Smile… It's the Old Army Game (1926), Bristol Old Vic with Sally Philips, European Silent Screen Virtuosi, Slapstick Festival

Laughter may be the best medicine but there’s a lot to be said for smiling too. Bristol’s Slapstick Festival is the best of the West, an annual institution that draws huge support from Cary Grant’s hometown and comedians past and ever-present. As I sat in the Old Vic’s café with my wife and hangover, nursing a recuperative coffee more in hope than expectation, I spotted a table-full of Goodies, Tim Brooke-Taylor, Bill Oddie and Graeme Garden who lifted my spirits higher than caffeine ever could – I grew up smiling with them and also laughing with Tim, John Junkin and Lord Barry Cryer on Hello Cheeky (not forgetting Denis King on the old Joanna… I never caught her surname).

I’ve also never quite recovered from Sally Philips’ smile as her character repeatedly failed to keep a straight face confronted with Alan Partridge’s wrong-headedness. She was here to introduce perhaps cinema history’s most sublime smiler in one of her earliest films: it’s not the shadow of Louise Brooks’ smile but the sheer brilliance that warms the heart. As Sally said, Brooks almost breaks the fourth wall with her charisma and we’re also spellbound by her dancer’s grace and her pure, unconscious expression. That smile can be used for good and ill and Sally showed us a clip from Pandora’s Box in which Lulu once more seduces her man only to smile in wicked triumph as his fiancée opens the door to see them… she can smile and be a villain too but, it's a smile that still draws the viewer in. 

This was the first time I’d seen It's the Old Army Game (1926) on the big screen and in the quality it deserves. It was Brooks’ fourth film and only her second as the female lead and she had initially turned it down possibly because Clara Bow – who was committed to making Mantrap – refused it first: although that sounds a little mythical to me. She changed her mind possibly because of her friendship with WC Fields, with whom she had worked at the Follies. It would turn out to be a fateful decision as she would end up marrying the director Edward Sutherland within two months of the wrap.

Today's accompaniment was provided by European Silent Screen Virtuosi led by peerless pianist Günter A. Buchwald, Slapstick’s musical director and now in his 13^th year at the festival. He led Romano Todesco (double bass and on the beat throughout), Marc Roos (excelling on trombone) and Frank Bockius (percussion) in an improvised score that fitted the film like a glove. In the Vic’s stalls I had a great view of the players and, especially Frank’s drumming be it on wood, tympani, or, indeed, drums. He imitated fire engines, telephone, door bells but all in a musical way and blended with the overall lines of the collective which worked thematically around the characters and situations to produce and early contender for small ensemble accompaniment of the year – I shall remind you when Silent London’s poll comes around.

The film itself was a light and frothy as one of Elmer Prettywillie’s cream sodas and is, as Günter observed post-match, almost two films; a romance between Brooks’ shop girl Marilyn and a charming chancer, George Parker (William Gaxton) and the slapstick comedy with Field as the misanthropic Prettywillie who never gives a sucker an even break, looking after number one first and often failing. Fields was 47 at the time (Brooks just 19) and the film was his chance to cross-over from the theatre to cinema following in the footsteps of other, younger, men such as Chaplin and Keaton. He regarded it as a risk which is hard to credit given his later success. An inventive and skilled performer he throws in what must have been a fair chunk of his regular act throughout a largely formless narrative involving battles with small children, family and customers.

The film starts with a daring real-time stunt as a woman (excellently played by an uncredited Elise Cavanna) drives like a maniac, narrowly missing a train just to buy a stamp: my wife gasped at the stunt and it is indeed remarkable. She wakes up Elmer in order to make her purchase and the proceeds to set off the fire alarm in trying to post her letter. The fire brigade arrives at the store to find no fire but plenty of soda and the startlingly pretty sight of Marilyn. Naturally a fire is started after they have left and Elmer spends a delirious few minutes attempting to wade through his dislocated response to the danger.

