Harold Lloyd

Data di nascita
20 aprile 1893 · Burchard, Nebraska, Stati Uniti
Data di morte
8 marzo 1971 · Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, California, Stati Uniti (cancro alla prostata)
Nome alla nascita
Harold Clayton Lloyd
Soprannome
- Speedy
Altezza
1,78 m

Excelled at thrill comedy which had his characters in jepoardy with dangerous stunts (i.e. the clock hanging scene in Preferisco l'ascensore (1923).)
In the prime of his career, Lloyd's most famous role was the "Glasses" character, a young eager all-American man who was out to succeed in life and absolutely no physical obstacle would stand in his way as he risked life and limb to achieve his goals.
Frequently played characters named Harold

His home, Greenacres has 44 rooms, 26 bathrooms, 12 fountains, 12 gardens and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. His home was also used as the exterior of Jack Woltz's (John Marley) home in Il padrino (1972).
Was once one of the 10 richest entertainers in the world.
A 1919 accident with a prop bomb, which turned out to be a live bomb, cost him the thumb and forefinger of his right hand. In subsequent films, he wore a glove and prosthetic device to hide it. Remarkably, he was able to do many of his gags (he employed a stunt man for serious stunts) convincingly afterward.
One of the 36 founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS).
He was the visual inspiration for the original illustrations of the superhero Superman/Clark Kent (created in 1938). Lloyd was 45 years old at the time, and he was modeled for Clark Kent's identity (Superman's identity was modeled after Douglas Fairbanks). Lloyd's "Glasses character" was the inspiration because like that character, Lloyd found that he could hide his identity simply by taking off the glasses.

Comedy comes from inside. It comes from your face. It comes from your body.
I do not believe the public will want spoken comedy. Motion pictures and the spoken arts are two distinct arts.
[when asked why he abandoned his Lonesome Luke character and that type of character] Charlie [Charles Chaplin] had the market cornered on that. He had it down to a science.
[when asked whether the transition from silents to sound made any problems because of his voice, as with so many other stars from the era] I had to work a little on my voice because I hadn't used it for years. I went to a voice coach for about five days, and then he said, "Good-bye, you just weren't using it right".
In a feature picture I like quite well, the one in which I'm hanging on a clock, Preferisco l'ascensore (1923), and which is probably one of our most popular, we did the final scenes of that climb first. We didn't know what we were going to have for the beginning of it. We hadn't made up the opening and after we found that we had, in our opinion, a very, very good thrill sequence, something that was going to be popular and bring in a few shekels, we went back and figured out what we would do for a beginning, and then worked on up to what we already had.