Three Good Fellows – Harold Lloyd, Doug MacLean, and Ben Model

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[image error]Musician Ben Model is a silent film super-hero. Aside from his duties as resident accompanist for MoMA in New York, and performing at silent screenings around the county, his indie Undercrank Productions has released over 20 rare silent movie DVDs, including the delightful Alice Howell Collection. I first learned about Alice, and was to able to enjoy some of her films, thanks to Ben. (This post HERE features a few early Hollywood scenes from her films.)

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When Good Fellows Get Together

Ben’s latest release The Douglas MacLean Collection is a revelation. I had never heard of Doug before Ben shared him with us. As Ben describes in his blog, MacLean made light comedy features before Chaplin, Keaton, and Lloyd switched to feature productions, at the same time Douglas Fairbanks was dropping the light comedy genre to make swashbucklers instead. The collection includes MacLean’s features One a Minute (1921) and Bell Boy 13 (1923), together with a 1920 promotional film portraying the Thomas Ince Studio in Culver City, MacLean’s producer. These films are packed with amazing images and locations, enough for several lengthy posts. But we’ll start with the overlap between MacLean and Harold Lloyd.

To begin, the March 1921 edition of Picture-Play magazine posted above reports Doug visiting Harold Lloyd, and how they are a couple of jolly good fellows. Here they are clearly setting on the Hill Street stunt set built for Harold’s 1920 production High and Dizzy.

Doug must have picked up a few tips from Harold, as his 1923 Bell Boy 13 (upper left) also has a brief stunt scene filmed above the Hill Street Tunnel. A similar set for The Terror Trail (1921) (center and right) reveals the secret.

Next, Doug’s “home town” train station scenes from One a Minute upper left overlaps with Harold’s home town train scenes in Girl Shy (1924) lower left. Paul Ayers, attorney, historian, and hiking trail expert, who has shared many remarkable location discoveries over the years, identified this as the Hynes Union Pacific depot, later destroyed by fire in 1946.

Paul studied many clues confirming the site, including the scene upper left where the partially legible “HYNES” depot sign appears with Marian De Beck (“Marion” in the film credits) during One a Minute. Other clues, looking north during Girl Shy, upper middle, Paul noticed a bit of “uniON PACIfic” between the men sitting on the baggage cart beside Jobyna Ralston, while the two-shot of Doug and Marian looking south, upper right, was filmed on a “U.P. (Union Pacific) 1502” passenger car.

Looking west from the Hynes depot, matching views from One a Minute, 1921, left, and Girl Shy, 1924, right, both show the same modest home with a left-facing porch. The house in the Girl Shy frame closer to the depot was built after Doug filmed in 1921.

This 1925 map shows the Hynes depot (red box), and the dozen or so buildings and homes comprising the tiny town about 11 miles north of Long Beach. In Girl Shy, above right, Richard Daniels cheers on Harold as he races west to catch the train departing south from the Hynes Depot (yellow oval). The small neighboring communities of Hynes, and Clearwater to the north, were once the dairy capital of Southern California. They unified under the city name Paramount in 1948.

Switching locales, in One a Minute Doug runs beside the Palms Garage on the SE corner of Motor Ave. and National Blvd., the same view east down National as the cops chase Harold for being a suspected bootlegger in Girl Shy, above right. Situated in Palms, close to the Hal Roach Studios in Culver City, this corner garage appears in many Roach productions, especially the silent Our Gang shorts.

Above left, a matching view east down National with Roscoe Arbuckle in The Hayseed (1919). Roscoe and co-star Buster Keaton filmed at the intersection of Motor and National years before it became a common setting in Hal Roach comedies. Remarkably the corner Palms Garage building remains standing today.

In closing, this time Doug’s Bell Boy 13 lower right overlaps with Harold’s Girl Shy, lower left, with scenes staged at the former Southern Pacific Depot at 5th and Central downtown. A popular filming site, the depot also appears with Harold in Just Neighbors (1919), Douglas Fairbanks in When The Clouds Roll By (1919), and Stan Laurel in Mother’s Joy (1923), as explained in detail HERE. USC Digital Library.

HAROLD LLOYD images and the names of Mr. Lloyd’s films are all trademarks and/or service marks of Harold Lloyd Entertainment Inc. Images and movie frame images reproduced courtesy of The Harold Lloyd Trust and Harold Lloyd Entertainment Inc.

Be sure to check out The Douglas MacLean Collection and all of Ben’s other DVD releases. Thank you Ben!

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Please help support naming the Chaplin Keaton Lloyd alley in Hollywood by posting a review on Google Maps. Prototype alley sign design by noted Dutch graphic artist – Piet Schreuders. Download a 4-page brochure about the alley HERE.