Comic Harold Lloyd found immense success in reshaping his 'boy with glasses' persona with a few character-driven movies he produced. But he couldn't quite give up his gag-filled motion pictures showcasing a litany of hilarious scenes inserted with slapstick. In April 1926's "For Heaven's Sake," his team of writers portrays Harold as a successful millionaire, a departure from his regular normal good-guy role. The unique part of Lloyd playing a person of wealth is it opened up a series of 'rich-guy' jokes, ripe pickings for viewers who found themselves looking up economically at his wealthy J. Harold Manners.
What makes "For Heaven's Sake" so amusing is Lloyd inserts Manners, aka 'The Uptown Boy,' into an environment where thugs and poverty-ridden homeless people dominate. Lloyd doesn't play one of those stuffy country club snobs. He proves himself adaptable to his surroundings. Despite enjoying the finer things in life, his character can easily be comfortable in a poor neighborhood. Harold finds himself as the main benefactor of a homeless missionary whose founder's daughter is the pretty Jobyna Ralston (The Downtown Girl). He naturally falls for her, which makes the scenes of him rubbing elbows with the neighborhood's unfortunates easier to believe.
Several memorable sequences made "For Heaven's Sake" the box office success it became. When he brags to Jobyna he can easily bring the local rough pool hall gang into the religious missionary, he designs a variety of clever maneuvers to corral the gang into the her place and sing hymnals. And what would a Lloyd movie be without a last-second arrival to the alter. Instead of shanghaiing different modes of transportation to make it to the church on time, he's seen constantly herding his reception committee missionary members like cats on the way to his wedding. And at the same time he's escaping from the country club he was brought to when he was kidnapped by his so-called friends who don't want him to get married.
An explanation to the success of a Lloyd extravaganza is his witty inter-titles. Each one contains a rip-roaring joke, both in statement and in dialogue. "For Heaven's Sake," despite Lloyd having doubts about its success and wanting to withdraw it from being shown, became the 12th highest grossing silent movie of all time. For Paramount Pictures, the first Lloyd movie it distributed, such box office appeal meant a cash cow for the studio.
What makes "For Heaven's Sake" so amusing is Lloyd inserts Manners, aka 'The Uptown Boy,' into an environment where thugs and poverty-ridden homeless people dominate. Lloyd doesn't play one of those stuffy country club snobs. He proves himself adaptable to his surroundings. Despite enjoying the finer things in life, his character can easily be comfortable in a poor neighborhood. Harold finds himself as the main benefactor of a homeless missionary whose founder's daughter is the pretty Jobyna Ralston (The Downtown Girl). He naturally falls for her, which makes the scenes of him rubbing elbows with the neighborhood's unfortunates easier to believe.
Several memorable sequences made "For Heaven's Sake" the box office success it became. When he brags to Jobyna he can easily bring the local rough pool hall gang into the religious missionary, he designs a variety of clever maneuvers to corral the gang into the her place and sing hymnals. And what would a Lloyd movie be without a last-second arrival to the alter. Instead of shanghaiing different modes of transportation to make it to the church on time, he's seen constantly herding his reception committee missionary members like cats on the way to his wedding. And at the same time he's escaping from the country club he was brought to when he was kidnapped by his so-called friends who don't want him to get married.
An explanation to the success of a Lloyd extravaganza is his witty inter-titles. Each one contains a rip-roaring joke, both in statement and in dialogue. "For Heaven's Sake," despite Lloyd having doubts about its success and wanting to withdraw it from being shown, became the 12th highest grossing silent movie of all time. For Paramount Pictures, the first Lloyd movie it distributed, such box office appeal meant a cash cow for the studio.