Elmer tries in vain to get some sleep but is constantly disturbed by his nephew, the knife grinder and the ice man, who cometh most inconveniently. Fields nephew is meant to look younger but is played by 11-year-old Mickey Bennett who had to work hard on some brutal stunts with Fields – he’s kicked, pulled and generally thrown around. A smaller child wouldn’t have gone the distance, but Fields’ antipathy towards children required extreme visual expression and Bennett goes with the blows like a real trouper!

Mickey’s mother, played by Mary Foy, is similarly disliked by her brother… as is the Station Agent, Tessie Gilch (Blanch Ring – Sutherland’s aunt), who has a soft spot for him... there’s so much bile in Fields’ world-view and you can understand why he had taken so long to find a story in film. He’s not much of a hero and, Marilyn aside, seems to react to circumstances with short term respite his only goal… I suspect I’m growing into the man he became.

The story, such as it is, doesn’t really get going until about half way through when salesman George Parker persuades Prettywillie to join him in selling New York land to the local Floridians. Parker has already appeared stopping off to post a letter at the station to one of his girlfriends, only to fall in love at first sight of Marilyn. He follows her into town and there’s a wonderful sequence of Brooks walking away dropping her hankie or pausing to browse the magazines, all the time waiting for Parker to catch up.

When the two do eventually connect, it is genuine but even this doesn’t stop George from involving the drugstore in his scam – does he know it’s a scam? Is he himself the victim of the New York con artists? This part of the plot is difficult to fathom – you know where the story’s going but it doesn’t really bother to explain itself and maybe that’s a post-modern comment on contemporary narrative or just an oversight.

Elmer goes with the flow and starts to sell thousands of dollars’ worth of lots to the townsfolk. Things are going well and everyone goes on a picnic, with George and Marilyn going for a swim – any excuse to get the young starlet in a skimpy costume - whilst Elmer, Mickey and the “Girls” lay waste to the garden of a wealthy family. This sequence is pure WC anarchy with windows smashed and property damaged before they escape by driving through a wall. It’s daft and purely malicious, but all done with a tipsy wink of the eye; Fields’ was possibly more hard-hitting than others of this time – he genuinely didn’t seem to care and there's a distinct edge to all the mayhem.

Of course the land scam comes back to bite them and things escalate out of control as Prettywillie goes to New York to confront the baddies and set fire to what's left of his car. Parker gets arrested and things look bad until something unexplained happens… You have to laugh. You can't help but smile.

It's the Old Army Game is now available on Blu-ray from Kino Lorber and is now in pretty good quality, but it’s never been as funny for me as it was today when a combination of venue, audience, music and motion left us grinning like fools.

Bristol, as ever, it’s a pleasure!

The Slapstick Festival continues for one more day – details here – and then with the gala performance of Modern Times at the Hippodrome on 10^th February: tickets available from the website.

The People’s Pictures… Slapstick Festival Gala Friday, Bristol Watershed and Colston Hall

My third year at the Slapstick Gala and again I marvel at the event’s support from the city of Bristol; the Colston Hall was filled to the rafters not just by curious locals or travelling hipsters but by local folk who know how to have a grand time! No one talked throughout the show, continually checked their phones, laughed at the quaintness of it all or, indeed, some of Tim Vine’s jokes*… they get it: they know Stan and Buster and they really understand Charlie and Oliver. Heck, even the obscure Arthur Lake, casually dropping a baby in convenient dump bins… they got him too.

Waves of laughter flowed around the Hall, genuine, belly laughs, all feeding each other as recognition of the ridiculous, the daft and the jaw-dropping was shared by the warmest audience you’ll find in all the kingdom. Bristol, you are the most educated and fun-to-be-with crowd! Comedy is a team sport and in this respect, you are City and Rovers united.

I had a conversation with my mother-in-law about why she hadn’t found Chaplin as funny as she’d expected up to now but what’s been missing is an audience and a live musical setting – tonight’s showing of A Dog’s Life (1918) took the roof off and she laughed.

