Harold Lloyd marathon on TCM tonight! (1 Viewer)

[Patrick McCart]

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Starting at 8 PM EST, Turner Classic Movies will have a marathon of Harold Lloyd films!
All are newly remastered from restored prints, along with brand new musical scores.
The lineup will be...
8:00 PM EST: Safety Last
9:30 PM EST: Girl Shy
11:00 PM EST: Hot Water
12:30 AM EST: The Kid Brother
2:00 PM EST: Speedy
For those without TCM, the Harold Lloyd films will be released to DVD using the same excellent restored prints and musical scores later this year.
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[Scott Leopold]

Definitely looking forward to this! I've got my VCR ready, and will be heading up to watch in just a minute or two. Great news on the DVD releases, especially since one of the articles I read indicated that the family was uncertain about whether they would release them or not.

 

[Jason_Els]

I'm watching this now (thanks Patrick!) and the restorations are marvelous and in some cases, stunning. The music is SOOOOO well done too! I wonder if they're using the original program music?

 

[Scott Leopold]

I only watched Safety Last & Girl Shy last night--I was too tired to stay up for the rest. I'll have to watch the tape later this week. I'll also have to watch Safety Last over again. I was so blown away by the quality of it, that I had a hard time following the story for the first 5-10 minutes. The quality of the print was truly breathtaking. We'll definitely be buying the DVD's.

This was the first time I'd seen either of these, and I thought they were both great. Safety Last had the whole family in tears. I was the only who stayed up for Girl Shy, but my wife yelled at me a couple times to keep it down. I'll definitely be adding these to my list of movies that I recommend to people when trying to get them to give silents a chance.

 

[Eric Peterson]

I also was absolutely blown away by the picture quality of these movies. I thought that the Buster Keaton remasters were incredible, but these Harold Lloyd remasters blow those out of the water. I recorded all 5 movies and was in the middle of "Safety Last" when a phone call interevened, so I'll have to finish watching it on tape tonight. I caught bits & pieces of the remaining films while I was taping them, but didn't want to get caught up and disturbed in the middle again. I watched the end of "Hot Water" and was laughing my ass off.

 

[SteveK]

Unfortunately, I was unaware of these movies being on TCM and thus did not watch them. But I have nothing but good things to say about TCM. Between the foreign films (such as June's Italian festival) and the silent films they show, not to mention the almost 100% OAR presentations, no commercials during movies and only the occasional (rather than constant) channel bug, TCM is clearly in a class by itself when it comes to movies. TCM is everything that a classic movie channel should be. It is my favorite channel, by far.

Thanks, and keep up the good work, TCM!

Steve K.

 

[Jason_Els]

Absolutely! TCM is rapidly becoming one of my favorite channels as they take more and more risks. I remember the debut of the quasi-restored "Greed" and couldn't believe just how much time and attention went into the broadcast. I recommend TCM to everyone who remotely likes movies. I can't wait for the Italian festival. My poor VCR is going to be smoldering pile when it's all over.

 

[Eric Peterson]

Unfortunately, I was unaware of these movies being on TCM and thus did not watch them.

I read somewhere that Harold Lloyd will be star of the month on TCM sometime early next year and they will feature nearly all of his movies. I'm hoping that this might be about the same time frame that they will release the films on DVD.

 

[Scott Leopold]

According to TCM, he'll be star of the month sometime in the Spring (I'm assuming April, since Lloyd's birthday is April 20). His family had 19 of his silent features restored, and these will all be part of the Star of the Month feature. I don't know any details about the DVD's, but I'm assuming that these titles will be the ones released. TCM had this mini-festival to coincide with the release of the book cowritten by his granddaughter, Harold Lloyd: Master Comedian.
From what I've read about his granddaughter, she has a strong desire to get him back into the public eye. For years, when you thought about silent comedy you thought about Chaplin. In recent years, people have rediscovered Buster Keaton. But Lloyd was, at one time, the box office champ in the 20's, and, according to Amazon, "made more silent films than Chaplin & Keaton combined." While she doesn't want to take anything away from the other two, she wants people to know and remember what a great comedian and star her grandfather was.
Part of the reason his films fell out of the public eye, and something that should ingratiate him to the folks here even more, was that he insisted on complete control of his films. Sometime in the 20's-40's (I forget when), he bought up the rights to most of his films (the article I read claimed "all," but I'm fairly certain this wasn't quite accurate). He didn't like how silent films were portrayed on TV, and refused to have his films shown with the rinky-dink piano soundtracks that all the other films were given. He also insisted on them being shown at the proper speed, and with the proper tinting, etc (I guess you could say he was an OAR advocate before being an OAR advocate was cool). As a result, they seldom received any airplay, outside of the occasional showing on PBS, or as clips on retrospective specials. While some of the others may not have been shown properly over the years, they were still shown much more often than Lloyd's films, and thus kept a more prominent place in the public conscience than his films. Now, with the availability of DVD, and better restoration techniques than previously available, and with more appreciation being shown some of the silent works and stars of the past, his family felt this was a good time to make his works widely available again. I'm eager to see the DVD releases and the rest of the films this Spring, and am grateful to TCM for the support they've given to his family in their efforts.

 

[Chris Lock]

If they have music, how can they be "silent"?

 

[Patrick McCart]

From what I've read about his granddaughter, she has a strong desire to get him back into the public eye. For years, when you thought about silent comedy you thought about Chaplin. In recent years, people have rediscovered Buster Keaton. But Lloyd was, at one time, the box office champ in the 20's, and, according to Amazon, "made more silent films than Chaplin & Keaton combined." While she doesn't want to take anything away from the other two, she wants people to know and remember what a great comedian and star her grandfather was.

I think it's neat how Lloyd concentrated on shorter films (usually). Since he stuck to what he was good at (acting), he did that. Chaplin tried too many things at one time (If only he HAD let Orson Welles direct him in a film!). Buster Keaton, on the other hand, was an excellent director and actor at the same time. IMO, Lloyd and Keaton made films with much more technical merit than the Chaplin features.