A Single Reel Harold Lloyd

Harold Invades 1919 Office Space in Ask Father

The title refers to eager beaver Harold Lloyd's needing to get (her) dad's permission to marry, easier hoped for than done. Two clever gags make up nucleus of this single reel: Bebe Daniels laying pillows at a distance in anticipation of Harold being thrown their way, and slapstick aboard a moving walkway installed in offices HL tries to crash. The latter was variation on Chaplin's escalator business in The Floorwalker. Comics could devise much on mechanical, thus peril-laden, props, plus audiences were fascinated with devices so exotic. Buster Keaton would go Lloyd and Chaplin better by shaping shorts around gadgetry gone haywire, this playing well to 1919'ers that didn't trust infernal machinery to start with. Annette D'Agostino Lloyd says in her indispensable Harold Lloyd Encyclopedia that Ask Father was his 48th "Glass" character short, and that Harold by this time was getting $300 per week from boss Hal Roach. HL had by 1919 ridden his own escalator to a top among screen clowns. In portent of stuntwork to come, he scales up a building to achieve Ask Father ends, early evidence that screen Harold would do anything to make success. It was this quality above all that  endeared him to 20's viewership.