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Feature Article II:
Hal Lloyd Dare-Devil of Movies Scared in Stunt – Wants Idea
by Harold Lloyd
from the Boston Post, October 10, 1924

I don’t know how to write an article – and I feel just the way I do when I go up to the top of a tall building and walk out on the window ledge.

I’m scared. Oh, yes, I am! Hardly anybody believes me when I say that about climbing, but it’s true. I don’t like being on a height any more than you do, at first.

But, I stick up there as long as I have to, to get used to it – you can get used to anything in time – and then the scared feeling goes away.

It was when I was 12 that the great event of my life occurred. At this time I was devoted to astronomy. Down on a certain street in Omaha there was one of those fellows who, for a nickel, would give you a look through.

He also gave a lecture, free. I was on hand every night for two weeks, drinking in the lecture and looking at my nickel’s worth, until I became an old friend with many free looks thrown in when the crowd was thin.

One night, while the astronomer was lecturing, a man stopped to listen. He was an actor – that was enough to keep me at his side until he sent me away – and he was playing juvenile lead with the Burwood Stock Company. He had been hunting for a new boarding place.

”Gee,” I offered, “I’ll ask mother if she’ll take you.”

Right there my future was decided. Mother listened to me and took John Lane Connor to board. He was our first, last, and only boarder.

Like a faithful dog, I followed at his heels to the theatre, hanging in the wings, lending a hand where I could. In time, then needed a boy. It was for the part of Abraham in Tess of the d’Urbervilles, the play Mrs. Fiske made famous, and the part had 48 sides! I got it.

I was a little boy then, covered with freckles: Wesley Barry had no more than I boasted at that time. Connor coached me, and I went over so well that I got every boy’s part that season. But, I began late.

My legs were growing longer and my voice was tricky, my hands were big and my neck uncertain. My career in boy parts was short. But I could not leave the theatre. While we stayed in Omaha I held on. I remember being property boy, usher, head usher, candy butcher in three theatres, electrician, anything that would keep me hanging on. If there is anything in the theory that refusal to get out helps towards success, I score one on that.

Don’t think it was all clear sailing. I remember, again and again, later going to work to a studio and having the director turn a cold eye on me and snarl: “I tell you, I’ve got nothing for you. Get out!” Don’t think the work is easy in itself for me: I told you at first I’m scared, and I am.

When we were making Safety Last! – if you saw the picture, you will remember I had to climb the façade of a 12-story building – well, when we were making this, we made the sets on top of buildings, the buildings running from one to five stories.

I had to climb these sets and, although there was no time that I was literally 12 stories from the ground, I was dizzy when I first went up, and I did nothing for several days but walk around and get used to it. By that time, fear had left me.

When I climbed, I was supposed to be protected by safety platforms, which were to catch me if I fell. But often our calculations went wrong. At one point my foot becomes entangled in a tennis net, which is pushed out from a window.

I got all tangled in this net and, in trying to get free, I lose my balance. And several times in my struggles I swung out beyond my platforms and the boys, that is, the camera men and son on, watched with their hearts in their mouths.

Then, at the last climb to the highest point, I swing out on a rope from a flagpole, and the pole bends perilously. It did just that and I swung out beyond the platform again, and neither the boys nor I would have been surprised to find myself dropping into space.

My luck held.

Some of the most dangerous things do not show the real danger. In the last picture, Girl Shy, I had to drive a team at breakneck speed against traffic, down the wrong side of Main Street, Los Angeles, with autos blocking our every move.

That’s a mighty risky performance, but in the film it looks as if it was all planned for me. It wasn’t. It was a lot of fun in the doing – and I felt great when it was over!

I said in the beginning that traveling around had made me know something of folks. I have to do that, to write pictures, for I don’t write stories, I write pictures – pictures that people must laugh at. I have to understand what people will laugh at.

I’ve found that the bigger the idea under a picture, the more popular it is likely to be. Up to date I count Grandma’s Boy my most popular picture, and why? Not because of thrills, or stunts, or even laughs.

Because under that picture is an idea – that we can be what we think we are, if we have the backbone.