“Saboteur” is a fascinating film and a bit of an oddity. Lloyd’s plunge was one of the most memorable demises in screen history, an influence on the death of Hans Gruber in ‘Die Hard’ as well as innumerable subsequent Hitchcock films, including ‘Rear Window,’ ‘Vertigo’ and “North by Northwest.” Lloyd’s ‘Saboteur’ performance began a long association with Hitchcock that would also include an appearance three years later in ‘Spellbound’ (1945).” Sobczynski wrote: “Lloyd played the title role of the villain who leads Robert Cummings, an ordinary man wrongly accused of the acts of sabotage that he himself has perpetrated, on a cross-country chase climaxing atop the Statue of Liberty. Some accounts credit Houseman with introducing Lloyd to Hitchcock before “Saboteur” was made. Peter Sobczynski noted the New Jersey native was working professionally at age 9 and by the 1930s was appearing in productions of the Federal Theater Project with the likes of John Houseman and Orson Welles, who created their own drama company, Mercury Theater, and invited young Lloyd along. Perhaps the best online postmortem appreciation of Lloyd was published on the Roger Ebert site shortly after the actor/writer/producer’s death. They were characteristics that served him well. In interviews in his later years, Lloyd said that writer Ben Hecht, upon screening the movie with Hitchcock, quipped that Lloyd’s character “should have had a better tailor.” Remembering the comment and livening up interviews with it a half-century later was typical of Lloyd’s wit and intelligence. His character in “Saboteur” died when his antagonist and pursuer, played by Robert Cummings, was unable to save him as he dangled from the Statue of Liberty: Cummings has a grip on Lloyd’s coat sleeve but the stitches rip out and Lloyd falls to his death. Lloyd was known for his wit and way with an anecdote.
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