How Harold Lloyd Filmed the Girl Shy Trolley Stunts

Harold Lloyd's trolley stunts from Girl Shy. Filmed looking east as Argyle turns into Yucca.

Following the great success of Safety Last! (1923), Harold Lloyd further cemented his reputation as a dare-devil comic with his first independently produced feature comedy Girl Shy (1924).  In that film, Harold discovers the woman he loves is about to marry a bigamist, and in a frantic race to the altar, Harold dashes all across Southern California by every conceivable mode of transport in order to halt the wedding.  During one sequence Harold finds himself hanging from the pole of a runaway trolley car.

The sequence was filmed in a residential neighborhood just a block away from the famous intersection of Hollywood and Vine, along the route of the former Pacific Electric Railway, as it transitioned from running east-west along Hollywood Boulevard, to running east-west along Franklin Avenue, through a rapid succession of alternating left and right turns along Vine Street, Yucca Street, and Argyle Avenue.  Lloyd’s crew filmed the runaway trolley sequence from various vantage points at each corner to capture nearly a dozen unique looking shots from this one setting.

You can download below a 10.4 MB PowerPoint presentation showing a brief overview of where and how Lloyd filmed the Girl Shy trolley stunt in Hollywood.  Most of the slides are animated, so wait a moment each time before clicking the “next” button.

How Harold Lloyd filmed the Girl Shy trolley stunts – John Bengtson

You will need a PowerPoint viewer to watch the show, and can download a free PowerPoint viewer at this site.

From Safety Last!

As with his stunt-work hanging from the clock in Safety Last!, audiences were generally unaware that Harold had only one complete hand when hanging from the trolley car in Girl Shy.   As shown to the left, Harold’s incomplete right hand (he wore a glove covering a prosthetic thumb and index finger) prevents him from fully grabbing hold of the rope.  You can read how Lloyd injured his hand, and resorted to a bit of movie magic when memorializing his handprints in cement at the forecourt to Grauman’s Chinese Theater, in this earlier post.

The former Holmby House.

My book Silent Visions documents Lloyd’s elaborate race to the altar in great detail, staged on the streets of Hollywood, San Fernando, Altadena, Palms, Culver City, Bunker Hill, Rampart Village, Fort Moore Hill, and downtown Los Angeles, as Harold commandeers automobiles, fire engines, motorcycles, trolleys, and horse wagons in his quest.   The wedding was staged at Holmby House, now lost, the magnificent estate owned by retail magnate Arthur Letts, owner of Bullock’s Department Store.  You can see where Harold filmed atop Bunker Hill in this later post.

I am also posting here, once again, a tour of several silent-era Hollywood locations Harold Lloyd used in Girl Shy, and various other films, as well as the sites for the Lloyd, Chaplin, and Keaton Studios.

Harold Lloyd Hollywood Film Locations – Silent Visions

HAROLD LLOYD images and the names of Mr. Lloyd’s films are all trademarks and/or service marks of Harold Lloyd Entertainment Inc. Images and movie frame images reproduced courtesy of The Harold Lloyd Trust and Harold Lloyd Entertainment Inc.

The site of the trolley stunts, along North Argyle and Yucca, on Google Maps.

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Keaton’s Highland Goat Garage

Click to enlarge. Keaton filmed a scene from The Goat at the Hollywood A.1. Garage (box) up from the corner of the former Hollywood Hotel, now the site of the Hollywood and Highland retail and entertainment center. Left (c) 2012 Microsoft Corporation, Pictometry Bird's Eye (c) 2010 Pictometry International Corp. Center image Security Pacific National Bank Photograph Collection/Los Angeles Public Library.

During the frantic chase in Buster Keaton’s 1921 short film The Goat, Buster attempts to flee the police by leaping onto the rear spare tire of a departing car, only to find himself sitting instead on a freestanding auto garage ad for tire vulcanizing.

Two versions of the same gag, from alternate vantage points looking up or down Highland Avenue in Hollywood. Keaton placed himself either further up or down the street so that the garage would appear in each shot. The red box marks the palm trees in front of the former Hollywood Hotel that stood on the NW corner of Hollywood and Highland. The ovals mark the same Michelin tire sign.

Remarkably, this joke is one of the few from Keaton’s entire silent career for which an outtake exists, included as a bonus feature on the new Kino Blu-ray release Buster Keaton: The Shorts Collection (1920-1923).  The alternate take (above right), clearly shows a 1741 address for the garage, an invaluable clue.

Film location sleuth Paul Ayers had long suspected this gag was filmed looking south on Highland Avenue towards Hollywood Boulevard.  Thanks to the Blu-ray high resolution we can confirm the spot positively.

