Books I haven't forgotten

This, my friends, is the whole reason I began this blog. The Glass Character, in case you haven't heard, is the name Harold Lloyd gave to his glasses-wearing screen persona (and why he said glass instead of glasses, nobody knows, but it was a hell of a lot more poetical). It is also the title of my third novel, which practically no one has read. I gave up on posting links to Amazon, my author's page, etc. because it made no difference whatsoever. I sold, like, three copies last year. Nevertheless, it IS a good novel, even my daughter liked it (and like Mikey, she hates everything), and though it quickly disappeared into oblivion, and the Lloyd family treated it like some sort of poison, I am still proud of it because I am basically out of touch with reality. 

A friend of mine wondered why I was so hurt when he wrote an article about The Glass Character in a feature called Friday's Forgotten Novels. He simply could not understand it, and thought I should appreciate the attention and publicity. Hey, no one remembers this book at all! I'm sure that would make you rush out to buy it.

But never mind all that, it WOULD make a good feature film, because it's about Harold Lloyd, and no one has ever made a feature film about Harold Lloyd, or ANY sort of film. Eventually, someone will, and if it is ripped off of my novel, which it might be, there is really nothing I can do about it.

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The actor: Harold Lloyd's reaction shots

A memorable Harold Lloyd reaction shot from Girl Shy. Harold plays a yokel whose book "How to Make Love" has just been rejected by a publisher as ridiculous and worthless. But his expression isn't a reaction to that humiliation. This was his one chance to win a very wealthy girl he has fallen in love with, and that dream has just turned to dust.  

This scene proves what Hal Roach famously said: "Harold Lloyd was not a comedian. But he was the best actor playing a comedian who ever lived." Any dramatic actor would be hard-pressed to sustain scenes of emotional distress with such skill. 

He himself didn't think he was very funny, but he could "do" funny superbly. His pathos never turned to bathos, as sometimes happened with Chaplin (whose films are much more dated than Harold's). And as Roach said, Harold was a plausible leading man whose romantic quests weren't vaguely creepy or driven by pity.

Harold didn't wear a clown suit or pull faces or do any of the things silent comics did to get a laugh. He was an ordinary person caught up in extraordinary circumstances, and his complete inability to cope brought the audience on-side like nothing else. But when he triumphed in the end, all of our own failed fantasies were brilliantly realized. 

And one more thing - he always got the girl.

It takes a train to cry

Inexplicably, after nearly giving up my Harold Lloyd Facebook page (in fact, after nearly giving up, period: ever feel kinda suicidal?), I find myself back in a Harold phase. This IS a blog about Harold Lloyd, after all. Which is why it is called The Glass Character: Harold's eccentric name for his bespectacled alter ego. If it branches in a few other directions (old ads, old cars, weird videos, masses of gifs, and MANY handmade animations), it always homes back in on him eventually.

Harold's specialty was panic. Barely-controlled panic, or not controlled at all. Here he panics with a train. The movie is called Now or Never, and I haven't seen it in a while, but it's funny. I had only three frames to work with here, so the action isn't too smooth. I seldom have more than two photos with the same background. He runs away from trains, he runs on top of trains, he hangs on to the sides of trains. All very good stuff.

I find this insanely beautiful!

Hair-raising!

Harold Lloyd: those long ocean voyages

Harold Lloyd: fists of fury

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.

Harold Lloyd: Ride of the Valkyries

Another of my incongruous attempts to glom classical music onto scenes from Harold Lloyd. It almost works, in this case. This is the race to the church from Girl Shy set to Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries.

Harold Lloyd: The Rite of Spring

Experimental filmmaking at its most wretchedly primitive. I got thinking: what if I rescored some of the great moments from Harold Lloyd's movies with great moments from classical music? The result, bizarre as it is, was captured on film (sort of). This is the fight scene from The Kid Brother set to Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring.

Writers have their hearts ripped out

Since I finally figured out how to use the video camera, mainly to photograph all the wildlife in the back yard, I'm experimenting with other stuff, mainly ads for my doomed novel, The Glass Character. Maybe I'll have fun with it; maybe I won't. I like the idea of the screen beside me, and the fact these are silents means I can blather on as much as I want. I know what it is to be rejected (stomped into the ground a few hundred times?), so this scene spoke to me in particular.

More delicious moments from Why Worry

A great pratfall with obvious sexual connotations. Note that she doesn't get up for a long time. Though he tries to ignore it, she has a certain effect on him that has him reaching for his heart pills.

These two are such a great team, with a dynamic force between them that works perfectly. Jobyna Ralston combines sweetness with intelligence and fire.  Harold has met his match.

He berates her for neglecting her duties, running around in boy's clothes when he should be looking after his health! The argument will soon escalate into something more.

Things are reaching the boiling point. . .

