Silent movies - The Reckless Age

Have you ever heard of "Floyd's of London"? I'm quite sure you haven't because it's a joke on "Lloyd's of London", the famous insurance market.
Yes, we are in the world of insurances today and you can imagine it will be an unusual one we are dealing with in "The Reckless Age" from 1924.

First, the plot (spoilers!)

Lord Allan Harrowby from London is meeting with the two top managers of Floyd's of London.
He has an unusual request. He will marry the heiress Cecilia Meyrick soon and wants to take out an insurance for $100,000 against her changing her mind.
The managers agree, but first he has to sign an agreement that there will be no compensation if the wedding is off due to his own actions. Also, they will send their risk manager Richard Minot along to Florida to make sure the wedding goes through.

They put all their trust in Dick who has never disappointed them so far and give him a token of their appreciation, a watch.
The watch is engraved on the back - and no, I have absolutely no idea if they were just too cheap to get the real watch engraved for the film or if that picture was missing in the only existing print and was replaced by this masterpiece (which is shown twice).

On the train, Dick happens to meet Cecilia. Unfortunately, it is love at first sight for him which makes the whole mission very awkward for him now.
Although Cecilia also feels attracted to Dick, she is very keen on arriving in San Marco in time for the lunch where her engagement will be announced.

When the train is held up by a pig family, Dick decides to take a "taxy" to get Cecilia to the lunch in time. The train-car chase makes for a really cool stunt which made me jump.

From that moment on, Dick has a hard time to make this wedding happen.
Cecilia is not at all sure about it anymore, she and Dick keep flirting.
Naive Lord Harrowby is befriended by con man Martin Wall.
A valuable diamond necklace is stolen right off Cecilia's neck.
 

Pushing Cecilia over to Lord Harrowby to faint.

Some other guy turns up and claims to be the real Lord Harrowby. Dick has him taken to Wall's yacht to get him out of the way.
Actress Gabrielle Rose arrives with whom the Lord used to have an affair. She threatens to sue him for breaking his marriage promise. Luckily, Dick finds proof that she had already been married at the time and isn't divorced yet.

Are you already confused? Because, you know, we are not even halfway through the movie yet.

Meanwhile, Allan has endorsed the policy to Wall for a loan of the money he thinks he needs to get rid of Gabrielle Rose. Of course, Wall sees his chance to make a lot of money if he brings the other Lord back into the game.
Cecilia's father demands identification for the wedding to take place.
Allan's reaction is to run off. It's not looking good for him. Good for Dick and Cecilia, though. Only she doesn't want to see that because she still doesn't know why Dick has done everything to push that wedding through while saying he loves her. It's quite understandable that she's mad.

And don't you know it, the Lord is back! He's in company of the Duke and Duchess of Lismore who are friends of his and also of the Meyricks.
The other Lord gets introduced and Lismore recognizes him as the former butler. Another obstacle is removed.

Martin Wall, however, is still working on his plan. He offers the local paper's editor $1,000 to put the insurance story in the next issue.
The editor thinks he can do better than that, prints the story and goes to Cecilia's father offering him to destroy the issue if he buys the paper for $20,000.
Of course, Wall isn't happy when he finds out, they start fighting, Dick arrives and joins the fight (Denny used to be a boxer and started out in boxing two-reelers), then the employees, and in the end the whole office is in shambles. When Allan and Cecilia turn up, Cecilia learns about the insurance and Dick's role in it. Obviously, the marriage is off for good now and Dick doesn't have good cards, either.

Wall tries to claim the money, but since it was Allan's fault for telling him, the policy is invalid. To top it off, a police officer turns up because they found the necklace and jewels in Wall's room, yes, he has even stolen the yacht!

Dick and Cecilia meet again when the train they're on has a problem and they go for the same "taxy". The driver can tell there's something wrong between them and drives so wildly on purpose that they keep bumping into one another - until they can't resist anymore.

