Series: Harold Lloyd
Director: Hal Roach
Producer: Hal Roach
Titles: H.M. Walker
Photography: Walter Lundin
Editor: 
Stars: Harold Lloyd, Roy Brooks, Mildred Davis, Wallace Howe, Frank Terry
Company: Pathé Exchange
Released: 11 July 1920
Length: 2 reels
Production No.: L-7
Filming dates: March 4 - April 20, 1920
Rating: 4/10
High And Dizzy
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Available on DVD:
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Harold is a doctor in his surgery playing cards when the telephone rings. He gets excited but it turns out to be a wrong number. Just then an elderly gentleman (Wallace Howe) enters the waiting room with his young daughter (Mildred Davis). Harold springs into action by dressing up as a wounded patient and leaving the office singing the praises of the doctor (himself) so that the others will want to be seen by him. He then sees a woman about to get into an elevator and drags her into the surgery, past the waiting couple before releasing her back into the hallway where she originally was. Harold then dresses himself as a tall gentleman and parades through the waiting room past the couple. He eventaully calls the gentleman into his office and gives him an examination. The man explains that he is not sick and that he is there for his daughter, who walks in her sleep but Harold is distracted by the girl and sits down to talk with her. Dr. Brooks takes Harold into his office and offers him some of his home-made brew. Forty-four pints later they emerge from the office much worse for wear and decide to have some fun with an on-duty cop (Charles Stevenson). Harold and Roy make their way to a hotel (after leading the cop and a woman into a trap door in the sidewalk). Harold rings the bell in the lobby and gets the attention of several porters before the desk clerk even acknowledges him on account of him talking with a female guest. Harold, still drunk, leaps over the counter and starts helping himself to several keys to rooms and opening the mail which has been pigeon-holed for the many guests. The clerk tells him off and Harold leaves. |
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Harold makes his way to the elevator, where he tries to set his watch to the dial indicator according to the floor number the lift is on. He stumbles into a chair and starts picking at some decoration in a woman's hair, using it to sweeten his drink before throwing it into a bin. After almost falling down the elevator shaft, Harold stumbles back into the lobby and ends up getting a good smack from a guy (William Gillespie) who is having a quiet chat with a woman. Harold then gets into an altercation with a gentleman (Frank Terry) in a hallway when he snaps the man's cane and shoves him. Eventually Harold catches up with Dr. Brooks, who is slumped in a doorway and the two of them fall into a room through the door. In the bathroom Harold sees himself in the mirror on the back of the door but gets confused when his reflection shows that of two other men who have entered the room. Meanwhile, the girl, who is a guest at the hotel, has ventured out onto the narrow balcony in her state of sleep and goes for a high-rise, high-risk walk. She walks past Harold's window and then into his room from the outside ledge, which confuses Harold even more. He follows her back out onto the ledge briefly before she goes back into the room. After staggering perilously close to the edge of the ledge for a while and having a resident complaining about Harold dangling outside his window (I mean, the cheek of it, really), Harold goes back into the room to find the girl in her bed. This sobers Harold up until a knock at the door reveals the girl's father and two of his assistants. In the panic Harold proposes to the girl (wow, it was that easy back then?) She agrees and the two of them make their escape out of the window where a minister in the apartment below (the guy who complained to Harold earlier) quickly weds them. |
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Favourite bit Whatever one may think of Harold Lloyd's films (I have no time for them personally), there is no doubting he came up with some ballsy stunts. Credit where it's due. |
| Trivia • Copyrighted June 23, 1920. • Also listed for June 13, 1920. • Frank Terry is credited for writing the story on which the film was based. He has a small role as the man in the hallway. • When Harold and Roy Brooks leave the office and come out onto the sidewalk drunk you can see a man in the reflection of the window holding pedestrians back who would have otherwise walked into the shot. • In preparation for reviewing this film for the site I watched two versions of the film side-by-side and noted that different shots/angles were used in both prints. So there are definitely two different versions of the film out there in circulation. This observation was backed-up by Lloyd author Annette D'Agostino Lloyd when I consulted her on the filming method. • This was Max Hamburger's final film for Hal Roach. He has a small role as the elevator operator. • Noah Young, who was usually a leading co-star in these films, doesn't show up until the final minute of the film! My opinion • Mundane. Another one of those Harold Lloyd 'comedies' where nothing is funny, the plot becomes predictably pedestrian, the cast list is chock-full of people we don't even see and a completely pointless support from Roy Brooks. Not to mention the unconvincing turn from Mildred Davis as a supposed sleepwalker who has the ability to open windows, walk out on ledges, lock people out of her room and walks with her arm out in front most of time? With the exception of a couple of decent stunt scenes on the balcony, this film made me yawn out loud and cemented my intrigue as to how anybody - including Hal Roach ever found Lloyd to be entertaining. |
UNIDENTIFIED CAST |
| CREDITS (click image to enlarge) | INTERTITLES (click image to enlarge) |
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| POSTER (click any image to enlarge)  |
| GLASS SLIDE (click any image to enlarge)  |
| SHOT ON LOCATION (click any image to enlarge) 
 
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| Acknowledgements: The Harold Lloyd Encyclopedia by Annette D'Agostino Lloyd (book) https://silenthollywood.com/highanddizzy1920.html (Silent Hollywood) Jesse Brisson (identification of Molly Thompson and Fred Newmeyer) John Bengtson (locations expert) Tom Schober (help) This page was last updated on: 11 July 2023 |