She's had it - had enough of his selfishness, his ridiculous imaginary ills, and she lets him have it. And he likes it.

Some nice stunt work here, which I am sure was NOT done by a double.


The thing about Why Worry is that beneath all that absurdity and comedy and charm, there's a cleverly hidden Lloydian message. This movie is all about a selfish, self-absorbed boy becoming a man. And how does this happen? LOVE! Love is always the motivation in every Harold Lloyd movie, for everything. By the end of the story he actually has a man's job and responsibilities, but when he finds out his wife (Jobyna, of course) has just had a baby, he leaps over the desk and begins to run like crazy to the hospital. Harold is telling us, without laying it on too thick, that it's possible to grow up without losing any of your natural exuberance.

A lesson he must have learned through experience.

The hottest kiss in movie history!

YES: it's here in gif form, at long last, after seven years of waiting: my favorite scene from my absolute-favorite Harold Lloyd movie, Why Worry?

It's romantic and sexy enough that this is set on a tropical island where a revolution ferments. But it also has a kind of subconscious romance going on, with (ultimately) explosive results. Harold plays a hopeless hypochondriac, a self-absorbed fussbudget oblivious to the longing glances of his gorgeous nurse, Jobyna Ralston. That is. . . until the very end, when something erupts.

In typical wacky Lloydian fashion, he asks her indignantly, "Why didn't you tell me I love you?" But by this time, Jobyna knows he's in the bag. All she has to do is stand there and wait.

And here it is, one of the hottest, most impetuous kisses I've seen in silent film - or talkie film - or ANY film, for that matter. He doesn't just grab, he SEIZES her while she reacts with a kind of violent spasm, resists him (very weakly), then  melts into his arms, even doing a subtle leg-pop that might have been a first in motion pictures. Up to this point, movie kisses were coy, taking place behind screens or during the fadeout, or followed by big happy-happy grins of boyish glee. What makes it even more exciting is the fact that all through the movie there are not-so-subtle hints that Harold is attracted to her, but refuses to let himself know it. She plays him like a fish for an hour and two minutes, then lands him like a pro.

But it gets even better. The camera pans away for a few seconds, as if to let your eyeballs cool off a bit, then comes back to the lovers, who are STILL KISSING. As I researched Harold's life, I came across several references to his affair with Ralson. This was their first movie together, meaning that we have a sort of Bogart and Bacall thing going, with sparks flying that show up onscreen. Her utter confidence in her charms, her adorable boy's clothing, her swivelling hips - well. Harold never was much of one for marital fidelity .We all have our frailties, and in this case resistance was futile.

I had no idea up to now that my gif program could handle an hour-long movie (in fact, it probably couldn't, and must have been upgraded by the site at some point) or that I could set it up "blind" without using the slider, but voila et voici! Now I want to gif the entire movie, and I might just try it, doing it in 10-second installments. There are many great moments in this film, and I still maintain that with its upside-down dynamics and general wackiness, it's the first screwball comedy ever made, the prototype for everything that came after.

And just when I'm tired of Harold Lloyd, or at least tired of the heartbreak of a book that probably isn't going anywhere, something like this comes along.

SPECIAL BONUS PHOTO! Only a few still photos exist of this amazing scene, likely "captures" taken directly from the film. This one is new to me, with Jobyna's right arm registering surprise and her leg-pop at its maximum. The more I look at this, the more eyebrow-raising it is, because it really does look as if their lower bodies are touching. Was Hal Roach asleep that day? Why doesn't anyone say anything about this? I'm sure I don't know.

Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K7NGDA

The Glass Character: Here comes Harold Lloyd!

At last: my love has come along!  Harold Lloyd, who has obsessed my brain and ruled my heart for SIX years, is ready to show his face on the cover of my forthcoming novel, The Glass Character.

I've been looking at him for so many years, it seems strange that now he's looking back at me in one of his most famous (alarmed porcupine) poses. And though The Glass Character (Thistledown Press) won't be available for a few weeks yet, the cover has been finalized, and my excitement knows no bounds.

It's hard to know where to begin. Why Harold Lloyd? some people have asked me, and I have never completely figured it out. It's not as if I suddenly thought "this subject would make a good next novel", because I wasn't thinking in those terms. After two well-received but not-spectacularly-selling novels, my mind was turning to blogging and other more practical things.

Then Hurricane Harold moved in, a storm-front who knocked over whatever order there was in my life. Broke the whole thing wide open, sometimes quite painfully.

Harold Lloyd - and I've given this blog over to him, pretty much - was a legend in silent film, known variously as "the guy with the glasses" and "the man on the clock".

Like so.

I must have seen one of his movies on Turner Classics - in fact, without Turner Classics this novel never would have existed. I think I tuned in partway through The Freshman, the scene where his suit falls apart. I started laughing and didn't stop.

