Harold Lloyd

Harold Clayton Lloyd, Sr. (April 20, 1893 – March 8, 1971) was an American actor, comedian, and stunt performer who appeared in many silent comedy films. One of the most influential film comedians of the silent era, Lloyd made nearly 200 comedy films, both silent and talkies, from 1914 to 1947. His bespectacled "glasses character" was a resourceful, ambitious go-getter who matched the zeitgeist of the 1920s-era United States. His films frequently contained "thrill sequences" of extended chase scenes and daredevil physical feats. Lloyd hanging from the hands of a clock high above the street (dangerous, but risk exaggerated by camera angles) in Safety Last! (1923) is considered one of the more enduring images in cinema. Lloyd performed lesser stunts himself despite having injured himself in August 1919 while doing publicity pictures for the Roach studio. An accident with a bomb mistaken as a prop resulted in the loss of the thumb and index finger of his right hand (the injury was disguised on future films with the use of a special prosthetic glove, and was almost undetectable on the screen). Early life Lloyd was born on April 20, 1893, in Burchard, Nebraska, the son of James Darsie Lloyd and Sarah Elisabeth Fraser. His paternal great-grandparents were Welsh. In 1910, after his father had several business venture failures, Lloyd's parents divorced and his father moved with his son to San Diego, California, where he attended San Diego High School. Lloyd became interested in theater as a child, and worked in repertory companies. He often experimented with makeup, to disguise his youthful appearance.