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
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