The Bristol Ensemble played Chaplin’s own score and Günter A. Buchwald conducted for a film that is so much more knowing than most “civilians” would expect… aside from this crowd that is. From Edna Purviance’s tear-jerking singing – buckets of tears… a splash in the face for those who talk “sentimentality” – to Charlie’s knowing look at the end, the film is razor sharp.

Laurel and Hardy kicked us off in fine style with Angora Love (1929) – accompanied by maestro John Sweeney on the Hall’s amazing grand and Frank Bockius on percussion. This film may well have been the origin of the “don’t work with animals” rule as the lads just about manage to cope with a goat that just won’t let them go.

Arthur Lake’s Whose Baby (1929) may well have completed the other half of that rule as our rarely-screened hero has to cope with looking after a baby whilst convincing his girl that it’s not his. I use the term “looking after” loosely as Arthur dumps the kid in bins, lets his pram run into traffic and hangs him up on hooks. It’s all in the best of bad taste but a riot all the same.

Sherlock Jnr (1924) was the headline act and not the first time Buster’s meta-masterpiece had an audience gasping in disbelief as he puts his body on the line for laughs in some of his best stunts. The action is far-fetched but as the boy in the row behind observed, these things make sense as he’s in a dream… this Bristol audience is well informed at all ages!

Gunter played along on violin and piano with The European Silent Screen Virtuosi featuring Frank Bockius (percussion), Romano Todesco (double bass) and Marc Roos (trombone). The acoustics in the Hall are darned good to my ears and, sat dead centre, the music was rich and satisfying.

A stunning end to a full Friday which began with...

The Three Keatons

The Young Keaton (1895-1917) with David Robinson

David Robinson talked us through the golden age of vaudeville and variety and the birth of Buster! Keaton’s remarkable theatrical career began in 1899 aged 3, and we learned that it was not Harry Houdini who earned him his nickname but another vaudevillian who witnessed his fall down the stairs. Keaton’s father was an astute self-publicist and came up with the “better story” later. It was a tough existence and seeing Buster talk on film later in the day, you got the impression that he was a forceful, intelligent man with intent forged on the road in medicine shows and lower-league theatres. 

By the time he stepped in front of a camera he was a comedy seventh dan ready to knock his block off for our delight.

Betty Balfour's eyes

Vagabond Queen (1929), Betty Balfour with introduction form Lucy Porter

In which our Queen of Happiness plays Sally a humble maid in a London boarding house who temporarily becomes the Princess of Balonia – a woman she resembles to the last freckle – in order to act as a decoy on coronation day as rebels in the fake Balkan state, use knives, bombs and bullets to try and assassinate their future monarch.

It is an aptly named country and there’s a certain Marx Brothers zaniness to Douglas Furber’s script: “My friends and Balonians!”, directed with brisk efficiency by Géza von Bolváry. The film was essentially a silent but had a recorded soundtrack added post-production to turn it into a “talkie” of sorts. The score was from John Reynders – a renowned musical compiler – and sticks like glue to the narrative with sound effects galore as it follows the action like a shadow.

Betty is super-charged charm throughout and is aided by Ernest Thesiger as Lidoff, the Balonian diplomat and young Glen Byam Shaw as her boyfriend Jimmie. The real Princess’s actual husband, Prince Adolphe, as played by the decidedly louche Charles Dormer, is in a drunken confusion wondering how his poor Zonia has lost her loving feeling.

Like anyone introducing their mate to a party, Lucy Porter perhaps worried that we’d not get Betty, but who couldn’t love Chester-le-Street’s finest: she does indeed still make us happy!

Seff on the left and Cocl on the right

Cocl & Seff: Austria’s Laurel & Hardy, introduced by Chris Serle

Now here’s a couple of queer fish… one of cinema’s very first double acts who from 1913 appeared in many films sometimes together and sometimes apart. Both Austrian boys, Rudolf Walter (Cocl) and Josef Holub (Seff) had the distinguishing traits of most double acts: one tall, one short and one brainy the other less so… as things progressed Seff – who on this evidence was slightly funnier – evolved to look a little like Harold Lloyd.

