Hi everyone, here is our streamlined weekly Suggested Listening and Viewing post; featuring one album or musical collection for your listening pleasure; one movie or TV show/season for your viewing pleasure and one recommendation for background viewing – perfect for having on while having dinner, reading or just hanging out at home. Enjoy!
First off the music, this week and album:
Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan (1963) by Bob Dylan
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Moving on to our suggested viewing title of the week; this week our recommendation is the movie Safety Last! (1923)
Here is the movie:
About Formats: Safety Last! Can be streamed, obviously on YouTube with a new score; and also by the usual mainstream streaming services and checked out and streamed via the library’s streaming service Kanopy. It may also be purchased on regular or Blu-ray DVD.
About The Movie: Safety Last! (1923) is a silent film classic produced by Elmira native Hal Roach and starring comedian Harold Lloyd.
It is one of the most popular films of the silent film era and includes the iconic scene of Harold Lloyd hanging from a large clock tower clock, while viewers can see the traffic below and the city around him.
The movie’s humor starts with its title Safety Last! – the phrase “Safety First”, being a common phrase of the era that promoted the idea of implementing safety measures to avoid workplace accidents. In the film Lloyd doesn’t put safety first to comedic effect.
About Harold Lloyd: Harold Lloyd was born April 20, 1893, in Burchard, Nebraska to James Darsie Lloyd and Sarah Elisabeth Fraser. Lloyd’s parents divorced when he was a boy and he moved with his father to San Diego, California. Lloyd graduated from high school and then, in keeping with his childhood love of theater; dove right into the performing arts; as a young man he worked for the Edison Film Company. His first appearance in a movie was in the Edison film The Old Monk’s Tale (1914) which saw him portraying an Indian.
During the teens Lloyd met and became friends with filmmaker Hal Roach and his career took off. Inspired by Chaplin’s Tramp character; Lloyd’s and Roach created a humorous, bumbling character named “Lonesome Luke,” for Lloyd to play. The Lonesome Luke shorts were very popular with movie goers; but as the decade went on Lloyd made the decision to move away from that character and instead created an upbeat, enthusiastic, bespectacled every-day type of character, usually referred to as Harold in film credits; who encounters humorous situations, but who isn’t humorous in and of himself. This new character became even more popular than Lonesome Luke and appeared in numerous films including From Hand to Mouth (1919), Captain Kidd’s Kids (1919), Grandma’s Boy (1922), Why Worry (1923) and Safety Last! (1923).
Lloyd left the Roach company in 1924, founded his own production company; The Harold Lloyd Motion Picture Company; became an independent filmmaker and successfully made the transition to talking films starting with the movie Welcome Danger (1929). In the 1930s he continued to make movies including Feet First (1930), Movie Crazy (1932) and The Cats-Paw (1934). He sold his studio in 1937 and went on to produce movies for Paramount and RKO and host a radio show, The Old Gold Comedy Theater before retiring in 1947.
Harold Lloyd died March 8, 1971 in Beverly Hills, California and is buried in Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Los Angeles, California.
About Hal Roach: In brief, Harold Eugene Roach was born in Elmira, New York on January 14, 1892.
As a youth he showed an adventurous streak traveling solo to Alaska and then down the Pacific Coast to San Diego. Roach landed in Hollywood in 1912 and launched his career by appearing as an extra in silent films. In 1914 he co-founded the Rolin Film Company with Dan Linthicum and I.H. Nance, and the following year he produced his first successful short Just Nuts (1915). In 1920, he inherited $3,000 and was able to pursue his passion to create films with enthusiasm by founding the Hal Roach Studios; shortly thereafter he began making the Lonesome Luke shorts with his friend Harold Lloyd and his career took off.
Roach made more than 2,000 shorts during his career; including some of the most successful films of the 1920s and 1930s; among the most popular and influential of these are the Harold Lloyd films, the Our Gang films (aka The Little Rascals), movie shorts starring Will Rogers and films starring Laurel & Hardy.
Hal Roach died in Los Angeles on November 2, 1992 and is buried in Elmira’s Woodlawn Cemetery.
To learn more about Hal Roach’s works, check out his Internet Movie Database page https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0730018/
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Background Viewing
(Perfect to have on while having dinner, reading etc.)
Lakeside Ambience with Relaxing Nature sounds and Calm Fire
Have a great weekend!
Linda Reimer, SSCL
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Information on the four library catalogs (content available 24/7!)
The Digital Catalog aka Libby: https://stls.overdrive.com/
The Digital Catalog, is an online catalog containing eBooks, eAudiobooks, and digital magazines. You can use your library card and checkout content on a PC; you can also use the companion app, Libby, to access titles on your mobile devices; so you can enjoy eBooks and eAudiobooks on the go!
All card holders of all Southern Tier Library System member libraries can check out items from the Digital Catalog.
And The Digital Catalog/Libby features titles that may be checked out via the one-copy-one-user lending model, just like print books.
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Hoopla Catalog: https://www.hoopladigital.com/
The Hoopla Catalog features on demand checkouts of eBooks, eAudiobooks, comic books, albums, movies and TV shows. Patron checkout limit is 10 items per month.
Hoopla is a Southeast Steuben County Library service available to all Southeast Steuben County Library card holders.
The Hoopla companion app, also called Hoopla is available for mobile devices, smart TVs & media streaming players.
Titles in the Hoopla Catalog are available to be checked out on-demand by all library card holders, with the caveat of being able to check out a maximum of ten titles per month, per card.
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Kanopy Catalog: https://www.kanopy.com/en
The Kanopy Catalog features thousands of streaming videos available on demand.
The Kanopy Catalog is available for all Southern Tier Library System member library card holders, including all Southeast Steuben County Library card holders!
You can access the Kanopy Catalog through a web browser, or download the app to your phone, tablet or media streaming player (i.e. Roku, Google or Fire TV).
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StarCat: The catalog of physical/traditional library materials: https://starcat.stls.org
Card holders of all Southern Tier Library System member libraries can access StarCat to search for and request materials available at libraries through out the Southern Tier Library System.
Have questions about any of the catalogs?
Give us a call!
You can reach us at 607-936-3713 or visit our website at https://ssclibrary.org/
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