Until an hour ago I had never heard of, much less seen, Welcome Danger, a 1929 Harold Lloyd adventure-comedy that was also (I think) his first sound film. Which is “topical,” in a sense, in this is more or less the historical turf of Damien Chazelle‘s Babylon (Paramount, 12.23), a film about the Hollywood changeover from silent to sound flicks.
In its 10.3.29 issue, The Film Daily reported that Lloyd would attend the 10.7.29 world premiere of Welcome Danger,” opening at the Rivoli Theater. Pic opened on Friday, 10.12.29.
Welcome Danger opened two weeks before the beginning of the ’29 Stock Market Crash. At the end of Thursday, 10.24.29, the market was at 299.5 — a 21 percent decline from a few days before. On Black Monday, or 10.28.29, the Dow Jones Industrial Average had dropped another 13 percent.