Click to enlarge. This bottom view looks east down Hollywood Boulevard from Highland. The yellow box marks the Hollywood A.1. Garage at 1741 Highland. The red lines match up images from the background of the movie frame with the buildings on the street. The palms trees to the left of the street stand before the Hollywood Hotel. California Historical Society, Title Insurance and Trust Photo Collection, Department of Special Collections, University of Southern California.

The two story First National Trust and Savings Bank branch office across from the Hollywood Hotel, on the NE corner of Hollywood and Highland, appears in the background of Keaton’s scene.  It was demolished in late 1927 to make way for the 190 foot tall First National Bank building completed in 1928, and recognized today as one of Hollywood’s most prominent landmarks.  This comparable aerial view below matches the aerial view above, but for the new bank tower.

A comparable view, looking east down Hollywood Boulevard, of the Hollywood A.1. Garage (box), and the extant First National Bank Building tower now standing on the NE corner of Highland. The First National Building was designed by Meyer and Holler, the same architects that designed Grauman's Egyptian and Chinese Theaters. Security Pacific National Bank Photograph Collection/Los Angeles Public Library.

Built in 1903, the Hollywood Hotel (below) was a Hollywood institution for decades, until falling in decline, and being demolished in 1956.  Charlie Chaplin, Mabel Normand, and Marie Dressler filmed scenes from Tillie’s Punctured Romance (1914) on the hotel’s front porch.

The former Hollywood Hotel on the NW corner of Hollywood and Highland - compare to matching view below. California Historical Society, Title Insurance and Trust Photo Collection, Department of Special Collections, University of Southern California.

A comparable view of the Hollywood Hotel site today, as the First National Bank tower looks on from the right. (C) 2012 Google.

Click to enlarge. Looking south from 1741 N. Highland. The two small buildings up from the corner of Hollywood Blvd. (red and yellow boxes), still stand, although heavily re-modeled. (C) 2012 Google.

 

The Goat licensed by Douris UK, Ltd.

1741 N. Highland Ave., Los Angeles, CA

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The Office – Film Noir – and Harold Lloyd

Click to enlarge. Harold Lloyd's Speedy (1928) looking south down Witmer towards the Mayfair Hotel. Dwight, Erin, and Holly from The Office, shown below, stood by the stop sign on the right. (C) 2011 Google Inc.

What do the television show The Office, the 1950 film noir drama Edge of Doom, and Harold Lloyd’s final silent comedy Speedy (1928) have in common?  They all filmed scenes looking southwest down Witmer Street towards the front of the Mayfair Hotel, at 1256 W. 7th Street, just west of downtown Los Angeles.

The Office (2011) - Erin, Holly, and Dwight on Witmer Street beside the Prince Rupert Apartments. (C) 2011 Google Inc.

In a prior post I write all about the pivotal 2011 episode from The Office where characters Michael Scott and Holly Flax meet on the roof of the Mayfair Hotel, and declare their love for each other.   Prior to that scene, Holly meets with characters Dwight Schrute and Erin Kemper on the street to devise a plan for locating Michael, who had wandered off dazed without his cell phone.  The scene, shown above, was filmed at the NW corner of Witmer and Ingraham, beside what was once called the Prince Rupert Apartments.  Notice the steep slope of the street.

Click to enlarge. The prominent entrance to the Kensington Apartments, 668 Witmer Street, now lost, appears in Edge of Doom - left, and in Speedy - right. The Mayfair Hotel stands at the end in both shots. The Burton Arms Apartments, with the vertical white corner detail, still stands at 680 Witmer.

Harold Lloyd used the slope of Witmer Street to good advantage during an early scene in Speedy, where Harold recovers his idle taxi cab that had accidentally been towed away by a moving van.  As Harold speaks with the truck driver, the taxi breaks loose and rolls down hill running over a traffic cop.

The unusual setting intrigued me, as it featured a downhill slope pointing towards a “T” intersection, capped by an uncommonly tall building, on which a trolley ran along the cross street.   Although Speedy was filmed primarily on location in Manhattan, I also knew many taxi sequences were filmed on Flower Street in downtown Los Angeles.  So I first checked the few trolley-line “T” intersections to be found along Bunker Hill, and in the downtown LA Historic Core, but nothing matched up.  Since other scenes from this sequence were filmed in the Upper West Side of Manhattan, I checked nearby locales there as well to see if I could find this setting in New York, but it was another dead end.

