He is very much interested in athletics. He is a fine amateur boxer, and I suppose he gets more fun out of his swimming-pool than out of almost any other possession of his. In this he presents a great contrast to Chaplin, who doesn’t care for Hollywood’s “chilly pools” as he calls them.
If you go to Lloyd’s studio you find almost everybody calling him “Speed.” Even the youngsters on the lot make use of this nickname. These latter all seem to love him, and he is often followed by such a troop that he resembles the Pied Piper of Hamelin.
There is a great deal of the old-fashioned gentleman about this lovable young fellow. He is so earnest about his work, so determined that he is going to do everything which will make him a better actor, so modest of his achievements, and then, too, he has all the old-fashioned reverences. Mother, country, religion—all the unities so often exposed nowadays to the critical mood—are accepted by Lloyd unquestioningly.
“I can’t understand how any man could ever dissect his own mother’s character,” he once said in speaking of somebody who had engaged in this modern pastime. “After all—whatever she does, whatever her faults—she is your mother.”
No rebel, not in the least degree introspective, Lloyd is essentially a thoughtful person. He has been made more so by the accident—an explosion in his studio—which so nearly cost him the loss of his sight. Nowadays when he loses his perspective he tells me that he often visits a hospital.
“I go into that grim white place,” says he, “and I put myself back into those weeks and months when I lay with a bandage over my eyes, when everything that I had or wanted—youth and success and work—seemed to be vanishing, and I think I can see—what does anything else matter?”
ERIC VON STROHEIM
Who spent one million dollars on “Foolish Wives”. He is a prominent villain on the screen.
