His Best Girl

Monday May 7, 7:00pm, The Paramount Theater

Why Worry (1923)

"Say! Why didn’t you tell me I love you?"

Well-known hypochondriac and boy millionaire Harold Van Pelham (Harold Lloyd) travels to a sleepy banana republic to cure his ills. Upon his arrival it’s clear to everyone but Harold that all is not so sleepy.

Why Worry (1923), Lloyd’s fourth of eleven silent features, was his last with Hal Roach. It also marked the introduction of Jobyna Ralston, the dark-haired beauty who replaced Mildred Davis, as Lloyd’s leading lady. Playing Van Pelham’s nurse, Ralston was joined by Wallace Howe as "Mr. Pipps" the valet and James Mason as Jim Blake, "An American renegade, who, to further his own financial interests, has lashed the riffraff of the Republic into an outlaw force – restless and eager to overthrow the government." Rounding out the cast were Leo White as Herculeo, Blake’s pompous "first lieutenant," and Johan Aasen as Colosso, "...that wild hermit from the mountains who almost wrecked our army."
Harold’s nurse feeds him a steady supply of pills. "She is putting her heart and soul into her work – especially her heart." A longing look and a sigh leave little doubt she wishes she were more than just his nurse. Harold, preoccupied with self-diagnosis and his physician’s desk reference, is oblivious. They arrive in "Paradiso – a drowsy city in a dreamy land," and are instantly confronted with peril. Harold remains clueless until his hotel "escort" throws him in a jail cell with Colosso.

Why Worry was easily Lloyd’s most hectic feature, jumping from one gag to the next throughout the film. Ralston displayed a range of expressions, from dread to elation, doleful distraction, squinty-eyed fury, adoring sweetness and sly deception, all in the space of six reels.

Bebe Daniels worked with Lloyd through roughly the first half of his career. Her abilities would far exceed those required for simple one and two reel comedies. Daniels jumped at the chance for a dramatic career the instant C. B. DeMille beckoned. Later on, it became clear that her talent was constrained by the subject and format of Lloyd’s films.

Mildred Davis was certainly adorable; cupie doll cute with blond curls, in a broadly drawn little-girl package, but with clear limitations. When they married in 1923, Lloyd’s old-fashioned mid-west sensibilities demanded that Davis give up her career for motherhood.
Ralston came along at an optimal time, as feature films reached their most satisfying, descriptive and complex point. Lloyd’s ability to present a succession of gags in the context of a well-developed story had reached a certain maturity, and Ralston was a perfect addition to the pleasant complexity. She became a vital presence in Lloyd’s best work, and his perfect counterpoint. Throughout Why Worry, they react with blinking, astonished disbelief to each other’s unexpected behavior, while sharing bewildered delight in each others company.
Harold whines, "I’m amazed at you! Playing around this way in boy’s cloths when you should be looking after my health." Her angry, finger pointing tirade leaves Harold, cow-eyed and in love. In the end, she cures his hypochondria and they fight off an entire army with the help of Colosso, a cigar, a length of drainpipe, a bass drum and a basket of coconuts (try and figure that one out), in one of the funniest scenes ever filmed.

Why Worry opened in Seattle at Jensen and von Herberg’s Liberty Theater (Where the Public Knows It Sees Good Shows) on Saturday, November 10, 1923. Post Intelligencer advertisements announced "6 acts of furious fun, so hysterical that you’ll need a straight-jacket to control yourself," with Harold Lloyd "as the boy who gets tangled up in a terrific South American revolution."
"He touched your heart in ‘Grandma’s Boy’!
He cured your ills in ‘Dr. Jack’!
You shrieked at ‘Safety Last’!
Now he’ll tickle you pink with red-hot romance.
It’s something different again; a roar, a riot – the boy’s a wonder!"
The program included Will Rogers in Jus’ Passin’ Thru, and Liberty News with featured stories: "Traffic increases on Seattle’s busy streets, Boys of Washington schools do cement work, Making Mapleine, a Northwest product and National leader of B.F.O.E. J. G. McFarlane visits Seattle, with Wallace at the Wurlitzer.

Hot Water (1924)

"Let me tell you how to handle your mother-in-law! I know all about them – and I have the scars to prove it."

Disappearing between two of Harold Lloyd’s most popular and ambitious features, Safety Last (1923) and Girl Shy (1924), Hot Water (1924), is not so much a feature length comedy, as it is a series of sketches on middle-class married life strung together. "Harold rides a streetcar," is followed by, "a drive in the family car," and "Harold gets drunk and kills his mother-in-law (he thinks)." Regardless of its humor, and it is tremendously funny, this film demonstrates the value found in the short format films that met their demise a few years earlier when features became obligatory.
Harold is first seen as the perennial best man, running with a bridegroom who is late. "Believe me, I’ll never give up my freedom for a pair of soft-boiled eyes!" He runs smack into lovely Jobyna Ralston, and just like Henry Higgins, succumbs to the inevitable.

In the streetcar sequence, he attempts to juggle items from a lengthy grocery list his "Wifey" has requested, along with a live turkey he won in a raffle, while riding the crowded streetcar. He is thrown off by the conductor, makes a leash for the turkey with his necktie, and walks home.
Harold arrives to discover his obnoxious in-laws have descended, to shatter his domestic bliss and make his life a living hell. The next segment, a ride in the family car, is the heart of Hot Water. It includes the best visual gags in the film. Harold attempts to drive as his unbearable mother-in-law nags his every move and virtually destroys the new car, while somehow blaming Harold.
Seeing the wreck, a sympathetic neighbor offers him a drink, and Harold gets stewed in the final act of Hot Water. He accidentally kills his mother-in-law, or so he thinks, and misinterprets everything he sees and hears once he is convinced, in a final act, that plays like an anti-climactic add-on to the earlier catastrophe.

Hot Water had a one-week engagement at Seattle’s Capitol Theater in November 1925, with an admission price of fifteen cents, "Any time, any day." Located near the northeast corner of 3rd Avenue at Pike Street, the Capitol opened its doors in 1924 in a remodeled "two story & loft" built in 1910. The theater was renamed "Telenews" in the nineteen-forties when it switched to an all-newsreel format, and was later converted to retail space. The Capitol and Colonial (also long since converted for other use on the 4th Avenue side of the block) Theater buildings fell to the wrecker’s ball when Century Square was built in 1985.

(Jobyna Ralston)

Seattle Theater Group, The Paramount Theater and Trader Joe’s present,
The Harold Lloyd Retrospective: five nights and nine films from the legend of Silent Era comedy. Featuring live accompaniment performed by Dennis James, on the Paramount’s original 4/20 Publix 1 Wurlitzer. April 30th – May 25th

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