Clyde Bruckman Movies

Movie Crazy was Harold Lloyd's best-received sound film. It is the semi-autobiographical tale of an idealistic aspiring movie star who exchanges the quiet life in his sleepy Kansas hometown for the glamour and excitement of Tinseltown where he mistakenly believes he has been selected for a screentest. Unfortunately, the test is a series of slapstick bungles. The studio heads busily review the strange audition and while waiting for their verdict, Lloyd falls in love with a pretty actress who unfortunately is totally in costume when they meet. He doesn't recognize her in her street clothes, but still cant help falling in love with her. The actress knows he doesn't recognize her and has some fun with that. Lloyd's success is further assured when the studio moguls sign him up as their newest comedian. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

A Flask of Fields consists of three short subjects starring the inimitable W.C. Fields. All three will be familiar to Fields buffs, but chances are they won't pass up the opportunity for just one more look. First on the docket is 1930's The Golf Specialist, wherein W.C. recreates his classic Ziegfeld Follies golf routine ("Stand clear and keep your eye on the ball!") Next up is The Dentist (1932), in which the comedy gets so raucous that an entire sequence had to be censored in reissue prints (it's the bit where Fields is forced to straddle his struggling female patient (Elise Cavanna)). Last on the program is The Fatal Glass of Beer (1932), a surrealistic bit of inspired nonsense best summed up by the catchphrase "And it ain't a fit night out fer man nor beast!" ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This comedy classic is the sound-film debut of enormously popular and brilliant silent comedian Harold Lloyd. He plays a gentle botany student who must reluctantly succeed his father as chief of police. He does a good job and ends up busting up a ring of drug dealers led by the enigmatic "Dragon." Later he discovers that the Dragon is really one of the most prominent and highly respected men in town. When not chasing bad-guys, the hero falls in love with a woman who has disguised herself as boy. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

This two-reel Laurel and Hardy silent is especially rich in slapstick. The comic duo have been promised five hundred dollars to finish a house, but the racket is disturbing the quiet of a nearby hospital, and both a nurse (Dorothy Coburn) and policeman (Edgar Kennedy) insist that the noise be kept to a minimum. Of course, with Laurel and Hardy, this request is impossible. A board flips up and hits the nurse on the behind; roof shingles go flying and land on the cop, glue side down. Stan's genial help results in various injuries and indignities to Ollie. But they get the job done, and the owner (Stan Lufkin) happily hands over the money -- until a tiny bird lights on the chimney, causing it to collapse. The rest of the house follows suit. The home owner retrieves his money and gives Stan a kick; this results in a battle of mutual retaliation that ultimately includes the policeman and nurse. This silly little film doesn't have much plot to speak of, but it's so well constructed, and the humor is so solid, it doesn't matter. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide

Although Hal Roach had already decided to officially team up Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, he cast Hardy as Max Davidson's sidekick in this two-reeler about a couple of miners who strike it rich. "Cherokee" Cohen (Davidson) and "Happy" Hopey (Hardy) strike gold, and the claim is purchased by Bat Carnahan. Cohen and Hopey take their newfound wealth to New York, where they check into a swank hotel and their uncouth behavior makes them sorely stand out. But Hopey finds a date when he helps out Viola (Viola Richardson), who has just been fired from her job as a telephone operator. Cohen finds his own girl, Martha (Martha Sleeper), under similar circumstances. They go out for dinner, and their lack of social skills infuriates the manager. When he berates the guys, Hopey throws a creampuff at him. In typical Hal Roach fashion, this escalates into an all-out food fight. The fracas finally comes to an end and Cohen and Hopey are ordered to pay for the damage done. The manager brags that he managed to get through the ordeal unscathed, but he's spoken too soon -- a new tray of pies is delivered and Cohen and Hopey make sure they find their mark. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide

Laurel is Canvasback Clump, an underfed and thoroughly clueless prize-fighter, and Hardy his rather overly optimistic manager. In confronting his ape-like opponent, Thunder-clap Callahan (Noah Young), Canvasback is quickly out for the count and the boys are left with the five-dollar loser's end of the purse. Later, considering their bleak prospects in the park, they encounter a smooth-talking insurance salesman (Eugene Pallette), who talks them into taking out a five-dollar accidental injury policy on Canvasback. After seeing his friend almost slip and fall, his manager decides to take matters into his own hands -- hurling banana peels into his pal's path. Instead, he topples a pie seller exiting a bakery -- thus inciting the silver screen's first real pie fight -- and arguably it's most inventive and funny.

