All Slights Deserved

Hooray for Harold Lloyd! Dodo-do-do-do-do-do-do-doo-do Harold Lloyd! Dodo-do-do-do-do-do-do-doo-do Black or white, he's that guy, A pair of glasses and a smile It's impossible for me to think of Harold Lloyd without recalling the theme tune to Harold Lloyd's World of Comedy , a tv series of excerpts from his films that seemed to be a fixture of school holidays and early evening slots during the eighties. Even now I can't help but raise a smile when I hear it; like the character Lloyd played in his best known work it was simple, unaffected and infectiously likeable. Ironically that series, produced by Time-Life Films, is much derided by purists as a clumsy cut-and-paste job that played the clips at the wrong speed. Yet it was probably my introduction to silent comedy; consequently I think I knew of Lloyd before Charlie Chaplin and certainly before Buster Keaton. Critically speaking Lloyd is probably destined to remain in the shadows of Chaplin and Keaton, alth...