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Harold Lloyd is a Actor, Director, Scriptwriter and Producer American born on 18 april 1893 at Burchard (USA)

Harold Lloyd

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Birth name Harold Clayton Lloyd, Sr.
Nationality USA
Birth 18 april 1893 at Burchard (USA)
Death 8 march 1971 (at 77 years) at Beverly Hills (USA)

Harold Clayton Lloyd, Sr. (April 20, 1893 – March 8, 1971) was an American actor, comedian, film director, film producer, screenwriter, and stunt performer who is most famous for his silent comedy films.

Harold Lloyd ranks alongside Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton as one of the most popular and influential film comedians of the silent film era. Lloyd made nearly 200 comedy films, both silent and "talkies", between 1914 and 1947. He is best known for his bespectacled
"Glasses" character,
a resourceful, success-seeking go-getter who was perfectly in tune with 1920s-era United States.

His films frequently contained "thrill sequences" of extended chase scenes and daredevil physical feats, for which he is best remembered today. Lloyd hanging from the hands of a clock high above the street in Safety Last! (1923) is one of the most enduring images in all of cinema. Lloyd did many of these dangerous 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, though the glove often did not go unnoticed).

Although Lloyd's individual films were not as commercially successful as Chaplin's on average, he was far more prolific (releasing twelve feature films in the 1920s while Chaplin released just four), and made more money overall ($15.7 million to Chaplin's $10.5 million).

Biography

Lloyd married his leading lady, Mildred Davis, on Saturday, February 10, 1923 in Los Angeles. They had two children together: Gloria Lloyd (1923-2012) and Harold Clayton Lloyd, Jr.. They also adopted Gloria Freeman (1924—1986) in September 1930, whom they renamed Marjorie Elizabeth Lloyd but was known as "Peggy" for most of her life. Lloyd discouraged Davis from continuing her acting career. He later relented but by that time her career momentum was lost. Davis died from a heart attack in 1969, two years before Lloyd's death. Though her real age was a guarded secret, a family spokesperson at the time indicated she was 66 years old. Lloyd's son was gay and, according to Annette D'Agostino Lloyd (no relation) in the book Harold Lloyd: Master Comedian, Harold Sr. took this in good spirit. Harold Jr. died from complications of a stroke three months to the day after his father.

In 1925, at the height of his movie career, Lloyd entered into Freemasonry at the Alexander Hamilton Lodge No. 535 of Hollywood, advancing quickly through both the York Rite and Scottish Rite, and then joined Al Malaikah Shrine in Los Angeles. He took the degrees of the Royal Arch with his father. In 1926, he became a 32° Scottish Rite Mason in the Valley of Los Angeles, California. He was vested with the Rank and Decoration of Knight Commander Court of Honor (KCCH) and eventually with the Inspector General Honorary, 33rd degree.

Lloyd's Beverly Hills home, "Greenacres", was built in 1926–1929, with 44 rooms, 26 bathrooms, 12 fountains, 12 gardens, and a nine-hole golf course. A portion of Lloyd's personal inventory of his silent films (then estimated to be worth $2 million) was destroyed in August 1943 when his film vault caught fire. Seven firemen were overcome while inhaling chlorine gas from the blaze. Lloyd himself was saved by his wife, who dragged him to safety outdoors after he collapsed at the door of the film vault. The fire spared the main house and outbuildings. The estate left the possession of the Lloyd family in 1975 after an attempt to maintain it as a public museum.

The grounds were subsequently subdivided but the main house and the estate's principal gardens remain and are frequently used for civic fundraising events and as a filming location, appearing in films like Westworld and The Loved One. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.