He recast himself as a striving young go-getter, and emphasized his natural handsomeness, in contrast to the grotesque appearances of most other slapstick clowns. To give himself a distinctive trademark, he donned a pair of turtle-shell glasses.
Look Pleasant, Please is one of the early one-reel experiments with Lloyd's new approach, and it shows Lloyd's argument: slapstick gets funnier when the audience cares about the characters. Lloyd plays a lazy shopkeeper (there are literally flies on him) accused of price gouging. Running from the police, he opts to swap places with a local photographer, not realizing the photographer is himself running from an enraged husband who (correctly) thinks the man was hitting on his wife.
It's a simple setup, the kind of farcical situation easily established and then exploited for laughs. Various supporting artists flutter though the ten-minute-long film, including James Parrott (brother to Charley Chase) as a drunk who gets his blurry picture taken. Almost any comedy outfit could have staged something similar, and indeed most did, but Lloyd's take sparkles with his own personal charm, an endearing young man the audience couldn't help but cheer.
By David Kalat
