Luke's Shattered Sleep

I look for anything in this early Lonesome Luke comedy, for some sign of the brilliance Lloy would attain in the next decade, but it's like looking for the Lloyd Hamilton of the mid-twenties in his Ham & Bud comedies. Lloyd and Roach were just starting out at this stage and anxious to produce something, anything that would get the exhibitors to take the comedies -- and that meant comedies like those at Keystone. But they didn't have the editing that Sennet did and they didn't have the budgets, so there's no discernible plot -- everything happens around a flophouse as cops chase bums and bums fight -- but the comedy falls are even more bone-breaking than Sennet used. Lloyd would continue this rougher set of pratfalls into his Glasses character.

For fanatics only.

There is a lot more that Hal Roach could have done with this Lonesome Luke character. We're not seeing him marginalized enough. Chaplin had the right blend of comedy and pathos, documenting his own experiences as an outsider. This is where Lonesome Luke fails. He's imitating an outsider, but in fact, Luke is as much an insider as Lloyd is.