Harold Lloyd

Harold Lloyd (1894-1971), American film actor, who at the time of his retirement from acting in 1945 had completed nearly 500 films, silent and sound, all of them comedies and most of them featuring inventive extended chase sequences complete with hair-raising daredevil physical feats. He was born in Burchard, Nebraska, and started acting in one-reel film comedies in 1913 in San Diego, California. In 1917 Lloyd invented his familiar characterization of the bespectacled bumbling optimist, and in 1922 he played this role in his first feature-length film, Grandma's Boy. His films were both commercially successful and noted for their technical sophistication and realism, compared to others of the genre at the time. Among the best-known examples are Safety Last (1923), The Freshman (1925), Movie Crazy (1932), and The Milky Way (1936).