and more), December 12, 2021