Get Out and Get Under

Being after his accident, Harold wears gloves for pretty much this entire film. This is still under the Hal Roach studios in 1920 & it is less refined slapstick style & not as complex as Harold would develop in later films. Think Harold is self-conscious about his hands in this, not only because of the gloves, but his stunts in this one are no where near the ones he would do later. Mildred Pierce is the girl in this love story but her major work is in Harold (the boy) dream sequence in the film beginning where he dream Mildred went & married someone else & he found out while trying to pose for a photo portrait & arrives too late to do anything about it. This is a theme Lloyd would develop more thoroughly in later films. Some of the chase sequence with the police pursuit has some inventive sequencing & the pace is fast & furious. While this is a couple of notches below his better films, this one is pleasant. The version I saw from the TCM set is only just over 25 minutes, though it doesn't seem to be missing anything. Watch for the sequence where Harold disappears inside his car. It looks impossible & clever, & is the most intriguing stunt by Harold in the film.

Get Out and Get Under is Harold Lloyd's first film after an exploding accident that caused him to lose a two fingers and a thumb in one of his hands requiring him to wear a prosthetic glove in movies for the rest of his career. This is a very funny short in which Harold is hurrying to get to the theatre for his performance. Lots of hilarious scenes concerning ways to fix his car, his dealings with a kid (Ernie "Sunshine Sammy" Morrison of the original Our Gang) who keeps hanging around while he's working, a dog, some engineers of a train ferry the car accidentally goes on, a parade, a banana peel (no surprise there), a steep hill, a water tower, a fire hydrant, a "road closed" sign, and some motorcycle cops. His leading lady is played by his eventual wife, Mildred Davis. Produced and directed by comedy mastermind Hal Roach. The music I heard in this version was provided by Vince Giordano and his Nighthawks Orchestra. Highly essential viewing for silent movie comedy fans especially those of Harold Lloyd.

Get Out and Get Under (1920)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

A young actor (Harold Lloyd) must rush to get to his play but his car starts all sorts of trouble. There's a few nice laughs here, including some nice bits with a young kid and a dog but some of the gags don't work as well. There's some amazing stunts including one where Lloyd jumps out of the car while it continues down the road. Lloyd must then catch back up with it. Another scene has the car going through thousands of people, which looks quite amazing. This was one of Lloyd's first films after a bomb exploded in his hand, nearly killing him and in a few close ups you can still see the scars on his face.

The Boy (Harold Lloyd) is getting his picture taken and it does not go well. He is proposing to The Girl (Mildred Davis), but the photographer tells him that she is marrying The Rival (Fred McPherson) that day. He is too late. Luckily, it's all a dream, but he's late for a theatrical performance. He gets in his car, but it's an eventful drive.

I would have liked to see this story without the dream reveal. It is a 25 minutes short so I don't know if he has the time to break up the married couple. I would like to see him try. This short ends up being a lot of car gags. It's fun, but the story can be anything if all Harold wants are car gags. Diving in to fix the engine is a fun visual gag. I'm sure they removed the engine to do that one. He is just breaking the law when he runs from the cops.

This is one of Harold Lloyd's most enjoyable short comedies, but if things had turned out differently it might never have been made at all. Get Out and Get Under was one of the first films Lloyd appeared in after recovering from a freak accident that nearly claimed his life. In the fall of 1919, while Harold was posing for publicity photos, actor Nat Clifford innocently handed him what was believed to be a prop bomb; it turned out to be real, and when it exploded both men were badly injured. After a period of convalescence Harold resumed his career, but his still-healing facial scars are visible in his first close-up in this film, and if you watch his right hand carefully you can see that he's wearing a prosthetic device in place of the fingers lost in the explosion. Nat Clifford is here too, as the neighbor at work in his garden.

Despite the circumstances under which it was made Get Out and Get Under is a surprisingly cheerful comedy, though much of the humor relies on anxiety and frustration. Harold plays an actor in an amateur theater production trying to get to his show on time, but auto troubles and other problems hinder him every step of the way. After a somewhat measured opening the story builds in momentum and suspense, becoming funnier, loonier, and more surreal as it goes along. One bit involving the creative use of a pup tent is especially memorable. Some of the gags suggest routines identified with Buster Keaton, as when Harold makes a wrong turn and crashes a parade (as Buster would do in Cops) or is sidetracked into a railroad yard and gets doused by one of those water spouts (as Buster did several times). It all goes to show that there was a lot of borrowing and cross-fertilization in silent comedy; Lloyd certainly returned the favor and borrowed from Keaton on other occasions. In any event, our hero ultimately achieves his goal, wins the girl, and delivers a neat pay-off gag in time for the fade-out.

Modern viewers might be surprised at the sequence involving a drug addict Harold meets during his adventure; the man is actually shown injecting a substance, presumably cocaine, into his arm, leading to a routine reminiscent of Chaplin's Easy Street but with a surprise twist. (Oddly enough, prolific character actor William Gillespie played the dope fiend in both movies!) This sort of subject matter would become absolutely taboo when enforcement of the Production Code kicked in during the '30s, but jokes about illegal substances and drug addicts crop up fairly often in silent comedy. Also of note here is the presence of Ernie "Sunshine Sammy" Morrison, the first African- American kid in the Our Gang series, who plays the boy who insists on participating while Harold is trying to fix his engine. Sammy has an easygoing charm and naturalness before the cameras that is striking in this sequence.