Fred C. Newmeyer | A Sailor-Made Man / 1921

the sailor’s dance

by Douglas Messerli

 

Jean Havez, Hal Roach, Sam Taylor, and H.M. Walker (screenplay), Fred C. Newmeyer (director),

A Sailor-Made Man / 1921

 

While many of Harold Lloyd comedies feature Lloyd as a weakling, a nerd, and certainly a passive being who at moments is even able to go along with momentary incidents of crossdressing, by and large his comedies are grounded in heterosexual resolution. He struggles to get the girl and often ends up marrying her or at least coming to a positive situation in their relationship.

      That trajectory is at the heart of A Sailor-Made Man, the Fred C. Newmeyer comedy featuring Lloyd from 1921. Lloyd, The Boy, begins as a cane-twirling rich young playboy endowed with all the privilege in the world but without a clue how to best to use it. A self-centered weakling, this Boy sits down on a chair the moment its resident stands to greet someone, hands total strangers his hat and cane, and simply walks around lines entering spaces and rooms that are notably there to exclude others.

      When the beautiful young girl, The Girl (Mildred Davis) suddenly appears at the seaside resort at which he is vacationing, he fails to immediately note her entry as the other young males rush to her side; and when he does attempt to introduce himself, the other boys crowd round her a bit like buffalo, with heads creating an impervious circle at the center of which stands the beauty.

    When The Boy finally encounters The Girl to her face, he wastes no time in suggesting they immediately get married, a further sign of his total lack of social reference.

       As commonly occurs in Lloyd films, her response is to ask her father, which The Boy immediately proceeds to do, the busy businessman responding that it’s impossible until he gets a job and proves his worth.

     So naïve is The Boy, that he doesn’t even take it personally but literally goes out looking for employment, encountering a sign posted outside a small storefront: “Join the Navy.”  He enters and immediately forgoing the long line sits down at the Officer’s desk, pours himself out a glass a water, hands his cane and hat to the Navy recruiter and, offering him a chair, explains that he has decided to “join your Navy.”

       Obviously, he does not impress; but he told to come back in a couple of hours for a physical.

     The Boy returns to the beach where The Girl has just been told by her father that to escape his business activities, he is taking his daughter and anyone she wants to invite on a trip on their yacht around the world; they may not return for years. Gathered around her are those she has invited and upon seeing The Boy with a cane once again, she eagerly invites him to join them. The Boy joyfully agrees, immediately rushing back to the Navy recruiter to tell him that he’s changed his mind. So, evidently, has the recruiter, if he had any questions about The Boy’s abilities he is now determined to demand he keep faith with the signed document, as Lloyd is trussed off for a physical that he cannot fail. The Boy, whether he likes it or not, is now a Navy man.

        In very next frame, The Boy is on board a Navy vessel on his way to somewhere in an imaginary Far East. We soon observe a very different world from the usual Harold Lloyd film as we witness all the Navy boys dancing together, a moment of joy to pass the time in their loneliness. This is an odd homoerotic scene set down in the middle of the usual Lloyd antics, and for a moment, when the men move even closer together in their dancing, holding one another the way men and women dance together we perceive an almost unthinkable if realist phenomenon that would seeming be unthinkable to a Hollywood film even in the less censored period of 1921.

      That year had very little evidence of LGBTQ behavior in its films, almost all of them involving crossdressing, a basically heterosexual trope that allowed men to make others laugh by performing, generally unconvincingly, as women. It had little to do a sexuality. The only serious movie with LGBTQ substance of that year was the German film starring Asta Nielsen, Hamlet, a brave film that suggested a transgender reconsideration of the Danish tragic hero. There was nothing that Hollywood produced that contained such possible homoerotic power as the scene from Lloyd’s A Sailor-Made Man, whose title might even be thought to be somewhat controversial. Obviously, the director and his writers needed a kind of scapegoat, an individual that could renormalize the situation by showing up its apparent perversity. The only man not dancing is the clueless Boy and the character that the credits describe as “The Rowdy Element” (Noah Young), the bully with whom the weakling Boy shares a cabin.

    An Officer seeing Rowdy refusing to participate orders him to dance, and when the character turns and puts his hands up as if in defense of the request, The Boy interprets it as an invitation to a waltz, puts his arm around him, and dances off, with the Officer approvingly watching. The minute the office turns away, the Rowdy begins to slug his dancing partner, returning to dance when the Officer turns his gaze upon him once again, the pattern following for a least three long pans of the camera. Early LGBTQ commentator Vito Russo nicely analyzes the situation:

 

“Lloyd, ever the victimized weakling, dances with the sadistic bully of the story, who cuffs him soundly whenever the captain turns his back. Thus the effeminate man, the symbol of weakness, takes it on the chin for everyone, becoming the scapegoat for the unstated homoerotic activity of the real but insecure men around him. Using in each case male intimacy as the thing all males secretly dread, the issue is raised indirectly yet goes unmentioned. In this way, the sissy remained asexual while serving as a substitute for homosexuality.”

