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Outside of the fact that he is a movie comedian and worth more than $10 million, Lloyd is a typical U.S. citizen. He works hard, rides a succession of hobbies (old cars, microscopy) with grim preoccupation, loves sports, and has been happily married to the same wife for 26 years—Mildred Davis, once his leading lady. He keeps himself trim at 56 by exercising, eschewing tobacco and drink.
He is the typical fraternity man who loves good fellowship. He joined the Masons with his father in 1924 because, he says, "It was a crosscut of a wonderful group of citizenry." As enthusiastic about Masonry as he is about everything he has ever taken up, he went up through Scottish Rite with his father beside him, became a 32nd degree Mason, then went up the other route to Knight Templar. In 1926 he "crossed the hot sands," i.e., took the initiation into the Order of the Mystic Shrine.
Hero in Spectacles. Lloyd's career is the story of the triumph of sobriety. In 1917 he conceived the movie character which was to make him a fortune. Before that he had been an average American boy with a passion for the stage and magic tricks, who grew up to be a struggling young comedian in one-reel movie farces. At first he played a ragged, mustached character called Lonesome Luke, which he now admits was a poor imitation of Charlie Chaplin. Then he bought a pair of glassless horn-rimmed spectacles (his eyesight is fine) and studied the effect.
As he described what he saw: "The glasses would serve as my trademark and at the same time suggest the character—quiet, normal, boyish, clean, sympathetic, not impossible to romance." Pathé made four two-reelers of him in spectacles, and they were an instant success.
Sobriety's rise had one interruption. Lloyd posed for a publicity gag shot lighting a cigarette from the lighted fuse of a small bomb. Someone had made a mistake: the bomb was no fake. It exploded, blowing a hole in the ceiling and taking away part of Lloyd's face and the thumb and index finger of his right hand. Only determination pulled him through the accident and the subsequent surgery. But back into the movie business he went. The intent, slightly bewildered, obviously virtuous face of Harold Lloyd began popping out at movie audiences in thousands of Palaces and Bijous. The nation split its sides.
Now, in the large garage behind his comfortable 32-room Italian Renaissance home, he maintains the offices of the Harold Lloyd Corp. There President Lloyd and 15 employees take care of scattered real-estate holdings and handle an occasional movie. The last thing he acted in was Preston Sturges' The Sin of Harold Diddlebock. Howard Hughes, who bought it, is still cutting it up.
Top of the Divan. This week Lloyd, convalescing from a serious gall-bladder operation, stood at another satisfying apex of his life. He had given himself unstintingly to Shrine activities. He had been Al Malaikah Temple's Potentate. For the past seven years he had worked among the Shrine's crippled children's hospitals, had been a director and trustee of that program, which is a substantial and sober part of Shrine activities. It maintains 16 hospitals, annually raises millions of dollars through its circuses, East-West football game, annual dues and local contributions.