The Good American

Harold Lloyd was the ‘third genius’ of silent cinema, a happy-go-lucky, bespectacled innocent audiences loved to love. Then critical authority caught up with him and that was that: he was written out of the script of history. Yet all of a sudden, says Aaron Hicklin, Lloyd is enjoying a renaissance in the States. And Hollywood is even remaking his most famous movie…

Suzanne Lloyd is on the phone. She is telling me to try Jude Law, to try Johnny Depp. “Johnny based his glasses on Harold,” she says. Her tone is warm, familiar. She thinks she can get hold of Robert Wagner for me, and maybe Debbie Reynolds. And have I tried John Lithgow? He was a huge fan. “So many were,” she says. “He taught Cary Grant how to play that part in Bringing up Baby, he used to help Tyrone Power.” She offers a few memories of her own: playing in Mary Pickford’s yard; travelling Europe with King Vidor; answering the phone to Cary Grant as a child. “I remember going over to Samuel Goldwyn’s studio when I was eight years old, to watch Harold Lloyd’s World of Comedy,” she says. “It was funny because the image of the young man on the screen was not really my dad, so I couldn’t put the two together, but now that’s my job — putting it all together.”

That young man on the screen? A milquetoast bespectacled nerd, rather aimlessly going about his…