Pour l'amour de Mary

Nothing great in this 3-reel comedy from Harold Lloyd. He would use much of this material later in his career and to better effect. The sets are crude and the storyline choppy. Mildred Davis (the girl) disappears for much of the film, and Anna May Bilson (as the little girl--not a boy as stated in the plot summary here) is not very photogenic. Some good comedy bits, but nothing great. And yes, Mildred Davis would become Lloyd's wife soon after this film was completed.

A Hal Roach HAROLD LLOYD 3-Reeler.

A young fellow must suddenly care for an infant on a very eventful overnight train trip.

Harold Lloyd has a field day in this wonderful short silent film, NOW OR NEVER. His athletic prowess was never in more demand than here where - with half his right hand missing and disguised by a glove - he jumps, crawls, runs, leaps and squirms his way all over, under and through a passenger train. Along the way he must contend with thieving hobos, belligerent passengers, unfriendly bullies, suspicious conductors and the demands of a precocious tiny tot, charmingly played by little Anna Mae Bilson. Through all perplexities & befuddlements, and a lot of real physical danger, Harold is never less than astoundingly funny.

Pretty Mildred Davis plays the infant's nursemaid; Miss Davis' association with Harold Lloyd was at this time turning to romance and would soon culminate in marriage.

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

While probably a bit more uneven than most of Harold Lloyd's early 1920s comedies, this feature has some very enjoyable moments. Lloyd and Mildred Davis star in a rather complicated story that sees them spend considerable time with a cute young child, giving Lloyd some different material than usual to work with.

The story is the kind of deliberately illogical series of predicaments that provides a showcase for a skilled comic like Lloyd, as his character movies rapidly from one jam to another. Most of it takes place on a train, which provides an enjoyable setting with lots of good props and minor characters.

The parts that work the best turn out to be the scenes with the child. Lloyd's eager beaver style forms a nice contrast with the young girl, combining humor with an occasional warmer moment that works well. The rest of the movie also contains some good gags, but many of the others are only average, at least by Lloyd's standards. Nothing at all is wrong with Lloyd's timing or with the pace; it's just that this time only some of the gag ideas are really creative or funny. It still adds up to an enjoyable comedy that is somewhat above average overall.

(2021) Now or Never SILENT COMEDY

Some of the gags also includes the child asking Lloyd for a drink of water before she asks him for a cup of milk to which he would onto the chord of the train so that he would get milk from a cow from a nearby farm. There's another scene where Lloyd is trying to wash, and he manages to have step out of the train since he thought the train made it's stop where he wanted to go. One of the most daring scenes happen when Lloyd was on top a train, and their were some moments where it looked as if he was hanging that high! The sequence with Lloyd and a bridge looked kind of dangerous as well!

In the set-up to this movie, Harold has to take care of Anna Mae Bilson on a train, without a ticket. Once that's established, you can sit back and enjoy this well-paced and funny three-reel comedy.

Once he had begun to make two-reel comedies in 1919, Harold would occasionally make a three-reel one. Whether he was experimenting with a better set-up to the funny sections, or Hal Roach and he agreed the three-reel version played better is not clear. His first feature, A SAILOR-MADE MAN started at three reels and just kept going.

Young Miss Bilson appeared in this movie, and the first-shot short in the Our Gang series, it was called OUR GANG and was released third in sequence. She lived to be 89, dying in 2005.