I know that it sounds like a very confusing movie, but it really isn't.
Dick handles one problem after the other and Floyd's trust in him is absolutely justified because he handles them well.
Denny was a popular actor in the 20s (and still worked in film until his death beside being an engineer and inventor) which isn't surprising as he was good at romance, comedy, but also action.
He and Ruth Dwyer make this a cute little romantic comedy.
As you might know, dollar princesses absolutely existed - rich heiresses marrying into titled families who needed money. In this case, the Lord is even in love with Cecilia - that wasn't always the case with these marriages - although I'm not sure about her feelings because she falls for Dick awfully quickly.
Not even the insurance is that unusual. There is indeed an insurance company offering a "change of heart" policy, just not that shortly before the wedding date.
The only awkward bit was that there was one example of blackface with the taxi driver.

When I saw that the movie was an adaptation of the book "Love Insurance" by Earl Derr Biggers, I had just finished another book and figured why not?
Although I had only read one or two of the books and watched one or two of the movies years ago, Biggers was familiar to me as the creator of Charlie Chan. I hadn't been aware that he was a journalist and playwright as well and also wrote other successful novels before Charlie Chan.

You thought there was a lot happening in the movie?
Although the basic plot was the same, the book had even more people and twists! For some reason, the movie turned Lloyd's into Floyd's and turned Cynthia into Cecilia.
The story had been serialized in several newspapers in 1914 and was published as a book later that year. It was quite amusing to read, so much so that I put other Biggers pre-Chan books on my list, but I think reading it in installments might have made more sense to keep the whirlwind feeling down a bit. Oh well, those sleepless night.


Source:

Marc Wanamaker/Kimberly Pucci/Janice Simpson: The Reckless Age (L'età frenetica). On: Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 36, Pordenone, 30 September | 7 October 2017

Silent movies - A Dog's Life

Today I got two Chaplins for you. I don't mean two Chaplin movies, but two Chaplins in one movie - Charlie and his brother Sydney.
Let's have a look at "A Dog's Life" from 1918.

Here's the plot with spoilers.

The Little Tramp is trying to make the best of his life in the streets although he's sleeping rough, is sometimes forced to steal food, and has his run-ins with the law.

It's not that he doesn't want to work, but at the agency the others keep pushing him out of the way and in the end there's no job left for him.
Then he meets Scraps. The little stray has found a bone which attracts a lot of other dogs, and Charlie saves Scraps from the fight.

I'll happily admit that this made me feel
all mushy right away. The rest of the
pack raided a grocer's shop in the meantime.

At a coffee stall, Scraps takes the chance to steal some sausages and the Tramp stuffs himself with food every time the proprietor isn't looking.

A hilarious scene. The stall owner is Sydney Chaplin, by the way.

Now that they had something to eat, the Tramp heads for a dance hall. Unfortunately, the "Green Lantern" offers free dancing, but doesn't allow dogs, and they get thrown out.
He won't leave Scraps outside, though, and cleverly hides him. If only the tail wouldn't peek out through a hole in the pants, wagging like crazy.

There's a new singer and hostess in the bar who moves the audience to tears with her sad song.
The bar owner, however, wants his guests happy ... and thirsty! "If you smile and wink, they'll buy a drink."
So she tries her luck with the Tramp. After a bit of confusion, he asks her for a dance which turns out interesting, to say the least.
As the bartender finds out he has no money to buy drinks, however, he throws him out.

Flirting 101.

Outside, two villains mug a drunk gentleman and take his wallet. Being followed by police, one of them buries it in a hole next to the Tramp's favored sleeping spot.
Luckily, Scraps finds the wallet and they head back to the "Green Lantern".
Meanwhile, the singer has got herself sacked for refusing to dance with another customer. She's desperate because the owner doesn't want to pay her, but the Tramp shows her the money he has found and says they will settle in the country.
Too bad that the villains overhear them and take the wallet back. The Tramp doesn't give up that quickly, though, and manages to get the money back. 

"Giving" the villain his arms - a splendid performance.

The villains chase him to the coffee stall, during the struggle the wallet falls on the ground - from where Scraps successfully recovers it while the villains get arrested by the police and the Tramp escapes, leaving the poor stall owner behind confused and the worse for wear.

In the end, you see the happy couple on their farm and a bassinet stands on the floor - not with one baby, but a whole litter!

