Preston Sturges – The Sin of Harold Diddlebock (1947)
Also known as Mad Wednesday, this collaboration between silent comedy star Harold Lloyd and screwball comedy genius Preston Sturges was meant to be a splashy comeback for both. Unfortunately, it sank at the box office.
The film starts with original footage from Lloyd’s 1925 classic The Freshman. Because of his success on the football field, Harold Diddlebock (Lloyd, who seems to have hardly changed in 22 years, – still sporting a straw hat, and horn rimmed glasses) is offered a job. Full of hope and promise, the former gridiron champ finds himself in a minor bookkeeping position, where he remains forgotten for the next 22 years, until he’s abruptly fired.
Stunned, Diddlebock finds a friendly barman with a wicked talent for mixing drinks (Edgar Kennedy). When he awakes two days later, he has no idea what he’s spent the last 48 hours doing. It turns out he’s bought a circus and… well, you get the idea. Every scene is its own little gem of delirium, including one in which an artistic bartender invents the drink that launches Diddlebock into his drunken spree.
Lloyd isn’t always adept with Sturges’s madcap dialogue, but the sterling supporting cast of character actors makes that language spin like a top.
Players: Harold Lloyd, Raymond Walburn, Franklin Panghorn, Margaret Hamilton, Edgar Kennedy (as the Barman), Rudy Vallee, and Jackie the Lion.
700MB | 1h 29m | 512×384 | avi
https://nitro.download/view/2B13424014C5479/The_Sin_of_Harold_Diddlebock_(1947).avi
Language(s):English
Subtitles:None
