This 45 min. Harold Lloyd silent comedy marks the transition between his early period of exclusively comedy shorts of 10-35min. length, and his later period of exclusively feature-length comedies, mostly an hour or more in length........Here, Lloyd begins as a wimpy member of the young idle rich, who immediately falls for the scion of another rich man, she being Mildred Davis: Lloyd's future real wife. He immediately proposes, but she says he must meet the approval of her father. He tells Lloyd that he must prove himself successful in some line of work, before he will give his approval. So, Lloyd decides to join the navy. Actually, he tried to get out of his commitment, when he learned that he was invited on a round the world yacht cruise that included Mildred. But the recruiting officer wouldn't let him. Beginning as a lowly seaman, he snoozes and dreams he is the captain of a large navy ship. But, he quickly returns to reality. Well, he doesn't exactly impress as a seaman, but when he gets shore leave, in a small Middle East country, he demonstrates cunning and physical agility in trying to rescue Mildred from the clutches of an ugly, fierce looking, Maharajah. Dick Sutherland, who played the rajah, suffered from acromegaly, which distorts facial features. Coupled with makeup, he looked very scary, indeed.( Mildred is here because her yacht captain decided to stop at this town exactly when the sailors got shore leave here.). The most exciting part of the film is this section where Lloyd pulls out all sorts of tricks to rescue Mildred.........Unfortunately, Lloyd's shore leave was up as soon as he rescued her. Thus, he didn't get a chance to repropose to her. Fortunately, the yacht people decided to leave at the same time. Thus, Lloyd sent a marriage proposal by semaphore flags, and got a response from someone on the yacht.........I should mention that Noah Young played a seaman who became Lloyd's friend, and sometimes helped Lloyd in his rescue attempt.........See it at YouTube.
Review of A Sailor-Made Man
