Girl Shy

Long live Harold! This is a charming silent comedy where my hero plays a shy boy writing a book about the ways to seduce a woman. He wants to publish it, but the editor thinks this is a funny book. In his way, Harold fells in love with a beautiful young woman. This love helps him to stop being girl shy. Very funny gags, and also a sensitive way to illustrate love (such beautiful scenes are frequents in Harold's movie). This is also a great opportunity to see the beauty and the talent of the wonderful Jobyna Ralston. See it! And see all the Harold Lloyd movies of the 1920's! He was and still is one of the best comic actors in Hollywood history.

I initially went to the Film Forum's presentation to experience what going to the movies might have been like 80 years ago. To have an experience like my grandmother had (she used to rave about Harold Loyd). I thought the film was going to be OK. I was astonished at the wit of the film, its emotional content and the joy it brought to the audience. The gags were plentiful and quite clever, the action kept everything moving and the audience enjoyed themselves immensely (obviously a self selected group). The entire experience was enhanced by a live piano player and I think by the communal experience of seeing this film at the movies.

I highly recommend the film.

The great Harold Lloyd has a total triumph in 1924's Girl Shy. This films is jam-packed with wit, slapstick, and old-fashioned sweetness. Lloyd found his perfect leading lady in Jobyna Ralston, who had just the right amount of prettiness and comic timing. Lloyd, of course, was the master of comic timing in everything from set pieces to still-spectacular chases across Los Angeles downtown streets. I especially liked the daydream scenes where the shy Harold conquers 2 great 1920s stereotypes: the Vamp, and the Flapper. I'd love to know who plays theses women in this film. I think she also appears as the girl with the hole in her stocking. This actress is a hoot as the parody of the vamp and flapper..... Altho I admire Chaplin, Keaton, and Harry Langdon as master comics, Harold Lloyd may have been the most complete of these star performers. His acting range was the broadest and his characters were never quite as vaudevillian--Harold Lloyd's everyman persona still rings true 80 years later. Bravo, Harold Lloyd!

Although painfully GIRL SHY, a tailor's assistant uses every ounce of strength to keep the young woman he adores from an unwise marriage.

Harold Lloyd produces another winning entry in his series of silent screen comedy classics. This time there is a healthy dose of old-fashioned romanticism, as Harold and beautiful Jobyna Ralston yearn & commune alongside a bucolic stream.

Such tenderness never cloys, however, as Lloyd makes sure to leaven it with healthy helpings of hilarity. His attempts to hide a small dog on a passenger train are uproarious, as are his demonstrations on how to make love to vamps & flappers. And when the viewer thinks Harold can't possibly top himself, he ends the film with one of his marvelous chase scenes, in which he uses every sort of conveyance (train, jalopy, horse, fire truck, trolley, motorcycle & sand wagon) to stop Jobyna's marriage to a cad.

Throughout, Harold displays the remarkable athleticism for which he was celebrated, made even more astonishing when one remembers that he had lost half of his right hand a few years before in a freak studio accident, a disfigurement he disguised with a prosthetic glove.

Movie mavens will recognize some OUR GANG kids in uncredited roles--Fat Joe Cobb & Jackie Condon in the tailor's shop and Mickey Daniels as a newsboy on the street.

Jim Parker has composed an excellent film score which perfectly complements Harold's antics on the screen.

GIRL SHY is one of Lloyd's classics where that tight structure as the trademark of his comedy is most obvious. Every gag is so closed linked to another. It really leaves you marvel at his ability of building up and controlling his work. Besides, it is one of the great romantic comedies of the silent era, full of breath-taking imageries(like the scene when the Boy was dreaming about the Girl while fishing under a bridge..). It is hilarious throughout(especially for those 2 fantasy sequences). The great final chase is full of typical thrills that only Lloyd's comedy can provide(and, as we know it, `inspired' the final chase in The Graduate). Lloyd showed some wonderful drama acting ability too(when he had to dissuade the Girl from seeing him any more).