Big Movie on Campus

Forty years ago, Harold Lloyd had cut a scene from his 1925 classic “The Freshman” in which his character, a college freshman dying to be popular, breaks down and cries in his girlfriend’s arms.

“My grandfather didn’t like that scene,” says Suzanne Lloyd Hayes, director of the Harold Lloyd Trust and co-author of the new book “Harold Lloyd: Master Comedian.” “He didn’t want audiences to see him vulnerable and crying.”

But when audiences see the newly restored print of the film that premieres Saturday at the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra’s 13th-Annual Silent Film Gala, that short scene (less than two minutes) will be back in the picture.

Lloyd Hayes says she “tussled inside for a long time” about putting the scene back in the film. “Since he took it out, there must have been some means to his madness. He knew basically what he wanted to do with his films.” But she eventually decided it was time to reinstate the touching sequence after heeding the advice of film historian Kevin Brownlow and Carl Davis, who has composed a new score for “The Freshman.”

“You look at it now and it makes sense there in the film,” she says. “It gives him more of a vulnerability. It gives you more of a form of closeness or a bond to that person he is playing. So I put it back in. I hope lightning doesn’t come and get me.”

“The Freshman” is the third Lloyd classic to be screened at the Silent Film Gala, which takes place at UCLA’s Royce Hall. Previously “The Kid Brother” and “Safety Last”--featuring the famous scene of him dangling from the hands of a clock high above downtown L.A.--were shown. Davis will be conducting LACO in his new score for “The Freshman,” as well as for the 1920 Lloyd short comedy, “An Eastern Westerner,” which will open the event.

Dustin Hoffman will make his second appearance as honorary chairman of the gala. Two years ago, he presided over Charlie Chaplin’s “Modern Times.”

“I have never ceased being in awe of the fact that the art form of movies is in its infancy and that I was lucky enough to be a part of it at the beginning,” says the two-time Oscar-winning actor. Silent films, he adds, were “literally the Stone Age part of it, and it is like you were an archeologist and go into a cave and see hieroglyphics on the wall.”

People who spend their lives doing movies, Hoffman relates, “know more than anyone else that what we consider silent movies are really the purest form of film. The more you make movies, the more you realize that it is the visual impact that really conveys the most information between people.”

Lloyd Hayes says “The Freshman” was one of her grandfather’s favorite comedies. Lloyd, Chaplin and Buster Keaton were the top comedic stars of the silent era. With his straw hat and black-rimmed spectacles, Lloyd excelled in playing eager, sometimes naive young men. He was as athletic as Chaplin and Keaton and his films were filled with daring stunts.

“‘The Freshman’ is the ultimate college movie,” says Lloyd Hayes. It also gave her grandfather--who was born in 1893 and died in 1971--a chance to finally go to college. (Some of the football sequences were shot during games at the Rose Bowl and at Berkeley.) Lloyd never finished high school but “he always wanted to go to college,” says Lloyd Hayes. “He loved the element of learning. He was brilliant at math.”

In “The Freshman,” Lloyd plays a fish out of water who desires to be the big man on campus. “He wants to be on the football team and he wants to be in the fraternity,” she says. “But he gets there and his clothes are about 10 years out of style. Everybody is laughing at him. They put him on the team as the water boy and, poor guy, they use him as a tackling dummy and they make him do all the horrible, schleppy work.” In typical Lloyd fashion, though, he ends up becoming a football hero.

Reviews were glowing. The New York Times reported that “judging from what happened in the packed theater in the afternoon, when old folks down to youngsters volleyed their hearty approval of the bespectacled comedian, the only possible hindrance to the physical well-being of the throngs was an attack of aching sides.”

Davis, who has been scoring silent films since 1980, says “The Freshman” is very close to his heart. “It has qualities that make Harold very moving,” he says. “Harold is a toughie. He is a tough character who doesn’t show his emotions very much. But in this one he did, and what I am trying to do in the score is to kind of get at his feelings. My melodies are really to keep moving the story. “

Lloyd Hayes says it’s always a thrill to see her grandfather’s movies screened for audiences with a live orchestra.

“It is a total experience of sight, film and music combined,” she says. “It’s not a Broadway show but it’s not a film show. It is somewhere in the middle.”

The gala is just one of the Lloyd films screening this summer. On July 3, the Los Angeles Conservancy’s Last Remaining Seats festival will screen “Girl Shy.” And on Aug. 22, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art will celebrate his work with a three-week festival of his features and shorts.

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The Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra’s 13th-Annual Silent Film Gala takes place Saturday at 8 p.m. at UCLA’s Royce Hall. Tickets are $25 for general admission; $60 for priority seating and $225 for the film and post-film supper. For information call (213) 622-7001, ext. 275.