Their earlier shorts shown lacked the finesse of a Chaplin or Mabel Normand but by the twenties they were more oddball. One film was set in a hotel with the characters all moving like jazzed automatons, John Sweeney expertly followed their rhythm and it was an hilarious combination.

The funniest film was a Seff solo from 1926: Seff on the way to power and beauty (extracting der Mikel from the earnest Wege zu Kraft und Schönheit) which was a commercial for the Viennese Dairy that – wait for it! – milks the association for everything it’s worth. Also features cheese.

John Sweeney and Elizabeth Jane Baldry took turns accompanying and played together to sublime affect. Let’s have more piano and harp!

Lost and Found… David Robinson, Elizabeth Jane Baldry and Daan van den Hurck

Mr Robinson was on fine form today and took us through some enthralling snippets starting with the Odd-Father of Slapstick film, Leopoldo (Luigi) Fregoli a hugely-popular transformist, a quick-change artist, who could go from old gentlemen to lady… and young man faster than you could say, er, David Robinson.

There followed an English film featuring a lady on skates flying through the streets at an incredible whack, causing all manner of chaos; well done that stunt man!

Next an Italian film, featuring a lady whose huge hatpins knock into the heads of all around her and wonderful solo accompaniment from Elizabeth Baldry who plays her harp as percussion, rhythm and lead – a one-woman band who finds rich tones from deep bass, atonality (scratched strings) as well as the gorgeous lines you’d expect: a joy to watch her work form the second row!

André Deed – the World’s first comic superstar and a man of many monikers, featured in Boireau déménage (Boireau Changes House) and a bonkers tale of a door fitter creating mayhem with his door en route to a job… improvised and shot mostly on location, these are fascinating as well as funny.

As David Robinson said, there’s hardly any visual gag going that Max Linder didn’t invent or improve and we got to see a sample of his earlier work in Two Great Sorrows (1908) that even David hadn’t seen. It was a darkly comic tale about a young widower and a young widow that showed the root of Linder’s appeal was his ability to act…

Marcel Perez

Marcel Perez – who had even more names than Monsieur Deed – was next Mademoiselle Robinet (1912) in which he has to cross dress to cover up a dalliance with another man’s wife with the inevitable consequences.

Ray Hughes, a Chaplin imitator, was next in the genuinely “lost and found” Love and Lunch. I had no idea that there were Charlie tribute acts at the time but given his popularity it’s not too surprising… he’s pretty good but he’s no Charlie!

Lastly, we had a Stan Laurel treat, the recently recovered full version of his 1924 solo movie Detained (1924), provided by The Frisian Film Archive in Holland. Stan was great in this film and very funny; not for nothing did Buster consider him the greatest, he connects so well with the audience, even now, we’re all in on Stanley’s jokes!

Stanley hanging on...

As David said, having seen these films so often, they’re a lot funnier when accompanied by Elizabeth and Daan, there’s so much range in their playing and they make for an intuitively subtle combination –  as indeed did Elizabeth and John.

So Funny it Hurt: Buster Keaton and MGM (2004), Kevin Brownlow and David Robinson

Perhaps the abiding memory of this day will be our Kevin and our David trading tales of meeting some of the artists featured: yes, Mr Brownlow met Buster Keaton and Mr Robinson met Laurel and Hardy.

They were in conversation after the screening of Brownlow’s documentary of Buster’s difficult years at MGM, a period of declining creative output despite commercial success. The Cameraman was perhaps the last film in which Keaton had something like full creative control and the MGM brass mistook its success for their own… With every subsequent film from Spite Marriage (screened the day before) onwards, the studio took more away from its star in an attempt to leave him as just a “performer”. Buster was more than that though and even though the film’s earned good money he 

wasn’t going to go quietly.

