As mentioned on my old weblog, Turner Movie Classics is running an awful lot of Harold Lloyd movies this month. If you're ever going to watch, tonight would be a good time since they're offering Harold Lloyd's World of Comedy, a 1962 compilation that features highlights from a number of Lloyd's movies. For years before its release, Lloyd's work was generally unavailable to the public. Actually, silent movies have never been all that available but even the limited venues that showed them back then couldn't get their mitts on Lloyd's best. He controlled them and told all who inquired that he was waiting for the "right moment" to rerelease them.
He was also waiting for what some said was an unrealistically high price. Financial expectations were scaled back as he watched film festivals and college courses praise Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, ignoring the man whose comedies had outgrossed the both of them. Lloyd's business strategy was backfiring on his reputation. When one of his films did get shown, it was the early, unimpressive ones he didn't control. So in '62, he dropped his price and personally selected the contents of a film that was designed to remind the world who he was and why he was important. The showcase was a bit heavy on wild action scenes from his silent films and some curious choices from his talkies, the latter reportedly included because he was angry at books and articles that had suggested his career had ended with the coming of sound. Still, it did well at the box office and, coupled with the attendant p.r. campaign, did a lot to restore Lloyd's fame. A follow-up called Harold Lloyd's Funny Side of Life received scant distribution in the U.S. and did most of its business overseas.
In any case, Harold Lloyd's World of Comedy is a great time-saver: If you watch it and don't enjoy yourself, there's really no point in watching any other Harold Lloyd movie. If you do like it, Turner is running a batch of good shorts afterwards, followed by two of Lloyd's best features — Grandma's Boy and Dr. Jack. As you'll see, he did a lot more than hang off clock faces.