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WHO IS NORMAN LLOYD?
Directed by Matthew Sussman.
Produced by Joseph Scarpinito & Michael Badalucco.
Director of photography, Arthur S. Africano.
Edited by Ray Hubley.
Released by Journeymen Films.
USA. 67 min. Not Rated.
With Norman Lloyd, Ray Bradbury, Roy Christopher, Cameron Diaz, Tom Fontana, Sam Goldwyn Jr., Arthur Hiller, Peggy Miller & Karl Malden.

Who Is Norman Lloyd? jars. It’s been a long time since any film focusing on an artist has kept completely clear of The E! True Hollywood Story path. Refreshingly wholesome, this documentary tribute offers the rare look of a productive and stable life off-camera, in this case a Blacklist survivor, long marriaged, who embodies persistence.

Actor Norman Lloyd’s face, but perhaps not his name, will be recognizable to most viewers. Friend Karl Malden isn’t gilding the lily when he declares, “Norman is the history of our industry up to now.” Lloyd began his career on the New York stage, at one time under the wings of pioneering director/actress Eva Le Galliene, and played Cinna the poet under Orson Welles’s direction in the Mercury Theatre production of Julius Caesar. Elocution lessons erased any trace of his Brooklyn upcoming, and he still speaks impeccably with a Mid-Atlantic dialect, a softening blend of American and British speech, once the standard for American actors pre-World War II.

In film, he debuted only under the direction of Alfred Hitchcock in 1942’s Saboteur as the title villain. Besides the paternal physician in TV’s St. Elsewhere, he’s most recently known as Cameron Diaz’s flirtatious blind mentor (In Her Shoes). Now at age 93, he’s still before the cameras, starring in a metaphoric-laden short by a novice director. (In one on-set rehearsal, a costar, at least 50 years his junior, is clearly out of her league next to Lloyd.) In fact, producer Michael Badalucco met Lloyd when he guest-starred on the recent TV series The Practice, where Badalucco was a regular cast member.

A ceremony bestowing an honorary membership to Lloyd bookends the film. When founded in 1888, the Players Club’s goal was to elevate the standing of actors through interaction with the elite from other professions. Its mission is very much in keeping with the deferential tone of director Matthew Sussman’s film. (The organization is not at all to be confused with the Friars Club.) Lloyd’s genial and laid-back interview, which makes up the bulk of the film, is more like a conversation over tea than coffee, save for his angry recollections of the McCarthy era. For a more biting and chatty look at the actor’s life, there’s the recent Charles Nelson Reilly’s autobiographical, and hilarious rant, The Life of Reilly. Kent Turner
November 23, 2007