In July of 1969, at the age of 16, I divided my time between two very different worlds. The first was that of my generation, the colorful hippie Zeitgeist that I happily embraced. But I was also caught up in a black-and-white time gone by. In those days Seattle, where I live, offered silent movies at a handful of repertory cinemas or sometimes in private screenings through film clubs. A dedicated film buff, I saw as many silents as I could, and my favorites were always the comedies.

Seattle was host that summer to the 1969 Shrine convention, normally something the hippie side of me would have disdained. But then I read in the paper that the man being honored as Shriner of the Year was Harold Lloyd, of Beverly Hills, California.

Lloyd, of course, is considered one of the three comic geniuses of silent films, Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton being the other two. Chaplin is immortal, and Keaton remains recognizable to most people, but oddly, Harold Lloyd has been largely forgotten. That’s a shame. In the 1920s he was a huge star, known for his “everyman” comic persona and distinctive horn-rimmed glasses. His pictures often featured stunts —at once both hilarious and thrilling —in which he hung perilously off the edges of tall buildings or raced wildly in mad chases through city streets. His popularity was such that exhibitor polls taken in 1927 and 1928 showed him to be one of the top box-office attractions in America.

In 1969 Buster Keaton was dead, and Chaplin was in exile in Europe, but Harold Lloyd was alive and well and visiting my town. I quickly rounded up two girlfriends for moral support and took them downtown to get Harold Lloyd’s autograph. He was staying at what was then Seattle’s poshest stopping place, the Olympic Hotel.

In our bell-bottomed jeans and tiedyed shirts, we walked boldly up to the woman at the reception desk and asked her for Harold Lloyd’s room. She wasn’t much older than we were, and I don’t think she had a clue who Harold Lloyd was. She indifferently gave us his suite number, and we took the elevator upstairs. As we stepped off, we saw two older men standing in the hallway. One said to the other, “Okay, Harold, see ya later,” and walked off down the corridor. We were left with a heavy, balding man in bifocals.

“Are you Harold Lloyd?” I managed to croak.

“Yes, I am,” he said with a friendly smile. Inwardly I thought there was some mistake. This could not possibly be the silent film star I had admired. He wasn’t thin and winsome in a straw hat and blazer; he was fat and old and wore a brown suit that made him look like an insurance salesman. (Lloyd was 76 at the time. The following year he received a cancer diagnosis; he