Harold is a chef with certain devices for labor saving.Harold is a chef with certain devices for labor saving.Harold is a chef with certain devices for labor saving.
Photos
Wally Howe
- Bearded diner
- (as Wallace Howe)
Harry Burns
- Diner
- (uncredited)
William Gillespie
- Restaurant owner
- (uncredited)
Fred Jefferson
- Waiter
- (uncredited)
Storyline
Featured review
It's hard to imagine that Lloyd went from this to "Grandma's Boy" and "Dr. Jack" only three years later!
By 1921-1922, Harold Lloyd had perfected the sweet persona that made him the number one film comic of the 1920s....yes, topping even the likes of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton at the box office. However, from the late 1910s to this time, Lloyd had perfected the look that made him famous (the glasses and straw hat)...but not the style of his later beloved character. In other words, he looked like the Lloyd we all came to love...but he acted quite different. In some of them, he was even a nasty jerk...the complete opposite of his later persona! "On the Fire" is clearly one of these 'in between' films...where Harold LOOKED like the beloved character but certainly acted nothing like him.
When the story begins, Harold and Snub (Snub Pollard...his perennial sidekick during this era) are working in the kitchen at some restaurant. Taking the idea from Fatty Arbuckle's "Waiter's Ball" and Snub's "It's a Gift", Harold has apparently rigged up a system so he can sit on his butt and pull levers to do his cooking. Frankly, the two films I mentioned did this MUCH better.
After a while, Snub and Harold are asked by the boss to wait tables. From then on, the film is strictly slapstick...an old fashioned (even by 1919) way to get cheap laughs. Capturing a fish and chasing it about and then shooting it really made no sense and was emphasizing laughs over story.
The bottom line is that this story really was not original and degenerated to cheap laughs and violence. Not among Lloyd's or Pollard's best, that's for sure.
When the story begins, Harold and Snub (Snub Pollard...his perennial sidekick during this era) are working in the kitchen at some restaurant. Taking the idea from Fatty Arbuckle's "Waiter's Ball" and Snub's "It's a Gift", Harold has apparently rigged up a system so he can sit on his butt and pull levers to do his cooking. Frankly, the two films I mentioned did this MUCH better.
After a while, Snub and Harold are asked by the boss to wait tables. From then on, the film is strictly slapstick...an old fashioned (even by 1919) way to get cheap laughs. Capturing a fish and chasing it about and then shooting it really made no sense and was emphasizing laughs over story.
The bottom line is that this story really was not original and degenerated to cheap laughs and violence. Not among Lloyd's or Pollard's best, that's for sure.
helpful•00
- planktonrules
- Aug 24, 2021
Details
- Runtime10 minutes
- Color
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 1.33 : 1
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