AT LAST! Harold Lloyd: Introduction to The Freshman

At long last, I was able to post the clip where Harold refers to his screen alter ego as THE GLASS CHARACTER. Almost everyone else referred to "the glasses character", and no one is sure why Harold didn't, but it made a much more poetic name for my novel about his life and work (not to mention this blog and a Facebook fan page!):

The Glass Character: a celebration of Harold Lloyd

I just noticed several more very positive reviews on Amazon.com (though they didn't appear on Amazon.ca, which is why I never saw them!) So here they are, folks. . . I have to make the most of this, as the book had a very modest release and never reached the silent film devotees I had hoped for (nor was it made into a movie, which really ran me over - but I must rise again!).

The Glass Character by Margaret Gunning Amazon.com paperback edition

The Glass Character by Margaret Gunning Amazon.com Kindle edition

Reviews on Amazon.com

Michelle

5.0 out of 5 stars Truly a gem! 

Reviewed in the United States on May 29, 2017
Having become recently absorbed, nay, obsessed by all things Harold Lloyd I found myself drawn into Muriel's world---and what a world! I think one would be hard pressed to find a novel that captured the zeitgeist of the early years of motion pictures. The author did a superb job of balancing the events in Muriel's story with Harold's life. I was hooked and highly recommend it to anyone who likes the silent era of filmmaking, smart storytelling and the delicious Harold Lloyd :-)

Mathew Paust

5.0 out of 5 stars Carpet Ride to Magicland

Reviewed in the United States on April 27, 2014

In case the name doesn't ring a bell, he's the guy with the straw hat and Woody Allen glasses, in the suit, dangling from a clock on the side of a building so far above a busy avenue the cars below look like ladybugs on wheels.

Harold Lloyd.

Movie comedian of the silent 1920s. Called himself the "Glass Character" because his trademark glasses were fake. No glass in them. The guy was a nut. Blew one of his hands to Kingdom Come fiddling with what he thought was a stage prop bomb. It was real. Deliberately gave himself powerful electric shocks to get his hair to stand straight up. Did his own stunts--the clock dangle, the shocked hair, pretending to trip and stagger on building ledges up in the sky, netless--a brave, some would say foolhardy, genius. Nut.

Knowing this and being acrophobic, I can't watch his movies anymore. It even scares me to look at the photos. I'll let Margaret Gunning watch the movies and look at the photos, and I'll read her reports. Well, then again, I don't have to anymore. I've read her book, "The Glass Character". It's all in there.

Margaret, poor girl, is in love with Harold Lloyd. It started out as just a fascination with soundless images. Love snuck up and struck her dumb somewhere amid the exhaustive research she was conducting for a book about what was then still just a fascination. Love. Alas. Margaret is happily married and has two lovely daughters and four darling grandchildren, yet is far too young to leap the gap into the day when her beloved Harold held sway with the girls of a baby Hollywood. Fortunately, for her and for us, she's a novelist. She has the skill to weave the magic carpet to carry her backward in time to those days of yore, those Harold heyday days, and set her gently down along the path the love of her dreams must follow should he wish a rebirth in the imaginations and hearts of admirers forevermore. She's woven that carpet. It's large enough to take us with her on that long strange trip. I rode along on a test flight. We made it back, and I'm still agog.

When we stepped off the carpet in la la land I saw that Margaret had changed. No longer the familiar author of two of my favorite novels--"Better than Life", and "Mallory"--she'd become sixteen-year-old Jane Chorney, a virgin and erstwhile soda jerk in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with a terrible crush on movie idol Harold Lloyd. Soon after we landed, Margaret /Jane (and later "Muriel", as you will learn) decided to pack up her meager belongings, cash in her chips (two cents shy of fifty bucks) and head to Hollywood and into the arms of her eternal love. I might have tried to instill sense in her were I anything more than invisible eyes and ears. Unfortunately I had lost my voice and corporeal substance upon alighting in the Santa Fe dust.

So it was off to Hollywood via a wearying, bumpy bus ride, Margaret/Jane/Muriel full of glitzy dreams and innocence, and me hunkered weightless, mute and unseen on her delicate shoulder.

I won't say more. I took no notes and had to avert my gaze any number of times during moments that really were none of my personal concern. The Glass Character is Margaret/Jane/Muriel's story, not mine. What I did see and hear, and learn during our holiday in history is captured with such lucid, insightful poignancy I can't help but wonder if Margaret didn't in fact remain there, dictating her journal to a holographic image of herself in the distant future tapping on a keyboard somewhere in a place called Coquitlam, B.C.

David

5.0 out of 5 stars Stunning Star Shines - Great Book

Reviewed in the United States on April 12, 2014

I couldn't resist turning page after page when I started reading this novel. It is as fast-paced, frenetic, frantic, as the jumpy quick movements of silent film action. To say this book captures the spirit of the silent film era, of the flashing, double-dealing, over handed and underhanded Hollywood of the 1920s and onward, is a disservice. The reader is drawn right in, involved totally with the heroine of the story. The story is about her, but it is also a thorough portrait of the great film Comedian, Harold Lloyd. He comes to life in these pages, a three dimensional fully rounded fictional character. The good, the bad, the surprising, the ugly. He is totally human and his motives and circumstances are clear.

I've read Gunning's two earlier novels, Better than Life, and Mallory. The Glass Character is far more ambitious in its depth and breadth. It is longer, more expansive than the early works. Gunning has presented her master piece, in this novel. She fully comes of age as a serious, yet entertaining writer, who displays a lovely choice of words and a often refreshing turns of phrase.
If you haven't read Gunning yet, start. If her latest novel doesn't win, or at least get nominated for the top literary prizes, there is no justice.
Don't miss an engrossing, absorbing read. By the way, you'll definitely want to hit YouTube to find full length Lloyd films, outtakes, and documentaries.
Don't leave yourself hanging from the clock hand, get the silent era spirit and enjoy the book!

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K. J. Janssen

5.0 out of 5 stars THOSE WERE THE GOOD OLD DAYS

Reviewed in the United States on December 18, 2014

You're in for a real treat with Margaret Gunning's Novel "The Glass Character"

If you enjoy traveling back to the time when many of our parents frequented silent films as the prime source of entertainment, then you will love to bury your nose in this madcap treatise on the time and personalities of that era.

If the name Harold Lloyd doesn't ring a bell, you will know him intimately by the time you reach the last page.

We know so much about the entertainment industry today, but so little about what went on behind the scenes of the Silent Film era. You will be shocked by Gunning's expose of that wildcap period of our history.

Don't miss this treat from the pen of a very gifted author.

Harold Lloyd: Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra

Somehow the bleakness of Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra expresses Harold's grief at being mocked at the big dance better than anything. I mean, his pants fell apart and all. This is HL's low point in The Freshman, and I will say it was fiendishly hard to get the film and music to synchronize.