Pour le coeur de Jenny

Harold plays a spoiled rich young man who would rather party than act proper. Fed up with his lazy ways, Harold's parents send him west--hoping to make a real man out of him.

While this is far from a great short picture, it is a very good one featuring Harold Lloyd. The only short-comings are the slightly slow pace at the beginning--though the film certainly picks up speed towards the end. This is when Harold has a show down with the town bully--as well as his KKK-like gang! All this starts because he meets a woman in distress in the cow town--her father is being held prisoner by this bully until she agrees to marry this jerk. Lloyd, being a silent comedy star, is obligated to help with pretty predictable results. However, the stunt-work is excellent and the pace is fast and furious. Overall, it's a middle of the road Lloyd (and that still makes it excellent) comedy that is sure to please.

For all that it's unrefined much of the time, this short Harold Lloyd comedy is funny and entertaining. After a slightly slow start, it has some very good material and some entertaining scenes. It also gives Lloyd a chance to perform the kinds of material that played to his strengths and that pleased his audiences.

The first part shows Lloyd as a lackadaisical young man whose family sends him out west to live with his uncle. The early sequences are a bit routine, but they have some good gags in them. Things really get moving once Lloyd arrives in the west, has to adjust to western ways, and then has to contend with the town bully (Noah Young, in a role well suited to him).

The story contains some good gags, and it builds up to a manic chase scene that has some very good moments. It's not as polished as Lloyd's later features, but it's pretty amusing.

Before I start, I have to complain about the person who has put up that Harold Lloyd mini-biography on all the comments about his movie. It does not attempt to review the movie, maybe the it hasn't seen it but what is so monotonous is that the bio is the same one. Frustrating by all means. Anyway to the movie which is light on its feet and uses a dramatic set-up which has few laughs to get the up-to-no-good big city boy who ends up in the country where this situational comedy takes ground. Harold always billed as "the boy" meets "the girl" as they were all billed and this comic oater takes off as Harold has to battle the bad guys which ends with a furious chase to a train as the girl tries to defend him. Not great Lloyd but you could do worse.

Anyone who wants to know why Harold Lloyd was so popular during the 1920s should take a look at this film: it's one of the most satisfying short comedies he ever made. An Eastern Westerner is consistently clever and amusing, well-paced and packed with gags from the opening scene to the final fade-out. What's more, Harold himself is charming, displaying just the right blend of self-assurance, exuberance and humility. I must confess I find Harold a little hard to take in some of his early comedies -- sometimes he's so aggressive he borders on obnoxiousness -- but here he's an appealing figure throughout, ever more sympathetic as the story rolls along.

An Eastern Westerner offers exactly what the title promises, a displaced dude forced to deal with life in the wild & woolly West. There's a girl (of course) and a bully (ditto), and it all culminates in a chase. Harold follows in the footsteps of Douglas Fairbanks, who played a boyish character in a similar situation in a 1917 feature appropriately titled Wild and Woolly. But although Harold is a fish out of water in this instance he's no bonehead, and it's refreshing to see that, like Doug before him, he quickly adapts to the difficulties he faces, uses his brains, and manages to come out on top. At the same time, he has a sense of humor and isn't arrogant. When his attempts to impress leading lady Mildred Davis backfire and she laughs at him, Harold is big enough to join in and laugh at himself, and we like him for it. This likability wasn't always present in Lloyd's earlier films, where gags were all-important and his behavior was sometimes callous. In An Eastern Westerner Harold has graduated from clown to hero.

Beyond its value as a laugh-provoker this movie should also be of interest to fans of early Westerns, for the filmmakers evidently took care with production details to a degree that is surprising in a two-reel comedy. This really looks like a Western! The town of Piute Pass (where, we're told, "it's considered bad form to shoot the same man twice in the same day") is as dusty and rough-looking as the town of Hell's Hinges, and the bully of Piute Pass could appear in a William S. Hart epic without having to change costume. Sequences in the saloon involving fighting, card-playing and dancing could be excerpted and passed off as clips from serious Westerns of the era. While these production details are gratifying, this engaging comedy is already well worth seeing as a fine example of what made Harold Lloyd a top star.

A Hal Roach HAROLD LLOYD Short Subject.

Harold becomes AN EASTERN WESTERNER when his wealthy father banishes him from Broadway to Piute Patch.

Harold displays his remarkable athletic ability in this funny little film made shortly after he lost half of his right hand in a freak accident. Although his special glove (made by Sam Goldwyn's family) is visible at times, you would never know he was handicapped in any way. Whether trying to sneak into a New York nightclub, or escape from the dangerous Masked Angels out West, Harold is never less than hilarious.

Mildred Davis, Harold's future wife, plays the sweet Girl of the West; Noah Young is the nasty outlaw.

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