Harold Lloyd in Luna Park
Speedy, directed in 1928 by comedy writer and filmmaker Ted Wilde, is a mile-a-minute ride through New York that was the final silent film to star Hollywood comic icon Harold Lloyd. Shot on location in New York and on sound stages in Los Angeles, the film centers on a hapless, out-of-work New Yorker who embarks on a quest to save the city’s last horse-drawn streetcar. Lloyd, playing a variation on his famous and beloved “Glasses Character,” fills the role with his signature physicality and gag-heavy acting style.
For our release of Speedy, now out on DVD and Blu-ray, Bruce Goldstein (director of repertory programming at New York’s Film Forum) created In the Footsteps of Speedy, a short documentary about the film’s New York shoot. In the clip below, Goldstein explores one of the film’s most memorable sequences, in which Lloyd’s character Harold “Speedy” Swift takes his love interest Jane (played by Ann Christy) to Coney Island’s Luna Park. Here, we get a new examination of how Lloyd and Wilde brought these Speedy scenes to life.