From Speedy - a cop about to be flattened by Harold's taxi, and perhaps the only extant photo record showing the front of the lost Kensington Apartments.

My first break came when I noticed the Mayfair Hotel appeared at back during a scene in Edge of Doom (see above, left), as a troubled youth played by Farely Granger steps into the Kensington Apartments once located at 668 Witmer.  With the Mayfair as a reference point, I now knew what the Kensington looked like, as it appeared on film, even though it is no longer standing.  My second break was my realization (as discussed in my prior post about The Office) that in the 1920s there were tall buildings, such as the Mayfair, located just west of downtown Los Angeles, beyond the Historic Core.  Then, while searching for a file, I somehow come upon the two above images from Edge of Doom and Speedy, and got a hunch to compare them side by side, making the match.

The Burton Arms Apartments, 680 Witmer, as it appears in Speedy, 1928, and today. (C) 2011 Google Inc.

I find it fascinating how this one setting reappears over the decades.  My sense is that “T” intersections are popular when filming for a number of reasons.  First, it cuts down on traffic disruption, as through traffic can be more easily diverted.  Next, it seems to be less visually distracting.  Instead of the lines of the street stretching far off into the distance, drawing the viewer’s eye towards the vanishing point on the horizon, the cross street cuts across the view, creating a backdrop that contains the viewer’s eye.

California Historical Society, Title Insurance and Trust Photo Collection, Department of Special Collections, University of Southern California. (c) 2012 Microsoft Corporation, Pictometry Bird's Eye (c) 2010 Pictometry International Corp.

The aerial views above look to the north.  The yellow arrow points SW down Witmer towards the Mayfair Hotel on 7th Street (yellow boxes), and the red ovals mark the corner stop sign where Dwight, Erin, and Holly stood (far above).  The pin to the upper right shows the site of the lost Kensington Apartments, now a parking lot.

You can read about how Lloyd filmed Speedy all over Manhattan and Brooklyn, at Coney Island, and in Los Angeles, in my Harold Lloyd location book Silent Visions.

HAROLD LLOYD images and the names of Mr. Lloyd’s films are all trademarks and/or service marks of Harold Lloyd Entertainment Inc. Images and movie frame images reproduced courtesy of The Harold Lloyd Trust and Harold Lloyd Entertainment Inc.   The Office copyright (c) 2011 NBCUniversal Media, LLC.  Edge of Doom Copyright 1950 The Samuel Goldwyn Company.

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How Harold Lloyd Filmed Safety Last!

The image of Harold Lloyd clinging desperately from the hands of a skyscraper clock during Safety Last! (1923) is one of the great icons of film history.  The recent multiple Oscar-winning movie Hugo (2011) pays tribute to Safety Last!; first by including a clip of Harold’s film within the movie, and again when the young hero Hugo Cabret finds himself hanging from the hands of a clock at the train station where he lives.  Even the poster artwork for Hugo mirrors Lloyd’s earlier film.

You can download below a 14 MB PowerPoint presentation showing a brief overview of where and how Harold Lloyd filmed his stunt comedy masterpiece along Broadway and Spring Streets in downtown Los Angeles.  Most of the slides are animated, so wait a moment each time before clicking the “next” button.

Hugo (C) 2011 Paramount Pictures

How Harold Lloyd Filmed Safety Last by John Bengtson

You will need a PowerPoint viewer to watch the show, and can download a PowerPoint viewer at this site.

Filled with maps, aerial views, and vintage photographs, my book Silent Visions devotes an entire chapter to how Lloyd filmed Safety Last!, and his other stunt-climbing comedies (Ask Father (1919), Look Out Below (1919), High and Dizzy (1919), Never Weaken (1921), and Feet First (1930)) within the downtown Los Angeles Historic Core, while highlighting the burgeoning Los Angeles skyline appearing in the background of these films.

I am also posting here, once again, a self-guided walking tour of the downtown Los Angeles locations Harold Lloyd used in Safety Last!, along with locations from Never Weaken and Feet First.

Harold Lloyd Safety Last Tour – Silent Visions

You can also check out my other posts about Safety Last! here.

HAROLD LLOYD images and the names of Mr. Lloyd’s films are all trademarks and/or service marks of Harold Lloyd Entertainment Inc. Images and movie frame images reproduced courtesy of The Harold Lloyd Trust and Harold Lloyd Entertainment Inc.

The site of the clock set, above, at 908 S. Broadway on Google Maps.

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The Artist Locations – Part 6 – Uggie Saves The Day

Oscar-winning Best Director Michel Hazanavicius, Oscar-winning Best Actor Jean Dujardin, and an unidentified crew member standing in front of 121 S. Hudson Ave. between takes filming The Artist. (C) 2012 Google.

