Ensuring that this utterly unique period of film history remains alive and available to contemporary audiences is why collecting, restoring and exhibiting silent films has been an essential, mission-driven activity of the UCLA Film & Television Archive since its founding more than 50 years ago. It is also why the Archive is thrilled to join dozens of archives, theaters and other allied institutions, along with countless movie fans around the country, to celebrate the first annual National Silent Movie Day on Wednesday, September 29. In deciding how to mark this auspicious occasion for elevating awareness about silent film history, the Archive turned to one of the era’s most recognizable figures whose work has also been a particular focus of its preservation and exhibition programs over the decades: Harold Lloyd. As synonymous with silent comedy as Keaton, Chaplin or the Keystone Cops, Lloyd was a bespectacled on-screen dynamo whose blend of daredevil slapstick, youthful romance and relentless optimism captured the go-getting spirit of a striving America at the outset of the 20th century. To mark National Silent Movie Day and honor Lloyd’s legacy, the Archive presents three restored shorts, newly scanned from the Archive’s tinted 35mm preservation prints, starring Lloyd alongside two of his most famous leading partners, Bebe Daniels (Bumping into Broadway) and Mildred Davis (Get Out and Get Under, Among Those Present). (Lloyd and Davis eventually married in 1923.)
The program will be introduced by co-organizers of National Silent Movie Day, Brandee B. Cox and Steven K. Hill, with a post-screening conversation between Hill and Lloyd’s granddaughter and friend of the Archive, Suzanne Lloyd.
For more information about National Silent Movie Day, please visit nationalsilentmovieday.org
September 29, 2021
4:00 p.m. PDT
