Girl Shy (1924)
A shy, young man, who is completely incapable of talking to women, decides to write a book that details to other bachelors how to find a girlfriend.
Directors:
Fred C. Newmeyer (as Fred Newmeyer) , Sam Taylor
Writers:
Sam Taylor (story), Ted Wilde (story),
Stars:
Harold Lloyd, Jobyna Ralston, Richard Daniels |
Story line
Harold Meadows (Lloyd) is a shy, stuttering bachelor working in a tailor shop, who is writing a guide book for other bashful young men, "The Secret of Making Love," chapters from which are portrayed as fantasy sequences. Fate has him meet rich girl, Mary (Ralston), and they fall in love. But she is about to wed an already married man, so our hero embarks upon a hair-raising daredevil ride to prevent the wedding.
User Reviews
Boy with the Dog Biscuits box & Girl with the Cracker Jack box
This particular film was shown on TMC tonight with several other Harold Lloyd films which are being sold in new DVD form. The new film DVDs have full scores that were composed for them. And, at the start of this film (unfortunately just the first five minutes) there is an attempt to show hand tinting of the scene.
Harold Lloyd plays a shy, stuttering country boy who has never had a girl friend (the local girls like to tease him about this), but who has written a ridiculous book about how to get girls, which he is trying to get published. He meets Jobyna Ralston, a wealthy girl from Los Angeles, on the train to that town. He manages to reunite her with her pet dog and she, in turn, is the only girl that he finds himself comfortable enough to talk to. To protect the dog from an intrusive conductor, Harold eats some dog biscuits meant for her pet (he keeps the box). He buys a box of cracker jacks for her, and she keeps the box. They become symbols of the tight feelings they feel for each other. But Jobyna is being pursued by a suitor named De Vore (Carlton Griffin). She does not know of a nasty secret he is hiding.
Due to a personal humiliation, Harold decides he has to break with Jobyna, and she decides to marry Griffin. But Harold learns the secret, and is determined to stop the wedding. In the last half hour he proceeds to go from his village to Los Angeles, using automobiles, horses, buggies, trolley cars, and motorcycles. In the course of the chase he makes comments about prohibition bootleggers and agents, about 1920s automobile driver's training, the way streetcars could accidentally run themselves (if one is not careful), and on the lack of preparation some fire departments showed regarding properly tying down their hoses. It is a well done, amusing chase, and wraps up the film quite conveniently. Only the chases in two later Lloyd silent comedies would duplicate it - but not beat it as the best of the three.
