User Reviews

For the most part Harold Lloyd's early short films are enjoyable, and a few of them are little gems, but Ring Up the Curtain is not one of his better surviving works. Our setting is a small town theater where Harold is the resident stage hand and jack-of-all-trades, and when a touring troupe of players featuring Bebe Daniels blows into town he is determined to make time with her. That's about it for plot. Normally I enjoy any comedy with a theatrical setting, but this is a perfunctory effort, mildly diverting but disappointing over all; it's Harold on Auto-Pilot.

On the plus side, we have the rich backstage atmosphere of a small town vaudeville house. The setting alone will interest theater buffs, but better examples are offered in a number of silent comedies more enjoyable than this one, such as Roscoe Arbuckle's two-reeler Back Stage, co-starring Buster Keaton, and Keaton's subsequent solo classic The Playhouse. In Lloyd's Ring Up the Curtain, once you get past the period charm, the gags are pretty random. For example: when a midget actor enters, he is immediately trampled; then when a hefty man enters, he is immediately punched in the stomach. There's no reason for any of it, we don't know who they are, and we don't see them again. It happens because midgets and fat guys are funny, I guess, and besides, nothing else that occurs in this film is motivated, either. Everyone seems to be straining hard for laughs. Much is made of a snake discovered in one of the dressing rooms -- the actors run around looking terrified (although the snake appears quite sleepy-looking and harmless), because that's what you do when a snake is found in a short like this one. Harold attempts to charm the snake, Hindu-style, but the sequence sputters out without much of a punchline. Snub Pollard has a brief bit on-stage that I found more interesting than the backstage shenanigans, but it's over in a blink. After a while we no longer care about these characters; the comic sequences aren't developed in a way that engages the viewer, and then, to top it all off, the bizarre closing gag is in poor taste.

Harold Lloyd is great in An Eastern Westerner, High and Dizzy, and lots of other shorts he made once he hit his stride, but Ring Up the Curtain doesn't show him off to best advantage. According to a reference work on Lloyd, this movie marked his 135th starring film for the Rolin Company, as the Hal Roach Studio was known at the time. Perhaps Harold and his crew needed a vacation.

By the early 1920s, Harold Lloyd had become one of the very best and successful screen comics. However, his path to stardom was NOT so simple. In the 1910s, he played a variety of characters who really were really nothing like his sweet bespectacled guy. Even in some of his later films before going on to huge successes when he LOOKED much like the familiar guy he sure didn't act it and the formula still needed a lot of work...such is definitely the case with "Ring Up the Curtain". Sure, this incarnation of Lloyd LOOKS like the great character from such films as "Safety Last" and "The Freshman"....but act like him, not at all. Instead of being a sympathetic character with some depth and likability, this Lloyd is not much different from any other slapstick actor--ready to hit, kick or take pratfalls but nothing more. In fact, the film really has no plot--just Lloyd (and sometimes with Snub Pollard and Bebe Daniels) doing a lot of slapstick stuff with no context, no story...nothing. It's not a terrible film by 1919 standards but also has nothing to recommend it as well...unless you are die- hard fan of Lloyd and insist on seeing all his movies...the good, the bad and the indifferent.

Harold Lloyd as a stage-hand in a vaudeville theatre, love-sick for the leading lady, Bebe Daniels. The usual jokes you'd expect are all present - props (snakes!), curtain pulls and disappearing feet, trap-doors, trick sets.

The movie opens with Lloyd, it seems, as a bartender, but this is revealed to be just another set he should be clearing away rather than pretending to make cocktails. His hat at a tilt, he swaggers around the backstage area trying to put on the chat and impress the glamorous Bebe. Of course, this boy won't get anywhere.

Slight, but enjoyable.

Harold Lloyd is a stage hand surrounded by true thespians.He has more interest on just one of them, the leading lady.Ring Up the Curtain (1919) is directed by Alfred J. Goulding.It's brought to you by the Hal Roach studios, or Rolin Film Company as it was known then.Harold Lloyd gives once again a funny performance with those glasses.Bebe Daniels makes a wonderful leading lady.'Snub' Pollard makes a terrific leading man.This short comedy has a lot of fun stuff.The snake gag is quite hilarious.The snake on the loose moves from one hand to other, getting them scared for their lives.And Harold interrupting 'Snub' on stage, when he's having a romantic scene with Bebe is quite funny.From the early Harold Loyd films this is really amusing.

It could just be because Harold Lloyd set a high standard in his comedies, but this one seems mostly routine and unimaginative, at least by comparison with most of his movies. There are a handful of good moments, but most of the gags are really not that funny, while others may have been funnier if they had been carried off with better planning and/or timing.

The story has Lloyd working as a stage hand, Bebe Daniels as a dancer, and Snub Pollard as part of a group of traveling players. None of them really gets a lot of good material to work with, although they all do their best. There isn't really a coherent story line, so without any really good gag ideas or particularly interesting or sympathetic characters, it ends up containing a fair amount of relatively pointless activity.

Lloyd, Daniels, and director Hal Roach provided the movie with a considerable talent base to work with, and no one would want to be too harsh in criticizing anything involving them. This time, though, they really just do not have much to work with, and the results are only fair at the very best.