eMoviePoster.com

What are the objects in the corners of some images? Learn More

Harold Lloyd was born in Burchard, Nebraska, USA in 1893. His parents divorced when he was small (odd at that time) and he lived with his father (more odd). In 1912, they moved to California, and Harold, who had acted in community theater got a job at the Thomas Edison studio. He met fellow actor (and sometime director) Hal Roach, and when Roach got an inheritance and was able to buy part of a studio in 1913, Lloyd went with him. The following year he met Bebe Daniels, and the two became a team, both onscreen and off. In 1915, Lloyd created the Lonesome Luke character (essentially a rip-off of Chaplin's Tramp character) and between 1915 and 1917 made over 60 one-reel shorts. In 1918, Lloyd created a new character, with trademark horn rimmed glasses (Roach would later take credit for creating the character!). In 1919, Lloyd was injured performing one of his many dangerous stunts when a prop bomb exploded, and he lost his right thumb and forefinger (he would wear prosthetic fingers the rest of his life). Also in 1919, Daniels and Lloyd split up romantically and professionally, although they remained good friends the rest of their lives. In 1921, Lloyd made his feature movie, A Sailor-Made Man, followed by Grandma's Boy, and both were huge hits. Lloyd soon split from Roach and started producing his own movies, distributing them through Paramount, and he made a fortune from them. Lloyd had many hits through the 1920s (he made more movies than Chaplin or Keaton, and they grossed more money overall). He had married in 1923, and had two children, and he used some of the vast amount of money he made to build his own studio and an immense estate, called Greenacres, with 44 rooms, 26 bathrooms, 12 fountains, 12 gardens, and a nine hole golf course. Lloyd had always been eccentric, and his huge wealth allowed him to explore many odd hobbies, including stereopticon-like three-dimensional slides, and he had hundreds of thousands of them made, many of pretty naked (and near-naked) young women! When sound came to movies, Lloyd had trouble adapting, and each of his sound movies were less and less successful, until he pretty much retired in 1938. He spent much of his time on his charity work, and on his odd hobbies. He made the unfortunate move of not allowing his movies to be distributed or shown on TV for many years, which (like Will Rogers) helped to largely cause him to be forgotten by later generations. Worse yet, a nitrate fire in Lloyd's vault caused most of his early movies to become permanently "lost". When Lloyd passed away in 1971 at the age of 77, he was one of the richest men in Hollywood, but he was largely forgotten except by film buffs. But in recent years, he has been "re-discovered" and it is generally accepted that Lloyd was one of the three giants of silent comedy, fully the equal of Chaplin and Keaton! His best movies hold up exceedingly well, and I highly recommend seeking them out.

If you know who did the art (if any), please let us know.

Important Added Info: Note that starting in the very early 1910s (around 1912, when studios realized that people were more likely to go to a movie if it had a star they liked in it), studios created sets of special "personality" posters, which theaters that showed their movies could hang in their lobbies. These had a big advantage over posters for specific movies, because they could be used whenever a movie with that star was shown, which meant they could be used over and over! Because studios realized this, they made these posters on a high quality paper stock, sometimes with a "linen" texture, and sometimes with elaborate border designs, and almost always with great quality color printing. They almost always measured exactly 22" x 28", the same as "half-sheets" (which were then known as "displays", except that they were taller than they were wide, and that the images almost always had a "full bleed", meaning that there were no blank borders. They almost always showed a head and shoulders image of the star, and the image on these posters is often very close to actual life-size! They almost always have the name of the star and the studio they worked for at the bottom. Even though there were many sets of these from many studios over a period of approximately 30 years (they were rarely made after the early 1940s), very few survive, likely partially due to World War II paper drives, and partially due to the fact that they were never folded and the paper they were made of sometimes aged poorly. We at eMoviePoster.com were just consigned a very special collection of 99 of these "personality" posters, which we are auctioning in separate auctions. They were collected starting in the mid 1980s, and the collector who assembled this collection tried to "upgrade" condition whenever possible over the years, so many of them are in excellent condition (sometimes likely the best surviving example), and on the ones where they are in lesser condition, it is because the collector never could find one in better condition! Now he has consigned them to us, and they will find new owners. If they were kept together, they would surely make an incredible display for the walls of any place where lots of people gather, like a museum, a restaurant, or any similar place. Of course, it is more likely that these will find many, many separate new homes, but we hope that they end up publicly displayed wherever they end up!

Note that Paramount Pictures became the leading Hollywood studio in the late 1910s, and remained at the forefront of Hollywood for the next several decades. They had a great lineup of stars, and they created many sets of personality posters to promote them. The earliest of these is likely from the late 1910s, and there are others from each succeeding decade, and there are even some that are from the late 1940s or early 1950s, which is after most of the other studios quit making these 22x28 posters. You can tell their different sets in two ways. One is that all of the posters from a set have the same border design and the stars and studio names are written in the same font and layout. The other is that you can look at the age of the star in the image (although that might possibly be deceptive, because they might have sometimes used a slightly younger version of a star!). We don't know how often the Paramount sets were made, but some major stars carried over from set to set, but with the passing years, some stars would be dropped and new stars added. These posters are extremely rare as it is likely few theaters ordered them, and fewer still saved them, and in addition, they could be easily torn, and if they were not stored carefully, they would become fragile, and it is likely many were damaged and discarded for that reason! Note that the high quality paper stock these posters were printed on does not always age very well, and can become fragile (usually resulting in chips around the edges of the poster). Because of their fragile nature and their age, we intend to send all of these personality posters in large flat packages, and never roll them into tubes (unless the buyer insists)! PLEASE DO NOT BID ON THIS POSTER, UNLESS YOU ARE WILLING TO PAY THE COST OF SHIPPING IT IN A LARGE FLAT PACKAGE!

Our address for UPS or FedEx only is:
Bruce Hershenson,
306 Washington Avenue, West Plains, MO 65775