Uggie and George - The Weinstein Company

What an Oscar night!  The two biggest winners, The Artist, and Hugo, both pay homage to early cinema, and the best animated short, the beautiful and moving The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore, pays tribute in part to Buster Keaton.

You don’t need to speak French in order to enjoy this behind the scenes video, posted in early 2011, showing Oscar-winning Best Director Michel Hazanavicius and crew on location in Los Angeles filming scenes from The Artist.   I was able to capture from one scene where Uggie the Dog begs a policeman to follow him in order to rescue Uggie’s master, the down and out actor George Valentin, portrayed by Oscar-winning Best Actor Jean Dujardin.   I will likely post more stories about The Artist once it is released on video, but until then, let’s see where Uggie saves the day.

The cop and Uggie between takes - standing at the back of 104 S. Hudson Ave. (C) 2011 Microsoft Corporation.

Above, Uggie encounters the policeman alongside this distinctive fence at the back end of 104 S. Hudson Avenue.   After capturing the cop’s attention, Uggie and the cop race south down the street, past the low brick retaining wall of 134 S. Hudson Ave. (see below).

Uggie and the cop race by 134 S. Hudson Ave. (C) 2012 Google.

During an unrelated sequence from the behind the scenes video, we see Clifton the chauffeur, played by James Cromwell, drive Jean while turning north from W. 2nd Street onto Hudson Place (see below).

The corner of W. 2nd Street and Hudson Place. (C) 2012 Google.

Unlike my prior five posts that explain historic connections between The Artist and the great silent stars of the past, this post only shows contemporary locations.  Thus, for a moment I was concerned I had strayed from the premise of my blog.  But then I chuckled when I realized this blog discusses the locations from silent films, which is precisely what The Artist is intended to be.   So if the hoopla over The Artist should ever lead to the production of another contemporary silent film, you can look for analysis of that film here as well.

The Artist (C) La Petite Reine, The Weinstein Company.

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The Artist – Locations 1 of 5, Chaplin, and Pickford (repost)

The movie marquee appearing in The Artist stands on the Warner Bros. backlot.

Set in Hollywood during 1927 to 1932, The Artist depicts the romance between a fading silent film star and a rising “talkie” ingénue.  The Artist has received glowing reviews and numerous awards, and is noteworthy for being presented in black & white, and without spoken dialog.  What’s more, the lead actors, the writer/director, and most of the crew are all French, who traveled to Los Angeles to film the movie at authentic Hollywood studios and locations.

While the Los Angeles Times beat me with news of several locales appearing in the film, I’ve gleaned a few locations the Times did not cover, including a connection to Charlie Chaplin, below.

The Artist - vintage cars race past the NE corner of S. Hudson Avenue and W. 2nd Street. (c) 2011 Google

The ingénue character Peppy Miller, played by Bérénice Bejo, skyrockets to wealth and fame, and soon sets up house in a fabulous mansion, located at 56 Fremont Place.  The palatial home was occupied for a time in 1918-1919 by America’s Sweetheart, silent film superstar Mary Pickford.  Pickford was one of the most savvy business-persons in Hollywood, co-founding United Artists in 1919 with her future husband Douglas Fairbanks, and fellow partners Charlie Chaplin and director D. W. Griffith.

56 Fremont Place was home to Mary Pickford from August 1918 to August 1919. It appears in the background from this scene (above left) appearing in Charlie Chaplin's The Kid, and as the home of Peppy Miller in The Artist (above right). The box marks the same corner of the house in each image.

Charlie Chaplin no doubt visited Mary at her home at 56 Fremont Place in 1919, and was thus already familiar with the neighborhood when he used it to stage an important early scene from his 1921 masterpiece The Kid, named one of the 2011 entries into the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress.   During this scene, an unwed mother played by Edna Purviance abandons her infant son in the backseat of a limousine parked in front of 55 Fremont Place, the home directly across the street from Mary’s home.  Thieves steal the car before Edna can return to reclaim her child.  Upon discovering the baby, the thieves leave him in the gutter, where Charlie finds him, and raises the kid as his own.

55 Fremont Place, as it appears in Charlie Chaplin's The Kid. This beautiful home was recently owned by prize-fighting legend Muhammad Ali, and stands directly across the street from 56 Fremont Place, the former Mary Pickford home appearing in The Artist.

Edna Purviance in The Kid at 55 Fremont Place.

George Valentin's mansion at 104 Fremont Place. In 1927 the trees in front of the home would have been much smaller.

