Comedy Risks

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 608, 9 March 1929, Page 25

Comedy Risks

Fanie and Fortune From Lloyd Goggles STUDIO BOMB EXPLOSION LIGHTED bomb was j ! handed to the comedian j j tvho stuck a cigarette in his | mouth and proceeded to light j 1 it from the spluttering fuse. | | No one doubted that the | | bomb was a mere property j | grenade, but someone had j | blundered, and the career of j j famous Mr, Harold Lloyd rcas j | in grave danger of being cut j j off abruptly. ! i JN his reminiscences Mr. ihloyd tells how it happened. “Five weeks before, the studio had made two bombs for some stunt suggested by the news from Russia or the war. They were papier-mache, rounded and painted black. The property man overdid the charge. When one shattered a heavy oak table the stunt was called off and the other bomb returned to the studio.

“The explosives were supposed to Be kept under lock at the studio, and how this boinb got into a bin of property grenades, we nev;v have learned. i held the tiling m my hand for the first time, the fuse already lighted, and my mind on the pose. “The smoke blew across my face, so clouding the expression that the photographer delayed. As he continued to wait and the fuse grew shorter and shorter, I raised the bomb nearer and nearer to my face until, the fuse all but gone, I dropped the hand and was saying that we must insert a new fuse, when the thing exploded. Terrific Blast “Had I not lowered my hand at that instant, I should have been killed instantly, my head probably blown off. The force of the blast was principally upward. It tore a hole in the 16ft ceiling, burst all the windows and, incidentally, split from end to end the upper plate of a set of false teeth in my assistant’s mouth. The photographer fainted dead away. Blinded, bloody, and stunned, I staggered outside. A man was just alighting from a small car at the curb. “Take this man to a hospital Quickly!” someone shouted, and steered me into the back seat. “In four or five days the doctors found that the left eye was sound. They said nothing to me at the time, for, both the‘consulting eye specialist and the insurance physician were convinced that I would lose the right eye. In another week they told me so. It had been punctured, they said, but it might he possible to preserve its outward appearance. Danger To Eyes “My own doctor had never despaired of the right eye and time vindicated him. The bandages were taken off on? day, and I was wheeled out on the second floor verandah of the hospital, to see trees, light, and liie. “In November, 1919, I walked down Broadway on my second visit to New York and saw ‘Harold Lloyd’ in lights over two theatres. In March, 1920, I was back before the camera, taking up the fifth two-reel picture, ‘Haunted Spooks,’ where the explosion had halted it eight months before. “First my sight was found to be intact. Then the face, that had been a frightful, hopeless thing, healed gradually without a scar. Magic Of Glasses

“With my horn-rimmed glasses, I am Harold Lloyd; without them a private citizen. I can stroll unrecognised down any street in the land at any time without the glasses, a boon granted to no other picture actor and one which some of them would pay well for. At a cost of 75 cents they provide a trade-mark recognised instantly wherever pictures are shown. They make low-comedy clothes unnecessary, permit enough romantic appeal to catch the feminine eye, usually averted from comedies, and they hold me down to no particular type or range of story. “The first pair were too heavy, the second pair had so large a diameter that the rims covered my eyebrows and killed a great deal of expression. A third pair that just suited was found in a little optical shop, after scouring Los Angeles. I remember hunting through a tray containing probably 30 pairs .before coming on the right one.