WWW's 1st Home of Harold Lloyd

by David Gasten
October 2003

The date is September 21, 2003, and the village of Burchard, Nebraska is gathering to celebrate a local hero with hot dogs and popcorn, complete with a raffle, a small car show and an old-time movie screening. Children dash about on the lawn, while the adults sit and talk about old times and about their hero. The atmosphere in the air seems as though it belongs to a bygone time when small-town folk entertained each other in their parlors and gathered socially on a regular basis for dances and ice cream socials, a time when air conditioners and television were yet to be invented.

But the reason for the celebration is one of much larger magnitude than the small-town celebration suggests. This is the first time the newly-restored birthplace home of comedian Harold Lloyd, one of the most important movie stars of the silent era, has been opened to the public. Harold Lloyd was born in this small, three-room house on April 20, 1893, and lived a portion of his childhood years here as well.

About the Harold Lloyd House Grand Opening

The Harold Lloyd House, as it is called, was opened at 4:00 pm on Sunday, September 21, 2003, and remained open until approximately 7:15 pm, during which a slow but steady stream of over 100 people, mostly from the area, came in to look at the house. Inside the house was a small assortment of information on Harold, artifacts such as vintage photos and memorabilia, and vintage furniture, along with a store which offered Harold T-shirts, plastic spectacles, posters, envelopes, books, and videos for sale. As one exited the house, he was greeted by an offer to participate in a raffle, which featured prizes donated by local businesses and whose proceeds would go to the Harold Lloyd Foundation, the non-profit organization which was overseeing the restoration of the house.

The rest of the celebration took place two blocks north of the the house on the lawn of the old Burchard Public School, which is now an events center called Best Inn Burchard. From 5:00 to 7:00 pm, the Inn served hot dogs with potato chips, pickles, cookies, and tea, alongside an antique car show which consisted of two (yes, two) beautiful 1929 cars. Next to the serving area stood a makeshift theatre, whose seating consisted of rows of square hay bales overlaid with long planks, which were positioned around a projector screen. The event participants sat in the “theatre,” talked and ate as fifties rock and roll and show tunes played merrily in the background.

At dusk (which was about 7:45 pm), the projector screen lit up and the audience was treated to a screening of the 98-minute documentary Harold Lloyd’s World of Comedy (1962), which contains many of the best moments from Harold’s films, both silent and sound. Many of the approximately 65 people watching the film were already familiar with Harold Lloyd from having seen his films on Turner Classic Movies or at previous public screenings. The crowd laughed and gasped at the thrills, which included the famous clock sequence from Safety Last! , and Harold’s multi-vehicle race to crash the bigamous wedding in Girl Shy. The film gleaned the biggest laughs during the talkie sequences, which says something about Harold’s effectiveness as a talkie actor. The magician’s coat sequence in Movie Crazy, with the rabbit on the tray and the mouse crawling up the girl’s pantyhose, got the most elated response, receiving a quick succession of uproarious laughs. Along with the movie came all you could eat of locally-grown popcorn, which was probably the most delicious, full-flavored movie popcorn the author has ever had.

The Struggle to Save the House

The final touches on the restoration of the Harold Lloyd House had just been completed in August, the month before the Open House took place. This did not leave much time or money to prepare for the Open House, so the Foundation opted to keep this grand opening the pleasant, unpretentious slice of Americana that it was. But behind this friendly façade was a hidden struggle: ten thankless years of hard work by a handful of determined individuals fighting to preserve an historical landmark that came dangerously close to being bulldozed off the map.

The Harold Lloyd Birthplace was owned and lived in by Burchard residents Frank and Esther Tagtmeier (pronounced TEG-mie-er) from 1952 to 1982. In 1982 the Tagtmeiers were forced to move out because the home’s foundation was crumbling and making the house difficult to live in. Mrs. Tagtmeier mentioned that although she knew from wooden signs erected outside the town that Harold Lloyd was born there, she did not know that their house was his birth home until many years into their owning the house. “I would occasionally see people outside taking pictures of the house and wonder, ‘What are they doing that for?’” Mrs. Tagtmeier told the author at the Grand Opening. It is quite possible that one of the photographers she saw was Harold Lloyd himself, who reportedly visited the area with his granddaughter Suzanne and took photos of the house in the 1960’s. But when they moved out, they were well aware of the crumbling house’s historical value but unsure of what to do to save it.

One man who was also aware of the house’s historic value was a Chicago man by the name of Don McCormick. McCormick bought the house from the Tagtmeiers for the whopping sum of $500. Meanwhile the house stood idle and continued to deteriorate, to the point where there was discussion locally about tearing the old house down.

But in 1989, a newly-formed organization called the Pawnee County Promotional Network (or PCPN as we will refer to it hereafter) was cataloging historical sites in Pawnee County when the Harold Lloyd House came to their attention. “It wasn’t well known except locally that the house was even here,” said attorney and PCPN co-founder Joe Stehlik about their discovery of the house. So the PCPN took the house underneath its wing and began to consider how it could be restored.