French actor Jean Dujardin plays George Valentin, the male lead in The Artist, a charming, swash-buckling movie star character fashioned after Douglas Fairbanks.  Actual footage of Fairbanks performing stunts from his 1920 landmark film The Mark of Zorro appears in The Artist during a montage of scenes supposedly played by George.  The mansion where George lives is located at 104 Fremont Place (above, and marked in the photo below), behind the home Chaplin used when filming The Kid.

George Valentin's home in The Artist was located at 104 Fremont Place (left box), behind the home Chaplin used in The Kid (oval), itself across the street from the Mary Pickford - Peppy Miller home (right box) beyond the bottom edge of this photo. California Historical Society, Title Insurance and Trust Photo Collection, Department of Special Collections, University of Southern California.

One of the greatest challenges when attempting to recreate vintage Los Angeles today is the mature landscaping.  Back in the 1920s all of the subdivisions were new, and most homes had no trees to block the view.   This aerial view below shows how Fremont Place would more likely have looked during the era depicted in The Artist.

Click to enlarge. The oval marks the section of Fremont Place where The Kid and The Artist were filmed. 104 Fremont Place, appearing as George's home, was not yet built at the time this photo was taken. It appears as the vacant lot within the left edge of the oval. The Kid mansion stands near the center of the oval, while the Mary Pickford - Peppy Miller home is near the lower right edge of the oval. The long diagonal line just above the oval is Wilshire Boulevard, the next major street several blocks above Wilshire is 3rd Street. Security Pacific National Bank Photograph Collection/Los Angeles Public Library.

(c) 2011 Microsoft Corporation, Pictometry Bird's Eye (c) 2010 Pictometry International Corp.

There is also a scene in the movie where Uggie the dog summons a policeman on the street for help.  The corner street sign reading “OAKWOOD AVE, 6100 W” appears in the shot, placing the scene at the corner of N. June Street and Oakwood, below.

Check out Part 3 of this series for connections to Harold Lloyd’s Safety Last!, and Part 4 for connections to the Bradbury Building and Bradbury Mansion, and Part 5 for connections to Charlie Chaplin’s City Lights.

For more photos and location information about Chaplin filming The Kid visit this PowerPoint presentation on my blog, and my book Silent Traces.  And as I mentioned, the LA Times story has a number of locations worth exploring.   Thanks also to Carol Kiefer, the Art Department Coordinator who worked on The Artist, for assistance with this post.  She reports that the Bugatti driving scene was filmed at the Big Sky Movie Ranch in Simi Valley (which has a landing airstrip), the torture laboratory and cells were filmed at the Eagle Rock Substation, Zimmer’s office, the secretary’s office, the store room, and the auction house were all filmed at the Wilshire Ebell Theater, and that the hospital was the American Film Institute building.   The Tears of Love theater interior was the Los Angeles Theater at 630 S. Broadway.

UPDATE – Lindsay Blake’s ImNotAStalker.Com has several posts with even more locations from The Artist; including George’s duplex apartment; the history of the Red Studios where much of The Artist was filmed; and of the AFI “hospital” and the Wilshire Ebell where many interior scenes were filmed.

PS – The Wilshire Ebell Theater, a 743 Lucerne Boulevard, is also just steps away from the Mary Pickford home on Fremont Place.

The Artist (C) La Petite Reine, The Weinstein Company.  All images from Chaplin films made from 1918 onwards, copyright © Roy Export Company Establishment. CHARLES CHAPLIN, CHAPLIN, and the LITTLE TRAMP, photographs from and the names of Mr. Chaplin’s films are trademarks and/or service marks of Bubbles Incorporated SA and/or Roy Export Company Establishment. Used with permission.

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Mr. Keaton’s Neighborhood

Buster Keaton would travel hundreds of miles to find just the right setting for a shot.  But he was also practical, and filmed dozens of exterior scenes at or adjacent to his small studio.  I am not aware of any documentary or newsreel footage taken of the Keaton Studio, and thus, the glimpses of Keaton’s home turf appearing in the background of his films are likely the only movie records we have.  (I write more about this in the About Silent Locations section on my blog, and in my first post, while my book Silent Echoes covers these discoveries in great detail.)  Since acquiring other aerial views of the Keaton Studio, and the new Keaton Blu-ray releases, I have made several more discoveries about filming at the Keaton Studio, and describe a few of them here.

Click to enlarge. Two scenes from Day Dreams filmed on the Keaton Studio backlot, adjacent to the oval, below. At the right, Buster waits for a ladder holding some cops to fall into a delivery chute.