And nowhere is that appeal more apparent than in Lloyd’s eighth feature film The Freshman, which was his biggest theatrical hit and one of the most popular screen comedies of the decade. Although he fell out of favor for many years during the sound era, partially because his films did not play on television and were largely forgotten, Lloyd regularly outearned both Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton at the box office in the early 1920s, as his approachable, bespectacled boy-next-door persona held a special appeal with moviegoers who wanted to leave cynicism and the anxieties of the modern world at the theater door.

Lloyd’s comedies are invariably about struggle, as his character (almost always billed as “Harold”) attempts to attain success—the “American Dream”—by fighting odds stacked perilously against him (a theme that he literalized in his thrill comedies like 1923’s Safety Last!, which found him chasing his dreams of upward mobility by scaling the side of a Los Angeles skyscraper). In The Freshman, he plays Harold Lamb, a soon-to-be college student who, inspired by a (fictional) movie called The College Hero, is determined to be voted the most popular man on campus. When we first meet Harold, he is upstairs in his room practicing cheers and admiring himself in the mirror in his college sweater and hat. One of the movie’s chief miracles is that it takes Harold’s desire to be voted most popular, which could easily be read as egotistical and off-putting, and makes it endearing. Harold, who dubs himself “Speedy” after the movie hero he wishes to emulate, doesn’t want to be popular because he wants power and prestige; rather, he wants popularity because he genuinely likes other people and wants them to like him, too. He insists in his prefabricated greeting that he’s just “a regular fellow,” and in that regard, you can’t help but root for him.

Of course, being both naïve and awkward, Harold’s climb to the top of the social hierarchy is met with all manner of obstacles and subsequent humiliations, starting with a trio of cads (led by Brooks Benedict) who immediately recognizes the fallibility of his over-eagerness (which is embodied in the goofy jig he does whenever he first meets someone) and exploits it in a series of pranks and jokes that reveal the unfortunate appropriateness of Harold’s last name. Harold also immediately finds himself on the wrong side of the stern, humorless university dean, although he catches the eye of Peggy (Jobyna Ralston), a sweet girl—“the kind your mother must have been,” an intertitle informs us—who recognizes Harold’s genuine decency and watches from afar as he constantly makes a fool of himself in pursuit of social popularity.

The Freshman features two of Lloyd’s finest extended comic setpieces, the first being the Fall Frolic, an elaborate party he throws for the rest of the school that ends in disaster because his suit, which has been loosely stitched together by a tailor (Joseph Harrington) given to dizzy spells, is constantly falling apart on him. He’s finally the center of attention, but at the worst possible time, as he tries desperately to hold his suit together and distract others from noticing that the sleeve has sudden ripped off or the back has split down the middle (to increase the hilarity, the tailor tags along and tries to mend the suit on the fly, resulting in some amusingly compromised situations). Harold losing his pants in front of everyone is the inevitable final indignity, even though Lloyd wanted to avoid this obvious climactic sight gag (test audiences convinced him otherwise).

The other standout sequence is the film’s climactic football game, in which Harold, having made his way onto the team as the water boy (although he thinks he’s a genuine player) gets the chance to go out on the field and, against all odds, win the big game. Lloyd has already primed us for the gridiron pratfalls with earlier scenes in which Harold plays the role of tackling dummy during football practice and is constantly berated by the relentless football coach (Pat Harman), but we’re still not prepared for the inventiveness of Lloyd’s on-field shenanigans, which at one point are almost short-lived as he is carried off the field by medics after getting crushed on the first play (his character’s determination is nicely summarized in the look on his face as he bounds off the stretcher and runs back to the huddle).

The Freshman was produced at a time when college football was becoming a national obsession thanks to live radio broadcasts and increased funding for athletic programs that resulted in the construction of massive new stadiums. The film’s quartet of screenwriters—Sam Taylor (who co-directed with Fred Newmeyer), Ted Wilde, John Grey, and Tim Whelan—deftly incorporate the oversized emphasis on gridiron heroism, which is perhaps best embodied in an intertitle describing Harold’s school as “a large football stadium with a college attached.” The filmmakers were prescient or lucky enough (or both) to capitalize on this cultural tidal wave, making The Freshman the originating point for virtually all subsequent sports and college comedies. From Buster Keaton in College (1927), to John Belushi in Animal House (1978), there is not a college-themed cinematic yukfest that doesn’t owe something to Lloyd’s standard-bearer—the original revenge of the nerd.

Copyright ©2014 James Kendrick

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