It’s a shame we can’t see more of Brownlow’s amazing interviews with Keaton and others but when studios are asking up to $600 per minute for use of footage integral to the stories in Hollywood and elsewhere, there’s no affordable way. So… the very same guys who wasted these talents and destroyed their work in the first place, now stand in the way of what remains being more widely seen. And yet… Warners can find the odd $70 million just for Justice League re-shoots and MGM/Sony $100s of millions for remakes of Death Wish and Tomb Raider. Valuable work gentlemen, valuable work.

If you want to see the true spirit of cinema, you only had to look at David and Kevin, two people in love with film and who, after many decades of involvement, are still youthfully excited about their subject. Right back at you boys!

Kevin Brownlow and David Robinson

*To be fair, Mr Vine was very funny too!

Max, le grand fromage… Seven Years Bad Luck (1921), Daan van den Hurk, Slapstick Festival

Monsieur Linder, not just a master of slapstick but also subtext and, indeed, the comedy of cheese.

David Robinson introduced and gave a fascinating insight into the early years when film comedy had a French accent, albeit silent… From the Lumière brothers' naughty gardener standing on his colleagues hose in 1895 through to the manic André Deed aka Cretinetti or Foolshead, the French set the style culminating in Max Linder, perhaps among the first to develop more complex emotional resonance with his cinematic comedy?

Linder began making films in 1905 and by the time of the First World War, it wasn’t just Charlie Chaplin who described him as The Master. The war left a deep mental scar on Linder and he became deeply depressed in the years after it. Despite making a number of Hollywood films – including Seven Years… and the sublime, The Three Must-get Theres – he committed suicide in Paris along with his wife in 1925.

The Linder’s baby daughter Maude, was raised by her mother’s parents, who never mentioned her famous papa until, at the age of 18, she discovered his truth and started to preserve his legacy. David Robinson has met Maude on a number of occasions and she lives on now in her 90’s, proud of her father’s talent and achievements.

A cheesy grin from Max et sa belle-mère (1911)

The first film, the newly-rediscovered Amour Et Fromage (1910) illustrated perfectly the edge he had on other comics of the time. His comedy is casually surreal with a cheese so noxious, it develops its own sentience as it tries to escape consumption. It’s a stinker of a premise but very funny – who can resist the comic potential of a bad smell!

Elizabeth-Jane Baldry accompanied on harp proving again how flexible that instrument can be in this context: she played some lovely lines as you would expect but also hit the strings hard to create surprising atonal riffs. This instrument rocks and if Jimi ever played harp, well... it could have sounded a little like this.

The main feature was Seven Years Bad Luck, one of three films Linder made in Hollywood post-war and famous for its much-imitated mirror sequence.

Whersh my key...?

Max is getting married and the film starts with him celebrating the sacrifice of his liberty for love. He is a most impressive drunk, scaling his front steps with all the assurance of a two-minute old gazelle. Once inside he makes the classic error of confusing his wardrobe with his window: he throws his clothes out into the street and wonder why the air smells of mothballs.

But the real fun starts in the morning with his mirror as after his as Max's Valet John (Ralph McCullough) and Maid Mary (Betty Peterson) break his dressing mirror and coax his chef (Harry Mann) into pretending to be his master’s reflection. It’s the first time – I suppose – this act was done and it a mini-masterwork of invention: from Max’s deep concern at his handsome fizzog turned a little plain to his trouble with making his shaving foam stick.

Just as our hungover hero thinks he’s figured it out the servants get the mirror fixed and Max throws a shoe through it: seven years bad luck!

Max and Harry

Linder’s mind runs free through his films and he carries it all across with breathless ease even when the story takes sharp turns off course. This film is frenetic and has its own logic but it also has depth: Max is running from his ill-fortune but is he also running from commitment?