An about average Laurel and Hardy short until the extravagant climactic blowout, it was made near the start of their collaboration and helped prompt their swift rise as worldwide favorites. The pie fight itself, building methodically and hilariously to all-out Armageddon, has been endlessly copied but certainly never equalled. The short's early boxing sequences laid the groundwork for portions of Any Old Port (1932), a later Laurel and Hardy three-reeler. ~ All Movie Guide

Horse Shoes wasn't quite as spectacular as Monty Banks' previous comedy Play Safe, but it still packed plenty of laughs into its tight six reels. This time the dapper, diminutive Banks gets involved with the horsey set, leading to plenty of slapstick shenanigans at the racetrack. The story wraps up in a courtroom, with Banks performing some eye-popping athletics while pleading his case. An earlier sequence, in which Banks tries to sleep in an upper berth, only to find that his travelling companion is a strange young woman, was singled out for critical praise. Horse Shoes was directed by Clyde Bruckman, a frequent contributor to the films of Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Buster Keaton plays Johnny Gray, a Southern railroad engineer who loves his train engine, The General, almost as much as he loves Annabelle Lee (Marion Mack). When the opening shots of the Civil War are fired at Fort Sumter, Johnny tries to enlist -- and he is deemed too useful as an engineer to be a soldier. All Johnny knows is that he's been rejected, and Annabelle, thinking him a coward, turns her back on him. When Northern spies steal the General (and, unwittingly, Annabelle), the story switches from drama and romance to adventure mixed with Keaton's trademark deadpan humor as he uses every means possible to catch up to the General, thwart the Yankees, and rescue his darling Annabelle -- for starters. As always, Keaton performs his own stunts, combining his prodigious dexterity, impeccable comic timing, and expressive body language to convey more emotion than the stars of any of the talkies that were soon to dominate cinema. ~ Emru Townsend, All Movie Guide

One of Harold Lloyd's best feature-length comedies, The Freshman, features the bespectacled regular guy as Harold Lamb, a naïve young man who heads off to college believing campus life will be just as it is in the movies; he even learns a little dance he saw one of his favorite actors do in a film. However, Harold soon discovers that real life isn't all that much like the pictures, and he quickly becomes the laughing stock of the university. Determined to prove himself, Harold tries out for the football team, but he serves as water boy and rides the pine until he finally gets a chance to redeem himself at the big game. Along the way, Harold also tries to woo a lovely co-ed, Peggy (Jobyna Ralston). 22 years later, writer/director Preston Sturges used the climactic football game as the opening for his collaboration with Harold Lloyd, The Sin of Harold Diddlebock. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

The enduring power of this silent-era comedy classic from director/star Buster Keaton can be ascertained simply by recognizing how often its central concept has been cribbed, most notably by writer/director Woody Allen for The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985). Keaton is a cinema projectionist who dreams of being a famous detective, like Sherlock Holmes. In love with a beautiful girl (Kathryn McGuire), he presents her with chocolates and a ring, but another suitor (Ward Crane) also vies for her affections. The projectionist unsuccessfully tails his romantic rival, a deceitful sort who has stolen a watch from the girl's home and pawned it to buy her a larger box of candy. Falsely accused of the crime by his girlfriend's family, the heartbroken young man falls asleep at work while exhibiting a movie. He dreams that he walks into the screen and interacts with the film's characters -- now the players in the stolen watch imbroglio. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide

Thirty years after its release, Buster Keaton admitted that his first feature film was essentially three two-reel comedies strung together. Perhaps this was a way for the comic filmmaker to play it safe; he had achieved success for his short films and if Three Ages wasn't going very well, its trio of storylines could have been chopped up into separate films. The picture was a send-up of D.W. Griffith's 1916 masterpiece Intolerance. But instead of following greed and hatred through the ages, Keaton focused on love. His settings were the Stone Age, the Roman era and 1920s America, with Margaret Leahy as the girl and Wallace Beery as the villain in each segment. The stories are intercut, but they're basically the same: the villain uses either brutish or dishonest means to get the girl and Buster must somehow overcome him. Although they're the most crude-looking, the Stone Age scenes often offer the funniest moments: Buster flirts with a cavewoman who turns out to be twice his size; when a foe throws a rock at him, Buster hits the rock with a club, baseball-style, and squarely knocks out his opponent. The modern era offers the most thrilling scene -- Buster tries to jump between two tall buildings, but misses and falls. The fall was unintended, but instead of retaking the shot, he used it to create a series of events that led his character to the back of a moving fire truck.

While this picture ultimately didn't rate among Keaton's most classic work, it was a solid success when it first came out. Keaton did exactly what he'd set out to do, which was establish himself as a feature filmmaker. But it hadn't been all smooth going -- Margaret Leahy was pretty but had no talent for acting whatsoever. The girl was an English beauty-contest winner, and the prize was supposed to be a role in a Norma Talmadge film. She was so bad that Talmadge's director threatened to quit. So the star's producer/husband, Joseph Schenck (who was also Keaton's producer) put her in Three Ages instead. Keaton couldn't really complain -- because of his marriage to Natalie Talmadge, he was Norma's brother-in-law. So he made the best of it, although he later complained that Leahy caused him to throw away many scenes. Leahy eventually left the movie business and found a happier career working as an interior designer. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide