Clubs Are Trump

One of the great things about the short Harold Lloyd comedies is that he makes you want to get up out of your chair and jump into the action. You feel his emotions. You share his pain. He is an extension of the audience, and you immediately connect with his humanity. It's to his advantage that he is a universal character because he transcends time and culture. He provides light relief, whether he is Lonesome Luke or the glasses character. His portrayals are personal to each member of the audience that watches him, and there is something about the delivery of his performance that speaks into your own situation. He is most definitely an endearing character.

Harold -- in the person of Lonesome Luke -- and Snub Pollard go into the park and try to pick up women. Their boyfriends object violently, so the would-be Lotharios dream of stone-age society, where in order to pick up women, all you needed was to hit their boyfriends on the heads with clubs. They wake and put the plan into action, with poor results.

That's almost all there is in this alleged comedy: hitting people on the head with large clubs, with police sticks and with the occasional coconut -- which breaks the coconuts. This goes on for 25 minutes and it is beyond too much.

Harold Lloyd felt so too. He dropped the Lonesome Luke character and developed his now famous "Glasses" character. Looking at this example of the former, it wasn't a moment too soon.

If you watch "Clubs Are Trump" today, you might be surprised when you learn that Harold Lloyd is in the lead in this one. In his Lonesome Luke persona, he's practically unrecognizable...partly because of how he looks nothing like the nice-guy with the glasses everyone came to love and partly because Luke was a nasty and abrasive sort of character...also nothing like the sweet guy Lloyd later played in his films. Along with Lloyd in support is his usual number two man, Snub Pollard and the made a ton of films together in the 1910s.

The film begins in the present day and Snub and Luke are both mashers trying to make unwanted advances on women in the park with their dates. Soon the film does a flashback sequence to the caveman days and they pair are once again on the prowl for women...but this time with clubs and less subtle methods....and lots of folks getting bonked on the head!

So is it any good? Not especially. While there's plenty of slapstick, there just aren't all that many laughs. It didn't help that Luke and Snub were difficult to like and the story didn't make the most of its prehistoric setting. The only thing I really DID like was the ending in the park...now THAT was funny!

By the way, about a decade later, Laurel & Hardy made a somewhat similar film, "Flying Elephants", where they are also cavemen on the prowl. Also, the print for "Clubs Are Trump" on YouTube is interesting because the intertitle cards are in French and Flemish...presumably for Belgian audiences. Don't worry....you can watch the short just fine whether or not you understand these languages.