Marin malgré lui

Comedian Harold Lloyd was preparing for just another short film when the plot he and his team of writers came up with was sizzling with a wealth of gags. They were in a quandary whether to shelve some brilliant sequences to be within the restraints of their normal short 30-minute film or expand to a longer version. Producer Hal Roach recommended the later. Lloyd went along with his producer's opinion, and made his first feature film, December 1921's "A Sailor-Made Man." It was a decision that forever changed his movie career.

Clocking in at just 46 minutes, Lloyd's feature was a big money-maker at the theaters, cashing in almost half a million dollars on a $77,000 budget. The movie's plot of a rich playboy who is required to get a job before he marries his popular girlfriend could have easily fit into his previously two-reeler structure. But since his character's enrollment into the Navy required an exotic location, Lloyd expanded upon thrills and laughs to a longer motion picture.

A Hal Roach HAROLD LLOYD Film.

A conceited young twerp joins the Navy to impress his girl and becomes A SAILOR-MADE MAN.

Big changes were in store for popular silent comic Harold Lloyd with the production of this film. Up until this point he had specialized in short subjects and his distribution agreement with Pathé allowed him to make only two-reelers. But the gags in A SAILOR-MADE MAN grew to be so funny and complicated that Harold kept adding to the picture until the final cut ran a tad over 45 minutes - extremely unusual for comedies in 1921. Pathé took the chance and released it; audiences were delighted, which pleased everyone. Lloyd was to make only feature-length films from that point on.

The film breaks neatly into three parts, with the insufferably insensitive Harold in the first segment infuriating nearly everyone until his comeuppance in a Naval recruiting station. In the middle segment Harold has a series of shipboard adventures mostly dealing with the big boat's bully. Finally, and rather unexpectedly, the plot throws Harold into a wonderful escapade straight out of the Arabian Nights, as he confronts the mad Maharajah of an Oriental kingdom who has kidnapped Harold's girl. There are plenty of fakirs and scimitars and hairbreadth escapes, all punctuated by Harold's splendid athletic exuberance.

Mildred Davis plays Harold's distressed love. Noah Young, who appeared in many of Lloyd's films, is great fun as the thuggish seaman who becomes Harold's best buddy. Dick Sutherland is properly repulsive as the monkey-faced potentate.

Harold loved filming on location and for this film he took his cameras to the Beverly Hills Hotel and the Port of Los Angeles.

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

A pretty unremarkable Harold Lloyd comedy that finds our scrappy hero unwittingly signing on with the U.S. Navy in order to impress a girl. You can probably guess the physical and sight gags that go along with life on a Navy vessel, and then a large portion of the latter half of the film finds Harold in an unnamed Arabian country single-handedly fighting hordes of sword-wielding goons in order to rescue his fair love, who's been kidnapped by a wealthy sultan. There isn't a whole lot to remember about this film -- I had to look it up just to remind myself of what the plot was about -- but Harold Lloyd fans know that even his lesser films provide a good deal of entertainment.

Grade: B

Harold Lloyd was quite good at playing the louche man-about-town, even though he's more readily known for the good-natured all-American boy. He swaggers around in the opening scenes of this film, twirling his cane, blithely ignoring anything that bears no relevance to his privileged but cloistered world. He loves Mildred Davis (who else?) but her father tells Harold he must stop being an idle playboy and earn a living in the real world. Harold undertakes the challenge with typical laissez-faire, informing the recruiting officer at the naval office into which he has just strolled, 'I've decided to join your navy.' When he later has a change of mind, and tells the same officer that, 'I've decided *not* to join your navy,' he gets a very rude awakening.

There isn't much of a plot to this one, and you sense there's a quite a lot of padding, which means it perhaps isn't as funny as it could have been. Lloyd was a genius when he was inspired, but when he was going through the motions he could be very ordinary, despite his reputation as a perfectionist. Lloyd and Davis reunite in some middle-eastern bazaar where an evil rajah has his eye on her, and some frantic chases follow but this never comes close to measuring up to Lloyd's best material.

A brash millionaire, Harold Lloyd, impulsively joins the Navy to prove his worth to his girlfriend's rich father in this pleasant if unspectacular comedy. "Sailor Made Man" was Harold Lloyd's first feature comedy, which, according to reports, was originally conceived as a short film which grew increasingly longer. That evolution can be detected in the rather simple plot and lack of sophistication in regard to character development. In this film, Lloyd goes from being an insufferably selfish jerk to a somewhat normal sailor in about the length of one title card. Still, there are sufficient laughs, and a certain innocence to the romance that can't help but bring a smile, even if the film isn't as rich and assured as some of the features that followed. Not the best place to start for someone unfamiliar with Harold Lloyd, but a definite for fans.