     In a real sense, this film returns to the very roots of LGBTQ cinema, with something similar to the dance of the so-called “Gay Brothers” in The Dickson Experimental Sound Film of 1894.

     But the relationship between the two doesn’t end with that scene. Soon after, the still angry Rowdy, furious with The Boy tosses his kit out the door, hitting the Captain in the head. The officer storms into the room insisting to know who threw it and why. The Boy, obviously more fearful of his bully roommate that any punishment the officer might dole out, admits that it is his kit and takes responsibility for the act. For his behavior he is told to swab the deck, which he proceeds to do.

      The Rowdy, stunned by his roommate’s taking on the blame for his own acts, changes his views of his weakling roommate and watches him for a while as The Boy carefully washes down the deck, finally reporting to the Officer that he two was involved with the offense. Accordingly, he also he asked to clean the deck and joins The Boy in the scrub.

      Meanwhile, a group of other sailors, seeing the two engaged in the action, mock and imitate the two, the large-muscled man and the thin, bespectacled Boy working together in an earnest attempt to clean the ship. 

 

    A few minutes later The Boy observes the Officer has joined in conversation with other officer, momentarily laying down his hat. The Boy rushes to retrieve it, and from the corner shouts out to the other sailors, hat on his head, for them to immediately begin swabbing down the deck, an order seeing the cap, they immediately obey.

      Observing them all joining in on the task, the Rowdy looks up and perceives what has happened, joining his companion to praise his ingenuity, the two of them now laughing at the others the way they have previously treated them. But almost immediately the Captain reaches back to find his hat, only to perceive it on the nearby sailor’s head. Finally realizing he’s been caught again, The Boy sheepishly hands it back to the Captain, the latter of whom when he sees all the men at work, realizes what has happened and smiles before opening up in a laugh. The Boy has passed his first test in demonstrating his agility of thought. He and the Rowdy go off together, almost as friends.

      At another point The Boy comes across the Navy boxing champion working out in his gloves alone. As Lloyd watches behind the fighter, he poses along with some of the moves, and finally observing a pair of gloves laying nearby puts them on, and once more mimics the boxer’s actions behind his back. Suddenly, however, the boxer turns and seeing him “suited up,” so to speak, challenges him to a match. The Boy, ever passive, seems no have no other choice, proceeding to put up his arms as the boxer punches in in the chin, sending him across the deck. The action is repeated; but finally we see a bar of soap upon which The Boy slips, sending him across the floor and into the face of the boxer, knocking him out.

     For a moment The Boy looks down upon the passed-out champion, dazed by the event, but then cracks a small smile of delight, Rowdy coming across him at the very moment, amazed that what he sees, the small-framed sissy having just knocked the boxing king of Navy. As the boxer begins to come two, The Boy joins arms with his roomy and hurries off the two having now become fast friends, and The Boy having now passed the second test, one of bodily prowess.

     All he needs prove now is that he can love, to which the rest of the film is devoted as both the yacht party and the sailors go ashore simultaneously in the dangerous city of Khairpura-Bhandanna where the beautiful Girl has just caught the eye of the local Maharajah (Dick Sutherland) who is suddenly determined to kidnap her and hold her in his harem.

      The Boy and The Girl inevitably meet up in delight and touring the market discover a magician who makes The Girl disappear as two of the Maharajah’s men snuggle her off. Once he realizes what has just happened, Lloyd races after. For the last fourth of the film, The Boy bravely enters the palace, escapes various attacks, and finally frees The Girl, returning her to her yacht friends, and family. Just as they are about to kiss, her friends interrupt, and once they have sent them on their way, get ready to kiss once more. But now Rowdy appears, delighted at his roommate’s adventures. When they finally get rid of him, the Navy itself intrudes as it pulls the seaman away in a march back to the boat.

      In the last scenes of the film we see The Boy sending via naval signal flags the message “Will you marry me,” which the yacht’s steersman answers back with “I will!”

      The aimless playboy has come alive with a new sense of mind, body, and love to make up a  real man after all. Perhaps he now deserves to celebrate with a slow dance with Rowdy without any cuffs.

 

Los Angeles, July 12, 2022