There are two things clearly standing out in this movie.

1. Scraps (called Mutt in real life) absolutely stole the show. Sorry, Charlie and Edna and the others, you were funny, but we all know who was the real heroine here.
2. The singer's dress. I just couldn't get over this masterpiece of fashion design. We should all wear dresses like that, women, men, children.
It looked like a long whitish skirt with a black diaphanous top over which there was kind of a black apron whose two parts were connected at the hips with black strips. But wait, there's more! Uhm, a flapping piece of curtain fastened to the back?
"We still need a dress for Edna. Oh hey, there's still some leftover fabrics here. I can do something with that!" Absolutely brilliant 😂

Not only Scraps leads a dog's life in the movie, but also the Tramp and the singer, even if not literally.
The association between the scenes of the Tramp losing the fight for a job at the agency and Scraps the one for the bone is obvious.
All three of them are forced into that life which actually makes it extra heartwarming to see them get their happy ending (even if founded on ill-gotten money). I was fully prepared to see them go down a lonely road into an uncertain future, but I liked this much better.

I also enjoyed the gags very much and the "choreography" that Chaplin was so good at.
32 minutes well spent indeed.

P.S. Did you notice something about the pictures? The familiar cane is missing. I guess a cane and a leash would have been too much.

Silent movies - Our Hospitality

I don't know if you are familiar with Lucky Luke, the hero of a Belgian Western comic album series that is very popular in Europe. One of the albums is called "The Rivals of Painful Gulch". The O'Timmins (with big noses) and the O'Hara (with big ears) families have been in a decade long feud without even remembering why. Lucky Luke is made mayor in order to end this feud.
The story was inspired by the historical Hatfield-McCoy feud in 19th century West Virginia/Kentucky.
You want to know what that has to do with silent movies? I'm glad you asked.
May I present to you "Our Hospitality" from 1923?

The plot (spoilers ahead)!

After his father John and James Canfield have shot each other, baby Willie McKay is taken to New York by his mother where he grows up without being told about the feud between the families (have you noticed the similarity of the names to the real names?), raised by his aunt after his mother's death.

That's Keaton's and Talmadge's first son
Jimmy, by the way.

Then, however, he gets a letter telling him to claim his father's estate in the South and he starts dreaming big (in fact it's just a small rundown hut).
Before he leaves, though, his aunt tells him about the feud.

On the train - "Onward sped the iron monster toward the Blue Ridge Mountains" according to the intertitle (always followed by Willie's dog!) - he meets a young lady.
The train ride is quite eventful. They have to remove a tramp, a guy hurls stones at the engineer who throws back wood from his fuel cart which is quickly collected by the guy, they have a very bumpy ride as the tracks are literally laid over trees and rocks, they have to move the tracks because a stubborn donkey refuses to move (of course he walks off after the train has passed), they derail and the train runs on the bare ground, and at one point the engine even loses the wagons and is suddenly behind them - and that's not all (I'm glad my commute wasn't like that).

Once arrived, we - but not Willie - find out that the young lady on the train is Virginia Canfield as she's picked up by her father and two brothers Clayton and Lee.
Later Willie encounters Lee who, upon hearing that Willie is a McKay, immediately tries to kill him without success and runs home to inform his father and Clayton. While they choose their weapons, Willie happens to see Virginia in her yard and she invites him to supper.

By now, all male Canfields go after Willie who has some very lucky - and funny -  escapes.
When he calls for supper, the Canfields are shocked to see that he's Virginia's guest. Neverless, Father Canfield tells his sons that they will have to grant him their hospitality because their code of honor ... but only inside the house while he's fair game outside of it. Overhearing them plotting, Willie asks the butler whose house it is.
From here on, Willie and the Canfields have an eye on each other as they just wait for him to leave the house and get their chance.

The parson is saying grace, but only he and
Virginia have their eyes closed ...

Luckily, it rains hard when the parson wants to go home after supper. He's invited to stay and Willie extends that invitation to himself, determined never to leave the house again. When Virginia learns that he's a McKay, however, she can't imagine a future for them.
Willie hopes to escape in disguise and the chase begins (which gives Keaton ample opportunity for his daring stunts).

