Volume 31, Number 3 · March 1, 1984
Safety Last
By Robert Goff
Harold Lloyd: The Man on the Clock
by Tom Dardis
Viking, 357 pp., $19.75
Harold Lloyd charmingly explored the possibility of simple hopes at a time when technologies of transport and communication, including the cinema itself, were making those hopes especially absurd. His screen figure shared with his audience worries about matters like getting a job, going to college (when this meant crossing lines of social class), and conducting romance according to the rules prevailing in small American towns. The boy-man whose beglassed face could pass abruptly from shy to earnest and who could move across the screen with artful clumsiness or reluctant agility was more popular at the box office than Chaplin or Keaton.
Review, 3193 words
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