It was in 1991 that the PCPN realized that the centennial of Harold Lloyd’s birth was two years away. The organization were aware that Harold Lloyd’s memory had fallen into obscurity, and that if they wanted to raise the funds to restore the house, they would have to re-educate Nebraskans about who Harold Lloyd was. So they began planning a four-day delebration to commemorate Harold’s would-be 100th birthday. The event was held Thursday through Sunday, April 22-25, 1993, in Lincoln and Burchard, NE. This event was a gigantic and widely-publicized affair that featured in its impressive schedule of events a screening of an original print of Safety Last! accompanied by silent film accompanist Gaylord Carter on the theatre organ, three screenings of Harold Lloyd’s World of Comedy, an antique car show with an impressive array of vintage automobiles from the 1920’s and back, a commemorative stamp cancellation at the Burchard post office, an unveiling of a redering of the restoration of the Harold Lloyd Birthplace, and a VIP dinner at the Governor’s Mansion followed by a reception at the Cornhusker Hotel that was emceed by then-Secretary of State Allan German and featured music by the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra. In addition to all this activity, it included guest appearances by director and Harold protégé Richard Correll (Happy Days, Step by Step, Family Matters, Full House), actor Patrick Duffy (Dallas, Step by Step), and Harold’s granddaughter Suzanne. The event was so well-publicized on local television, newspaper, and radio, that statewide CBS news anchor Mel Mains reportedly said that if he saw another Harold Lloyd commercial he was going to be sick! The result of that publicity was an event so successful and well-attended that is received an award for Best Large Event of 1993 from the Nebraska Travel Industry. (For more on this event, see Annette D’Agostino Lloyd’s article about it here.)

The event was successful in every way except one: it failed to raise money to restore the house. The PCPN were satisfied that the event successfully reintroduced Nebraskans to Harold Lloyd, but they were hoping to break even on the event and maybe even make a little money to put toward the restoration of the house. Instead it left the PCPN $45,000 in the hole. So PCPN member Joe Stehlik and house owner Don McCormick took the debt upon themselves as a personal liability (which has since been paid down to just under $20,000), and the quest was on to raise funds to restore the house. Little did they know that it would take them ten years to accomplish this goal.

The PCPN felt the Harold Lloyd House was an important enough cause that it deserved its own organization, so they began the Harold Lloyd Foundation in 1994 to oversee the restoration of the house. The organization hosted small events such as bake sales, Christmas plays, and dinner theatres to raise funds, and even conducted telephone solicitations. Meanwhile Joe Stehlik’s law office applied twice for grants to restore the house and were turned down both times. After five years’ worth of hard work, the Foundation had raised $5,000, which was enough to reshingle the roof. The roof was reshingled using the original scheme of cedar shingles and copper valleys, which made it quite a bit more costly than it would be to reshingle a regular house. This new roof was completed in 1998, and was enough to shelter the interior of the house as the Foundation waited for the money to fund the remainder of the restoration. This repair was finished in the nick of time—had they waited any longer on reshingling the roof, it is very possible that the house would have deteriorated beyond any hope of repair.

It was in the year 2000 that Foundation member Yvonne Dalluge (pronounced duh-LOO-jee) attended a grant-writing workshop where she met a grant writer named David Talliday. Talliday offered to write a grant for the Harold Lloyd House on the Foundation’s behalf, and this time the grant was accepted. The Foundation was rewarded a $50,000 grant from the Nebraska Department of Economic Development in May of 2001, and was given until May of 2003 to complete the restoration. Meanwhile Yvonne and other members of the Foundation, to quote her, “scooped the dirt and junk off the floor and covered the windows with plastic” while they waited for the grant money to pass through the red tape.

When the grant money arrived, the Foundation went to great pains to restore the house to its original construction as it would have appeared around the time of Harold’s birth. Later additions were torn off the house, and the house was lifted off its limestone foundation, which was then reconstructed. After the foundation was completed, the house was put back on the foundation, the interior walls were recovered with plaster and lap covering (instead of drywall, which would be used today), the outside was re-sided, and the hardwood floors were stripped and polished. The house could not be completed by the May 2003 deadline, but it was so close to completion that the deadline was extended to August, which they met.

The PCPN has developed enough tourist-worthy attractions and activities in Pawnee County in addition to the Harold Lloyd House that they are currently able to sponsor four to six bus tours of the county every year. They will be able to open the Harold Lloyd House to the first bus tour of the 2004 season in April. The House is currently open by appointment only, but the Foundation suspects that eventually the house will be able to be staffed and kept open during regular business hours.

But that’s not all! The restoration of the house is only Phase One of what will be a three-phase project for the Harold Lloyd Foundation. The Foundation has purchased most of the entire block just to the east of the House. Phase Two of the project will be the building of a museum that will house the more expensive Harold Lloyd memorabilia, and Phase Three will be the addition of a small screening area where they will be able to show films and host events centered around Harold, the Roaring Twenties, and the silent film era. And it is here where they hope to eventually be able to sponsor a Harold Lloyd festival not unlike the annual Buster Keaton fetival in Iola, Kansas. Although it will probably be a while before Phases Two and Three see the light of day, there is little doubt that the Harold Lloyd Foundation will accomplish these goals, considering the vision and endurance they have demonstrated in saving the Harold Lloyd House.

If you want to make a tax-deductible donation to the Harold Lloyd Foundation, you may reach them at:

Harold Lloyd Foundation of Burchard, NE
PO Box 187
Pawnee City NE 68420
(402) 865-4000