Thanks to the parson, there's a happy ending as he manages to marry Willie und Virginia in time before the Canfields arrive at home and how could Dad resist the look in his daughter's eyes?

Now this was a movie I really had fun with!
I'm shamelessly going to steal a bit from Jim Emerson's review (link below, unfortunately it's only part of an article whose link doesn't work anymore).

"Among the things you will learn from watching Buster Keaton’s “Our Hospitality”:

● A novel method for easily collecting firewood.

● How to move a donkey away from railroad tracks, or vice-versa.

● How to improvise a boat.

● How to make a lady from a horse’s behind.

● How to put on a top hat in a low-ceilinged carriage (and why a porkpie hat is so obviously preferable).

In other words, the act of seeing this movie will immeasurably improve your life."

Keaton who loved trains set the movie earlier than the historical feud, so he could use a replica of the 1829 British steam engines Stephenson's Rocket. The train ride is my favorite part of the movie, it's hilarious. I had a hard time keeping the number of pictures for it down.
That doesn't mean, however, that the chase wasn't funny and actually exciting as well.
As usual, Keaton did most of his own stunts. Two of them got dangerous for him, once when a wire broke and Keaton was swept away in the water - as you can see in the movie because the cameraman had instructions to keep filming - and once when he was dangling over the waterfall and swallowed so much water that he had to have his stomach pumped!

There are a lot of sight gags, but no slapstick as that wouldn't have worked for a feature film that depended on its narrative that's based on tragic events.
This was Keaton's second feature film, but the first one had still been episodic. It was also a family venture. The producer Joseph M. Schenck was the husband of Keaton's sister-in-law, we have already seen baby Keaton, Virginia is Natalie Talmadge - still married to Buster at the time and pregnant with their second child - and the engineer is Joe Keaton, Buster's father.

A wholehearted recommendation from me!


Sources and further reading:

1. Jim Emerson: Our Hospitality: Buster Keaton and gravity. On: RogerEbert.com, Scanners, December 14, 2012
2. Jeffrey Vance: Our Hospitality. On: San Francisco Silent Film Festival. Essay. 2019
3. Hal C. F. Astell: Our Hospitality (1923). On: Apocalypse Later, November 19, 2023

Silent movies - Bare Knees

If I tell you this movie is about a flapper going to live with her sister and her very reputable husband in a very reputable town, you can probably imagine what's going to happen. But can you really?
Today I'll be talking about "Bare Knees" from 1928.

First the plot (spoiler alert!).

We begin in the Longworth household on wife Jane's birthday, but her husband John is home late again - the fate of a County Attorney - while his best friend Paul has already been there for an hour.
Paul has given her perfume, John a stole (you can tell Jane prefers the perfume).

There's also a wire from Jane's sister Billie (Virginia Lee Corbin did a nice job) who turns up at the very respectable birthday party the same evening - a flapper from bob to bare knees.
The effect is amazing, from shocked looks to a few young men being very interested including Larry who works for John.
It's not just her outfit, though, that shocks the good people of Hanford City, it's also her flippant way of talking, her irreverence, and her gift, a diaphanous black negligee.

From then on, Billie's a thorn in her brother-in-law's side. She dances a Charleston at the party and leads the girls' baseball team into a game against the boys' team , all of them wearing short pants and tank tops and confusing the boys so much that they beat them 29 : 0 (funny, the newspaper article says that the girls won against the men). Of course she also smokes, drinks, and is a big flirt.
Jane lets her know she has never seen anything that vulgar, but when Billie has gone out, Jane longingly lifts her own skirt above her knees, not knowing she's seen by John.

Meanwhile, John has sent Larry to investigate the club ship "Ship Ahoy" and Paul tells him that Billie is there almost every night.
John reply is that he wishes she were like Jane because a husband doesn't have to worry about a wife like Jane. Then he goes to bed.
Plot twist!
As soon as John is gone, Jane is in Paul's arms!
While Jane is struggling in her marriage, Billie declines Larry's proposal "Marriage is like eating a mushroom ... you don't know if it's poison until it's too late."