Max’s relationship with his fiancée Betty (Alta Allen) is a comically-fragile one – each as whimsical as the other; a perfect match – and he veers from winning her over to annoying her with the click of a phonograph and a silly Hawaiian dance with his other maid (Lola Gonzales). Betty throws him out on the grounds he has turned the house into a music hall.

Off goes Max leaving his pal (F. B. Crayne), who has designs of his own, to smooth things over with Betty… Max then decides to pack his bags and go on an adventure, because this is what you must do when relationships need work – perhaps he can escape?

Alta Allen with a girl's best friend?

He gets mugged out of town and has to bunk onto a train to get home, chased relentlessly by the ticket collector and guard he hides out in a station initially disguised as the old station agent. He gets close to the Station Agent's Daughter (Thelma Percy) ending up disrobing her after his hands get covered in molasses. This is a fantasy of freedom for Max and even when he later dreams of marrying Betty, he is surrounded by dozens of pretty women… Maybe the Sennett bathing beauties had an afternoon spare or maybe Max was making a point.

Max takes refuge in a zoo as a troop of cops pursues him. He tells a friendly lioness that he won’t eat her and generally pushes the Gallic whimso-meter onto full. He has his own style and sub-textural comedy quite distinct from Charlie, Buster and Roscoe. But then again he was first among these equals and there are extra bonus points for that!

Max's conflicted dream of happy ever after...

Things end as you’d expect and yet… seven years on from their marriage, the couple have seven little Max all dressed just like Dad… the cycle begins again. Bad luck?

Daan van den Hurk provided accompaniment and impressed with his controlled fluidity – every pianist has their own style and Daan was perfect for this tale of comedy heartbreak. I’m no musician but I would hazard a guess that the set up and punchline and sheer emotional unpredictability of comedy makes these films a challenge to accompany.

There’s also the ever-present danger of breaking into laughter. So, play along, match the tempo and never, ever laugh… tough gig! But a packed Arnolfini really appreciated the effort!  

Seven Years Bad Luck is part of the Kino Max Linder Collection which is available direct or from Amazons... daft not to if you haven't already.

Now there’s a funny thing… The Freshman (1925), Guenter A Buchwald, Bristol Ensemble, Slapstick Festival Gala

Another bumper show at the Colston Halls, mixing old and new as Buster, Stan, Ollie and Harold were preceded by Rory and Roy (who channelled Max)…

It was inauguration day in the US and multi-cultural Bristol was a good place to be - a city that knows its Tricky from its Trump. Cometh the hour cometh the multi-man as Rory Bremner provided pitch-perfect presidential  pretence; a much-needed humorous antidote to a western leadership that cannot even be bothered to count let alone spell-check.

Against the depressingly historic events in Washington DC, it was good to be reminded of the importance of comedy in providing relief and perspective.

First up was Buster Keaton’s The High Sign (1921) – actually his first solo short but delayed in favour of One Week, which he thought was stronger. It probably is but The High Sign is still a belter with a stone face caught up in a ludicrous plan to both kill and protect August Nickelnurser, the town miser who owns the Blinking Buzzards gang $10,000.

Buster manages to convince both the gang boss, the unfeasibly tall Joe Roberts, and August and his daughter (Bartine Burkett) that he is a dead shot thanks to the use of a hungry hound to create the impression he’s hitting all the targets in the funfair. It’s a tough commission but somehow Buster managers to get the job half done with the aid of an hilarious chase through August’s escape-routed house.

Of the films we saw, this was the favourite of my student daughter and her pal: Buster remains the coolest fool!

Dorothy Coburn and Oliver Hardy take a nap

Next we had Laurel and Hardy being offered a bonus to complete a new house on time in The Finishing Touch (1928). Homeowner Sam Lufkin obviously has more money than sense as this pair don’t look capable of working either faster or smarter. It’s the usual elegant disaster from the boys all given extra spice by the impatient promptings of a petite-yet-fearsome nurse (Dorothy Coburn), who runs a hospital nearby and asks them to keep the noise down.

