>Generally ranked alongside Chaplin and Keaton as one of the masters of silent comedy, Harold Lloyd created a more conventional personality than those peers, a very American 'Everyman' that thoroughly captured the public's fancy during the 1920s. From 1922 through the end of the decade, his films were more popular than Chaplin's, with Keaton's a distant third. Unlike most of the silent comedians of his day, though, Lloyd had no background in vaudeville, so he brought no time-tested characters to the movies. The primary interest of this stage-trained performer was drama until Hal Roach persuaded him to attempt comedy. Creating his first major character, Willie Work, Lloyd began learning from his mistakes in the crucible of the single-reel short.

>Chaplin drove the industry in which Lloyd was trying to gain a toehold. Exhibitors who could not get the original demanded imitations, so Lloyd settled upon a variation of the Chaplin theme for his second major character, Lonesome Luke. Keeping only the Tramp's oversize shoes, Luke wore tight trousers and a jacket and traded Willie's thick, centered mustache for a two-dot version to complement triangular eyebrows, but Lloyd's efforts to be individual and unique, which included a refusal to copy the well-known Chaplin mannerisms, still only branded him as an "imitator." Bristling at the tag, he enjoyed great popularity as Lonesome Luke but knew the character was about played-out when the inspiration for his third and final character came to him in the spring of 1917. The gimmick that would become his trademark was a pair of eyeglasses, but it was not easy to convince Roach and the distributor (Pathe) to drop a proven winner they had just elevated to two-reel status. After battling for months, he got to debut The Glass Character in Over the Fence (1917) but kept making Lonesome Luke films until the success of 'Glasses' was sure.

>Lloyd featured his bespectacled hero in a series of one-reelers to insure exposure in a new film once a week, eventually finding the formula that would make him rich. His character was not an outsider (like those of the other early clowns), but rather a working member of society, an optimistic plucker who smiled and fought his way through all adversity to achieve success and get the girl by story's end, while mirroring his audience in outward appearance and inward determination.

>Since Lloyd was not inherently funny, he relied on jokes to propel the storyline. Each gag followed the next in a logical progression until the film's climactic vindication and triumph of the hero. From 1922-25, he made two features a year before slowing to one a year for the balance of the decade. Safety Last! (1923) became his most famous, responsible for the enduring Lloyd pose-dangling mid-air, clutching the hands of a clock, but hits were routine for him in the 20s.