Now things get a little confusing.
John tells Larry they will investigate the "Ship Ahoy" together.
Jane has asked Paul to meet her in one of the private dining rooms on the ship bringing along a travel bag to elope, but Billie has found Jane's note to John and is already there.
When John and Larry turn up, she claims that she's the one who wants to elope with Paul and Jane came to stop her which is of course a shock for Larry.

Are you still with me? Because now it's getting really weird. 
A big fire breaks out on the pier and while all the others make it out in time, Paul and Billie get caught in the fire. Neither of them can swim, though, so of course they decide to have some last fun and ride the rollercoaster which still runs with empty wagons.
Don't worry! Larry is already in the water on his way to save his love! Who is just crashing through the burning rollercoaster with her wagon. I wish the quality were better. That black "cloud" on the right? That's the wagon.
Don't worry! Larry is already in the water on ... yes, again, but we don't see how he saves both Billie and Paul. Not that Paul turns up again in the last scenes, so who knows, he might have drowned.

By now, John has found Jane's note, but has the maid burn it (wouldn't that be something you do yourself?). All he says to Jane is that a lot of women wear short skirts now and has she thought of bobbing her hair - and she falls into his arms.
Larry is visiting Billie and she reminds him of his proposal.
Happy ending all around (except for Paul)!

I thought the movie was off to a good start and quite amusing. I even liked the plot twist, who would have thought that of Jane?
The ending, though ...
I don't know that I would have had a great idea myself, but a fire and a rollercoaster? The only excuse I would have for that could be that it's symbolic in some way, but this isn't a deep movie, it's a flapper comedy.

It also was a little disappointing to me that Billie gave up so easily in the end. I guess that was to be expected, maybe she hit her head when they crashed into the water or she saw her life before her eyes and thought she needed to change something. I guess the main point is that I don't think she and Larry make a good couple. He's so boring. Will he be enough for Billie?

I could also really have done without Bessie the maid. No, that's wrong, I could have done with the running "joke" about her hurting feet and her walking around weirdly. My feet hurt all the time and I felt her pain, but it did absolutely nothing for the movie.

The runtime was a little over an hour, easy enough to handle and there were some charming bits (and nice clothes), but "Bare Knees" is not going to make it on my re-watchlist.

Silent films - Mary, Queen of Tots (Our Gang Comedy)

Do you remember "Our Gang" or maybe they are more familiar to you as "The Little Rascals"?
I think it's about time we had a look at one of the films from this popular series!
Today I got "Mary, Queen of Tots" from 1925 for you.

Public domain via Wikipedia

"Little Mary of the Big House - - Father and mother are always too busy to remember that they love her - -"
Mary is lonely in the big house. Her governess is very strict and doesn't even allow her dolls. Her only friend is the gardener.

After finding Mary in the bathroom with a very wet dog, the governess tells her to stay in her room. Mary kicks a few things with a lot of verve and then sits on her bed crying.

Not to worry, though. Her gardener friend is approached by a lady who makes dolls together with her husband, and he buys four and sneaks into Mary's room to give them to her.
Mary reads to her new friends, but gets tired and falls asleep on the floor. The dolls and two plush animals, a dog and a donkey, come to life and explore the room.

When the governess comes in to check on Mary before going out, she finds the dolls and throws them right into the bin (which is an absolute shame as the dolls look really amazing, also she could have put Mary on her bed ... we don't like her).

Mary wakes up and runs outside to look for her dolls, but she just finds four boys who look like them!

She hugs them which confuses them highly, asks them why they ran away, and takes them back to the big house showing them around. "- - And this is the dining room." I love the reply. "That interests me - Let's eat! - -" (That could have been me.)
While Mary goes to the kitchen for food, the boys - Joe, Jackie, Mickey, and Little Farina - explore the house. They use the tea trolley as a scooter, Farina struggles with a chapeau claque - an opera hat that keeps folding and unfolding by itself -, they all take turns falling down on what Mickey is sure to be a magic rug (in fact just a rug on a very slippery floor), and they get nervous about a very loud wireless shouting HEY at them.
When the governess returns, she's shocked to see the boys who so much look like the dolls she has thrown away. Mickey tells her they have been invited to dinner, but she goes off to fetch the police.
Meanwhile, the gardener has found the dolls in the bin and Mickey explains that they model for the dollmaker couple. He also warns them that the governess will bring back the police.