Naturally there’s a cop on hand - Ed Kennedy – to keep a watchful eye and to make sure they’re both quick and quiet. Predictably, they manage neither but there’s no finer sight in silent of Ollie falling hard and Stan convincing himself and the World that it’s none of his fault.

Beat-perfect jazzy accompaniment was provided by The European Silent Screen Virtuosi, comprised of Geunter A Buchwald on piano and violin, Romana Todesco on double bass and Frank Bockious on percussion.

Roy Hudd in Max Miller style quiet suit...

Now then, the phrase “National Treasure” is often over-used but there are few more deserving of that epithet than Roy Hudd, a man whose illustrious career has always run in hand with preserving our music hall past. He is President of the Max Miller Appreciation Society and has kept The Cheeky Chappie’s legacy alive through his one-man shows and even playing him in a Doctor Who audio story (Pier Pressure).

Dressed in an outrageous Miller-esque silky suit, Roy proceeded to bring the house down with material now more sepia than blue but still showed why timing and stage-craft are so important to stand-up and slapstick alike.

"They don't make 'em anymore, duck!"

Harold's inspiration: Lester Laurel in The College Hero

Now for the main event and the screening of Harold Lloyd’s The Freshman (1925), accompanied by the 25-piece Bristol Ensemble orchestra, conducted by Guenter Buchwald and playing composer Carl Davis’s lovely score.

This was Lloyd’s biggest hit of the twenties and whilst some, like me, might prefer say Speedy, this film is an undoubted classic of structure and style as Harold is put through humiliation after humiliation until it seems he can sink no lower but just as redemption seems beyond him, well… what do you expect?

Lloyd produced and his team of writers - John Grey, Sam Taylor, Tim Whelan, and Ted Wilde – along with directors Fred C. Newmeyer and Sam Taylor – worked out this narrative arc with slide-rule precision and it was one that would only really work with Harold’s particular persona. Of the big three (or four), Lloyd was perhaps the closest to the common man of the jazz age: perpetually optimistic and ambitious, he has the go-getting intensity of the classic American and his relentless spirit sees him through.

The new arrival: keen to impress!

Chaplin is of an earlier time as is Buster and both are somehow more “primal” blue-collar personas. Lloyd is on the up and here he’s off to conquer Tate University at all costs! His idol is The College Hero (James Anderson) and he pins a photograph from the College magazine, the Tattler… he devours the literature and is very impressed with a film about a college hero who has a signature shuffle he dances before extending his hand in welcome to every new acquaintance.

Harold’s living a fantasy of college life at a time when only the privileged few would attend (the World’s turning again…) but it was obviously an inspiration as dozens of similar films were to follow after The Freshman’s success.

Harold’s initial experience is cringe worthy and the College Cad (Brooks Benedict) repeatedly lines him up and plays him for the fall. Harry borrows a line from his film hero and asks them to call him Speedy as he starts to bribe his way to friendship through buying ice cream and soda for all.

Jobyna Ralston

He hosts the "Fall Frolic" dance in an attempt to secure his popularity but his tailor (Joseph Harrington) has to be on hand as he has not completed proper stitching for his dress suit… it’s very funny but the humiliating conclusion is all to inevitable.

Only the daughter of the hostel manager, Peggy (the excellent Jobyna Ralston) see him for who he is and loves him for it. She tells the momentarily crestfallen Harry to be himself but he still thinks he has a chance if he can only get to play in the big football game…

 
The final set piece is perfectly timed and you’re shifting in your seat well before Harry gets his chance…He does succeed in an all-American way but he only because he just won’t give up: ever!!

When all artifice is stripped away that is perhaps the quality that Lloyd most represents: energy and resilience for an audience struggling in their own lives. We’ve never needed him more…and I'm now not meeting anyone new without doing the college shuffle!

A super time was had by all and once again I was mightily impressed by Bristol and its comedy commitment – the Colston Hall was pretty much sold out and this festival just gets bigger and better.

Rory and the band take a bow!