Grandma's Boy
(1922)
Comedy | 3 September 1922
Director:
Fred NewmeyerWriters:
Thomas J. Crizer, Hal Roach, Sam Taylor, Jean HavezCinematographer:
Walter LundinEditor:
T. J. CrizerProduction Company:
Hal Roach StudiosAlthough Harold Lloyd and Mildred Davis are identified in credits as “Grandma’s Boy” and “His Girl,” they are identified in intertitle cards as “Harold” and “Mildred.”
The 19 Nov 1921 Motion Picture News announced that Lloyd’s next film would be The White Feather, the first of two working titles for Grandma’s Boy. A month later, the 24 Dec 1921 Motion Picture News noted that Lloyd hoped to finish shooting He Who Hesitates before Christmas.
The 25 Mar 1922 Exhibitors Trade Review announced that Harold Lloyd would be completing Grandma’s Boy that week.
Grandma’s Boy was Lloyd’s first five-reel feature comedy, according to a full-page ad in the 23 Jul 1922 FD. According to a review of the film in the 10 Sep 1922 FD, Lloyd “has been developing rapidly during the past few years until it was necessary to put him in features.” His previous outing, A Sailor-Made Man (1921, see entry), had been his first film longer than two reels.
According to John Bengtson's Silent Visions: Discovering Early Hollywood and New York Through the Films of Harold Lloyd, Grandma's Boy was one of the most popular films of 1922, and critics loved it, too. It was one of Lloyd's first films to use naturalistic humor mixed with dramatic situations. Locations included the Palms area of West Los Angeles (around Nation Boulevard and Vinton Avenue; the area around the Hal Roach Studios in Culver City, now the Culver Studios); and the city of San Fernando in the San Fernando Valley (at Haddon Avenue ...
Although Harold Lloyd and Mildred Davis are identified in credits as “Grandma’s Boy” and “His Girl,” they are identified in intertitle cards as “Harold” and “Mildred.”
The 19 Nov 1921 Motion Picture News announced that Lloyd’s next film would be The White Feather, the first of two working titles for Grandma’s Boy. A month later, the 24 Dec 1921 Motion Picture News noted that Lloyd hoped to finish shooting He Who Hesitates before Christmas.
The 25 Mar 1922 Exhibitors Trade Review announced that Harold Lloyd would be completing Grandma’s Boy that week.
Grandma’s Boy was Lloyd’s first five-reel feature comedy, according to a full-page ad in the 23 Jul 1922 FD. According to a review of the film in the 10 Sep 1922 FD, Lloyd “has been developing rapidly during the past few years until it was necessary to put him in features.” His previous outing, A Sailor-Made Man (1921, see entry), had been his first film longer than two reels.
According to John Bengtson's Silent Visions: Discovering Early Hollywood and New York Through the Films of Harold Lloyd, Grandma's Boy was one of the most popular films of 1922, and critics loved it, too. It was one of Lloyd's first films to use naturalistic humor mixed with dramatic situations. Locations included the Palms area of West Los Angeles (around Nation Boulevard and Vinton Avenue; the area around the Hal Roach Studios in Culver City, now the Culver Studios); and the city of San Fernando in the San Fernando Valley (at Haddon Avenue and Branford Street).
The 23 Sep 1922 Exhibitors Trade Review announced that, after opening in New York City at the Mark Strand on Broadway on 3 Sep 1922, Grandma’s Boy had “smashed—not merely broken—the record for this time of year.” On the West Coast, the film was already in the seventeenth week of its run at Los Angeles, CA’s Symphony Theatre. Likewise, in San Francisco, CA, where the film opened 9 Jul 1922, the theater manager predicted “a run of indefinite length,” the 22 Jul 1922 Exhibitors Trade Review reported.
Popular entertainer Al Jolson told the 26 Aug 1922 Exhibitors Herald that Grandma’s Boy is “the greatest comedy picture I ever saw,” and that it gave him “a new conception of screened comedy.” Previously unsure whether the silent film medium would be right for him, Jolson stated: “Some of us on the stage may have had a feeling that there couldn’t be real comedy without monologues and conversations….Well, Harold Lloyd has come along and does it!”
Film Year Book 1922-1923 called Grandma's Boy one of 'The Ten Best' pictures of 1922.
The White Feather
In the country town of Blossom Bend lives Harold, Grandma's boy, a meek youth of nineteen who has been pushed around since boyhood. He is in love with Mildred, but frightened by his romantic rival, who mercilessly bullies him and, at one point, tosses him down a well. While paying a visit to Mildred's house, Harold and his rival get the news that the local Jewelry shop has been robbed and its owner, John Spence, killed by a menacing tramp called “The Rolling Stone.” The town citizens organize to hunt him down, and Harold is deputized as a member of the posse, but he is overcome by fear and goes home to bed. However, in the morning, Grandma inspires Harold with tales of her late husband's derring-do as a Confederate spy during the Civil War, and gives him a decorative gypsy charm she claims transformed his grandfather from a coward to a lion-hearted hero. Bolstered with confidence, Harold captures the killer, gives his bullying rival a good thrashing, receives a $1,000 reward, and induces Mildred to marry him. Grandma reveals that the charm is merely the handle of her umbrella, and that Harold's courage was inside him all ...
In the country town of Blossom Bend lives Harold, Grandma's boy, a meek youth of nineteen who has been pushed around since boyhood. He is in love with Mildred, but frightened by his romantic rival, who mercilessly bullies him and, at one point, tosses him down a well. While paying a visit to Mildred's house, Harold and his rival get the news that the local Jewelry shop has been robbed and its owner, John Spence, killed by a menacing tramp called “The Rolling Stone.” The town citizens organize to hunt him down, and Harold is deputized as a member of the posse, but he is overcome by fear and goes home to bed. However, in the morning, Grandma inspires Harold with tales of her late husband's derring-do as a Confederate spy during the Civil War, and gives him a decorative gypsy charm she claims transformed his grandfather from a coward to a lion-hearted hero. Bolstered with confidence, Harold captures the killer, gives his bullying rival a good thrashing, receives a $1,000 reward, and induces Mildred to marry him. Grandma reveals that the charm is merely the handle of her umbrella, and that Harold's courage was inside him all along.
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