The boys quickly hide in the kitchen, so the policeman only finds the dolls. He asks Mary if the governess is crazy. She tells him she doesn't know for sure, "mebbe", and he takes the governess away.

In another short it says "Mary - - She causes all the fights in the neighborhood - And there's lots of them - -"
Mary Kornman was the leading female character in the "Our Gang Comedies" from 1922 to 1926. Although this short is from 1925, I know I read somewhere that it might be the story how Mary came to join the gang, if only I knew where!

"Our Gang" was created by Hal Roach who also worked with Laurel and Hardy and with Harold Lloyd.
Roach said that he saw a few kids fighting about the best stick in a yard and thought that although they would have forgotten about those sticks in a few hours, they were so important to them now, just because that's the way kids are. This gave him the idea of a kids and pets series.
While of course dated in some regards, "Our Gang" is simply about kids from a working class neighborhood (which can lead to fights with wealthier kids) - playing, being themselves, full of fantasy, ideas, and enthusiasm, but also innovative in avoiding chores or schoolwork.

Between 1922 and 1944, there were 88 silent shorts, 132 sound shorts, and one feature length film.
Obviously, there were different children involved over such a long time.

We watched "The Little Rascals" on TV when I was a kid, but I don't remember anything (but the dog). I watched a few of the films and chose this one because it's just cute, especially the scene when the dolls come to life and explore Mary's room.
I wouldn't be surprised if they wouldn't pop up on the blog every, now and then ...


Sources and further info:

1. The Our Gang Story: A History of "The Little Rascals". On the YouTube channel of Legend Films
2. Our Gang/The Little Rascals (Partially Lost 1920s Silent Short and Foreign Prints). On: Lost Media Archive

Silent movies - The Freshman

Two weeks ago we had a college football hero, last week Harold Lloyd, how about Harold Lloyd at college today?
Here's "The Freshman" from 1925.

Public domain via Wikipedia

Today we have a proper plot. As Lloyd says in his autobiography, films like the "Lonesome Luke" ones are gag type comedies, films like "The Freshman" are character comedies which start more slowly and develop.

Harold Lamb is a young man excited for college. He copies a greeting - a little jig and a handshake -, the outfit, and the nickname "Speedy" from his favorite college movie, he has saved some money, he has high expectations about becoming a "college hero" like his movie idol.

On the train he meets Peggy, he gets interested in her crossword puzzle and they get along splendidly.

Once arrived in town, Harold falls right into the hands of the College Cad (no names, it's practically a tpye) for whom he's the perfect victim due to his desire to be popular in connection with his incredible naiveté.

The Cad shows him the "car assigned to him" which is in fact the dean's car and lures him on the stage where the dean is supposed to hold the opening speech by making him save a kitten from a height (if that wasn't enough already to hate the Cad, just wait, there's more to come), then tells him he has to make a speech during which Harold is laughed at by the whole assembly.

Harold holds the rescued kitten, but puts it under his sweater when he needs both
hands free. Mama Kitty urgently wants her baby back.
You understand that I was legally bound (by Gundel) to include these pictures
(and it was hard to keep it down just to these two, the kitten is adorable).

The Cad and his friends - male and female - cheer for Harold who thinks he's on the best way to be popular and invites the group for ice cream, but the Cad keeps inviting more people on the way to the ice cream parlor.
Look who follows them, too!

Again, legally bound.

After spending a good deal of his savings like that, Harold has to downgrade in regards to his living quarters.
There he meets Peggy again who happens to be the landlady's daughter. Harold's shirt has been ripped up when the kitten climbed up it under his sweater and Peggy sews the button on for him. You see him secretly cutting off more buttons.

To up his game, Harold tries out for the football team, but the coach isn't impressed. When their only tackle dummy is damaged, however, they use Harold as a live dummy and even the coach is impressed by his unbroken spirit at the end of the day. To "reward" him, they make him water boy and let him think he's one of the substitutes.