The thing about Harold Lloyd's comedy is -  it's funny. It makes you laugh. It isn't cerebral, it isn't sociological, it isn't "of its time" - it's of this bloody time, and  funny enough to knock you right out of your chair.

Harold Lloyd rocks.

So how did that initial fascination leap across the gap to an actual story, sustainable for 307 pages? Hard to say. Suffice it to say I fell in love. And a story of romantic/erotic obsession was born.

Now that we're out of the finalized-front-cover starting gate, I'm going to be writing more and more about this, because it would be too bad if this one (like the other two) got splended reviews and hardly any readership. Everything has changed since my last novel - and, more to the point, I have changed in ways that can't really be quantified.

("Quantified" - sorry about that!)

When I tell people I've spent six years on this project, they always say, "Oh, man, that must have been slow to write." They don't understand. It took a year and a half to write, and three and a half years to get to the point where it is actually in the starting gate and will soon (soon, soon. . . ) be in the stores.

On the shelves.

Whew.

I can't possibly get it all in now. I'm still trying to believe it. And though I will do everything I can think of to get the word out, I realize it's a whole different world: not only since I published my last novel Mallory, but since I began writing The Glass Character in 2008.

2008 sounds like a million years ago. So much has changed, I don't know where to begin. But he's coming soon to a book store or Kindle near you, folks: The Glass Character, Thistledown Press.

At last. . .

Order The Glass Character from Amazon.com

http://www.amazon.com/Glass-Character-Margaret-Gunning/dp/1927068886/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1395534131&sr=1-1&keywords=the+glass+character

Order The Glass Character from Chapters/Indigo.ca

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The unknown Harold Lloyd: Court House Crooks, 1915

I'd heard rumors, but I had never actually seen Harold Lloyd in a Mack Sennett comedy. He spent a year in the studio back in 1915, long before his heyday, taking minor roles while on strike from the Hal Roach studio, which refused to pay him $10 a week because they didn't feel his efforts were worth it. Seemed too good to be true at first, but the more you look at his character, the more you realize it couldn't be anyone else. It's a bit startling to see him without the glasses - he had wonderful eyes that were usually obscured, sexy eyes I always thought, a bit seductive - and to see him just so young, maybe 21 or 22. A boy. The extremely heavy white makeup is typical of the era when people's faces tended to disappear on film.

This wasn't all that easy to gif, and at first it wouldn't at all. He does appear in this picture a lot, but in snippets and little bursts of chase-scenes that last a couple of seconds. I'm having trouble setting up the Gifsforum with the bar, and you can't set exact coordinates or it doesn't work. My beloved old Y2GIF, the one I started on, doesn't work for me at all now.

So for now, this is the best I can do. Say good night, Harold.

Post-blog Notes. Yes, this is definitely Harold, though his face looks strange with no glasses and an inch of white makeup. The way he runs away is Harold-esque, the way he pulls the guy's hat down. . . His body language has that mercurial quality. Funny that he's buried in this, as he was in most of the Sennett comedies he made before ascending to greatness.

Got to start somewhere.

 

Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book

    It took me years to write, will you take a look

Order The Glass Character from:

Barnes & Noble

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Thistledown Press

http://www.thistledownpress.com/html/search/genre/Fiction/the_glass_character_p580.cfm

Chapters/Indigo
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Amazon.ca
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OMG, this is really HOT. . .

My new Facebook cover. OK, it ain't much from here, but it feels like a find to me.

My favorite Harold Lloyd film of all time is a relatively obscure one called Why Worry? 

This is the only Lloyd film  I know of that ends with a truly passionate kiss. It just goes on and on and is very convincing, making you wonder if the rumours about Harold and his sultry co-star Jobyna Ralston might have been true. Up to now, this is the only photo I have ever been able to find of that memorable clinch.

But today I found this. At first glance it looks like the same picture, but look a little more closely and you'll see that it was taken a few seconds earlier. Jobyna has yet to do the subtle "leg pop" which may in fact have started the fashion. She also hasn't yet hooked her right arm around his neck, but appears to be resisting him (rather feebly). In the next shot her body is subtly closer to his, NOT at a decorous distance which is the usual silent film rule (along with hiding behind a screen). The camera pans away for a second during this sizzling kiss, perhaps for the sake of modesty, then when it returns its gaze, they are STILL KISSING in that same furious way.

Whew!

I haven't been able to find a video clip of this breathtaking scene, and it puzzles me that so few film people even mention this picture, as if it's somehow inferior. To me, it's Lloyd's funniest and most quixotic, with some of the best gags he ever accomplished. But the kiss is what makes is all worthwhile. The clip may not exist. . . but then again, it took me four years to find the first picture, and another two to find the second one!

