[Harold Lloyd] Fred C. Newmeyer & Sam Taylor - The Freshman (1925)

The Freshman (1925)
Directed by Fred C. Newmeyer and Sam Taylor
Written by John Grey, Sam Taylor, Tim Whelan and Ted Wilde

Cast:
Harold Lloyd...The Freshman
Jobyna Ralston...Peggy
Brooks Benedict...The College Cad
James Anderson...The College Hero
Hazel Keener...The College Belle
Joseph Harrington...The College Tailor
Pat Harmon...The Football Coach

Pete the Pup (Little Rascals) makes a cameo in the movie.

 After modelling a persona based on his favourite movie and several books, the Freshman (Harold Lamb) sets off for Tate, where his naïve preparation immediately opens him to ridicule. The popular set keeps him around just to make fun of him and exploit his largesse, unbeknownst to Lamb, and his disastrous tryout for the football team leaves him assuming he’s made the squad when in fact he’s just the water boy. He finds his only champion in sweet, hard-working Peggy, who urges him to be himself. 

Harold Lloyd was 31 when he shot this movie. He had always wanted to make a football movie but never had the opportunity. When this film was in development, he thought it would be a bad idea to have him in it, because he was too old.

Lloyd originally began production with the football scenes, however he couldn't achieve the right tone, so decided to start again, this time shooting the film in sequence. Exteriors were filmed near the USC campus in Los Angeles. The game sequence was shot on the field at the Rose Bowl, and the crowd scenes were shot at halftime at California Memorial Stadium during the November 1924 Big Game between UC Berkeley and Stanford University. The football game sequence was reused by Lloyd and director Preston Sturges in Lloyd's last film, The Sin of Harold Diddlebock (1947).

Credited as being the first "sports" movie ever produced, The Freshman was Lloyd's most successful silent film of the 1920s, and was a huge hit at the time of its release. The film sparked a craze for college films that lasted well past the 1920s. The motion picture industry produced just 12 college films from 1921 to 1925, but 60 from 1925 to 1928. The perennial innocent underdog, and an iteration of Lloyd’s “glasses character”, whose thick spectacles, clean-shaven face, and everyday clothing make him surprisingly contemporary. Lamb is instantly familiar as a type. 

In his original essay that appears in the edition’s printed booklet, “Speedy Saves the Day! A Harold Lamb Adventure!”, critic Stephen Winer stresses the uniqueness of Lloyd’s glasses character in comparison to other silent-era comic actors’ personas and to stars of the talkies such as W. C. Fields and the Marx Brothers.

Neither an outsider like Chaplin’s Tramp, nor consigned to navigating the fringes like Buster Keaton’s and Harry Langdon’s characters, Lloyd’s trademark protagonist “has more in common with the then popular rags-to-riches tales of Horatio Alger.” For Lamb (and Lloyd), social success is not only acceptable, but is also worthy of actively pursuing.

The Freshman is considered one of Lloyd's most hilarious, well-constructed films, and one of the few remaining available after the sound era. In the 1960s, Lloyd reissued the film (with cuts) and extended scenes in compilation films. The DVD release of Lloyd's films in 2004 includes the full, restored version as shown in the 1920s.

In 1990, The Freshman was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant", going in the second year of voting and being one of the first 50 films to receive such an honour.