Harold thinks his leg has broken apart, but it's the dummy's leg.

Do you remember Pete from "Our Gang"?
This is his dad, Pal the Wonder Dog, at
six months old. He actually had a three
quarter ring around his eye while
Pete's ring was makeup.
(Gundel wasn't sure you needed to know
that. Always those dogs.)

Harold hosts the "Fall Frolic" dance.
He gets a new suit for the occasion, but his tailor has dizzy spells and therefore can't make it in time, so the suit is only held together by basting stitches and finally falls apart.
From the phone booth he has hidden in, Harold sees how the Cad tries to force himself on Peggy and teaches him a lesson.

The Cad retaliates by telling him that he has never been popular and that it all has just been a big joke.
Harold is devastated, but Peggy comforts him and tells him to stop trying to be someone he isn't and make them like him for what he really is.
Harold sees his chance at the big football game still thinking he's in the team because Peggy who knows the truth didn't have the heart to tell him. When the coach runs out of substitutes because of injuries, he has to send in Harold to avoid the game being forfeited.
Of course, Harold manages a touchdown in the last minute - and with just one shoe on, too!

Sweeter to him than being celebrated by everyone, however, is this note that Peggy slips him while he's being carried into the locker room ...

Let me get something out of the way first.
I hate bullying of all sorts and I really felt for Harold. You are supposed to do that of course, but also still to be able to laugh. Therefore, the scene of him as a live tackle dummy is cut rather short and a scene at the ice cream parlor was actually cut completely according to Lloyd's autobiography because it made the test audience feel too sorry for Harold to be funny.

If you read my post about "Brown of Harvard", you may wonder why I even watched another college movie (by the way, it's said that "The Freshman" kicked off a college movie vogue).
The difference is that I knew bits of "The Freshman" from the olden days when I was still an innocent, fresh-faced kid. Seriously though, I did know parts from the old compilation films. This was Lloyd's financially most successful silent movie and I knew it would be hilarious.
Tom Brown annoys me, but I route for Harold even though they both end up in a big football game, a sport I know even less about than others.
Also Harold's football game is fun because he's still Harold. He's not athletic, he's struggling, and it's a miracle that he suceeds. Tom's isn't because he is a sportsman and we know that he just needs to shed off the old wisecracker's shell, get serious and do it. You know what I mean.
Something that I thought was funny, though - Lea Stans from "Silent-ology" also pointed it out - was that there was absolutely no mention of studying. Even Tom held a stack of books once even if not for long 😂
Then again one of the intertitles said: "Tate University - a large football stadium with a college attached." I wonder if that was the reason why the Germans literally called the movie "The sports student".

Most of all, however, Harold is relatable. He is the ordinary guy who wants to be popular, who wants to be liked, who wants to show what he can do. Probably we all have been there one way or the other, haven't we (I mean, isn't blogging and hoping for reactions a rather good example 😉)?
We can relate to his reaction when the Cad tells him the truth, the shock, trying to laugh it off like it's nothing, then the breakdown. And it's so sweet to see Peggy comforting him and building him up again. The chemistry between Harold and Peggy (Jobyna Ralston) is great.

Yes, and then it is just nice to see the ordinary guy succeed even if it's not very realistic and we know it. It's something we maybe hope for sometimes in our own lives.
"Wait a moment, though," I hear you say. "What was it you said about sports heros?"
The difference for me is that in the end you don't find Harold letting himself be celebrated in a crowd or a parade. You find him alone in the shower - which he turns on by accident without even noticing - with what's important to him. Peggy's note.
 

I love this movie and think it's really funny and sweet.


Sources and further reading:

1. Stephen Winer: The Freshman: Speedy Saves the Day! A Harold Lamb Adventure! On: The Criterion Collection. Essays, March 25, 2014
2. Lea Stans: Thoughts On: "The Freshman". On: Silent-ology, May 23, 2016
3. Harold Lloyd (in collaboration with Wesley W. Stout): An American Comedy, New York, NY, Dover Publ., republication of the 1928 edition