I won't re-write about this at length because I'm suddenly caught up in a deep edit of The Glass Character, my novel featuring Harold Lloyd, which will be published by Thistledown Press in spring 2014. Believe me when I say, the initial writing of a book represents only about 15% of the work. But here's the link to a long piece I did, quite a long time ago.

And I will keep looking for that video clip.

http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.ca/2011/12/harold-lloyd-ive-been-looking-for-this.html


Post-blog note. Just dredged up this gif from the sumptuous romantic dramedy A Room with a View. It sort of portrays the kind of lip-lock these two enacted for the cameras. Come to think of it, the more you look at the photos, the more obvious it is that they were "seeing each other". The body postures, the way he seizes her, the way she melts into him. . .His character has been sort-of asexual up to now (not that we're buying it - he gets palpitations every time he sees her, and not just in his heart), so it's like a jack-in-the-box jumping out. . . in a manner of speaking. God, I wish I were Jobyna. . .right now. . .

Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book

         It took me years to write, will you take a look. . .

http://www.amazon.com/Margaret-Gunning/e/B001K7NGDA

Any good idea is worth beating to death!

Compare and contrast: one is dark and moody - in fact it's kind of broody - Fritz Lang's 1927 expressionist masterpiece, Metropolis. The anonymous worker helplessly grapples with the hands of a huge clock, a piece of machinery that seems to rule everything (including time itself). This is one of the film's creepiest and most disturbing images.

And then there's this guy who plays it for comedy - Harold Lloyd in his own masterpiece, the 1923 comedy Safety Last! But what sort of thunderbolt of inspiration gave him the idea to dangle from an enormous clock? If we free-associate, we come up with a few things: the hands on the clock/HIS hands on the clock, time running out, turning back the hands of time, the clock striking midnight, the crash of the stock market that ended the dizzy joy of the '20s: and who knew it was coming, who could hold back that inevitable stroke of doom?

This guy is also swingin', and it can't end well. The bizarre scrambled numbers on the clock face make no sense (for surely they ought to go to 11), and neither does the constant, frantic manipulation of the hands to avoid some sort of industrial disaster. The size of the clock doesn't quite square with Harold's, but the idea? Did it come to Lang in a dream? Was he thinking of Harold Lloyd at all?

Harold's fear is height, and the Metropolis drone's fear is immolation, a literal meltdown. In any case, they have to hold on, though the struggle seems hopeless. 

Exposed like the Wizard of Oz, here the clock becomes a bizarre mechanical wheel of fortune, its awful impersonal gauges and dials a reminder that technology is always in charge (and I have to say this, it also looks quite a bit like a banjo, a pie plate, or maybe even a tambourine). . .

. . . whereas Harold is just a scared little man trying not to die, a tiny surreal black figure swinging for his life. Is Lang's vision Harold turned inside-out or fed through the evil machinery of his imagination? Does Metropolis reflect the "mechanical" quality some critics claimed detracted from Lloyd's work? Are the cogs and flywheels that endlessly whirred in Harold's mind making themselves manifest in this horrorscape? Or is the whole thing just a big fat coincidence?

We'll never know now.

Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K7NGDA

Haunted by Harold

OK, then. I've told you all about Lloyd synchronicity, and in case you don't remember what it is, it's examples of the name Lloyd coming up over and over and over again through the course of a single day.

It happens and happens, and has been happening for months and maybe even years. I've had as many as five a day, and once I had four in a single movie (a little British comedy called The Wrong Box), but the ones that really make my scalp prickle aren't just things like seeing the name Lloyd on the side of a train or on a street sign or a realtor's sign or TV credits or a dog's ID tag. . . they're examples of actually SEEING Harold Lloyd, usually when I least expect it.

It happens fairly frequently on Turner Classic Movies, and this isn't so very unusual because they have championed the re-release of many of his magnificent silent comedies. But tonight. Oh God. I was minding my own business watching William Shatner's Weird or What? (one of my favorite educational programs) when an ad break came on, and. . .

And there was this woman dangling from the hands of a huge clock.

A Safety Last! clock. An ICONIC clock. WTF? Have I fallen into the freaking Fourth Dimension or something?

Not only was the ad in black and white, it had little lines running down it to make it look like an old movie. She wasn't dressed like Harold Lloyd, but still, the derivation was obvious.

A Harold Lloydian, Safety-Lastian, clock-dangling, cliff-hanging, danger-defying, "high and dizzy" thrill-picture scene in a goddamn Cover Girl cosmetics ad!

Listen, ever since I started researching my novel The Glass Character, and all through the writing of it, and even now, long post-Lloyd, this has been happening. It seems to come in waves, and now I'm in some sort of a bizarre tidal wave.

When I fell in with Harold Lloyd and his legend, I fell into enchantment. A state not so easy to enter, or, for that matter, to escape. I wish somebody would tell me what it all means.

http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.ca/2013/04/the-glass-character-synopsis.html

http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/betterthanlife.htm