Today is the anniversary of the release date of the Harold Lloyd film Dr. Jack (1922).
Dr. Jack is easily my least favorite (and the weakest) of Lloyd’s features. He plays a commonsense small-town doctor who exposes a quack’s efforts to mislead a beautiful young girl into believing she’s sick. It’s straight from the Douglas Fairbanks playbook (it’s very similar to his 1917 feature Down to Earth). The film has very little slapstick to it, has very little forward momentum, and the formula is all wrong for Lloyd. As always, individual gags are good. One of his movies has to be worst, and for my money, this one is it. Recommended only for completionists, and/or folks who have already seen Lloyd’s more famous features, as this would not be a fair or representative introduction to the comedian’s work.
To learn more about comedy film history please check out my new book: Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube, just released by Bear Manor Media, also available from amazon.com etc etc etc
To learn about the history of vaudeville, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever nutty books are sold.
