Harold Lloyd

Harold Clayton LloydHarold Clayton Lloyd, Sr. (April 20, 1893 – March 8, 1971) was an American film actor and producer, most famous for his silent comedies.
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 “Glasses Character”, a resourceful, success-seeking go-getter who was perfectly in tune with 1920s era America.
His films frequently contained “thrill sequences” Harold Clayton Lloydof 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! is one of the most enduring images in all of cinema. Lloyd did many of these dangerous stunts himself, despite having injured himself in 1919 during the filming of Haunted Spooks when an accident with a prop bomb resulted in the loss of the thumb and index finger of his right hand (the injury was disguised on film with the use of a special prosthetic glove, though the glove often did not go by unnoticed).
Although Lloyd’s individual films were not as commercially successful as Charlie Chaplin’s on Harold Clayton Lloydaverage, he was far more prolific (releasing twelve feature films in the 1920s while Chaplin released just three), and made more money overall ($15.7 million to Chaplin’s $10.5 million).
Lloyd married his leading lady, Mildred Davis, on Saturday, February 10, 1923. Together, they had two children: Gloria Lloyd (born 1923), and Harold Clayton Lloyd, Jr., (1931-1971). They also adopted Gloria Freeman (1924-1986) in September 1930, whom they renamed Marjorie Elizabeth Lloyd, but who was known as “Peggy” for most of her life. Lloyd, for a time, discouraged Davis from continuing her acting career. He later relented, but by that time her career momentum was lost. Mildred died in 1969, two years before Lloyd’s death. Lloyd’s son was gay, and, as several commentators have noted, he took the news of his son’s sexuality in an enlightened way.
Harold Lloyd and future wife: Mildred Davis in I Do in 1921
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. The estate left the possession of the Lloyd family in 1975, after a failed attempt to maintain it as a public museum.