“As a piece of comic architecture, it’s impeccable.” ~ Orson Welles
Safety Last! (1923) contains one of the most famous shots in motion picture history: the sight of Harold Lloyd hanging from the hands of a clock. Even those who have never seen a Harold Lloyd film before are familiar with this iconic image; it continues to permeate popular culture. Harold’s climb up a department store façade is one of the great sequences in silent comedy, yet what gets overlooked is how brilliant everything else is that leads up to it.
Fortunately, movie audiences will once again have an opportunity to see this wonderful film on the big screen when the Silent Film Society of Chicago screens it on May 12 at the historic Pickwick Theatre in Park Ridge, IL. Silent film accompanist (and host) Jay Warren will provide the organ score courtesy of the Pickwick’s Mighty Wurlitzer. (This is the first classic film screening at the Pickwick in fifteen months.)
Harold Lloyd is forced to become a man of action in Safety Last!
Safety Last! was the first Harold Lloyd film I screened as part of the Park Ridge Public Library’s “Legends of Laughter” film series in 2011. Those in attendance who had never seen a Lloyd movie were immediately hooked. What stood out in my memory from that night was the overwhelmingly positive reaction. Films like Safety Last! should always be screened with an audience. The film really does take on a new dimension. In a movie theatre, the film never fails. One of the most enjoyable movie-going experiences I’ve had was seeing Safety Last! at the Gateway Theatre some years back when the Silent Film Society of Chicago played it.
The Gateway screening was the first time I fully appreciated Harold Lloyd as a comic genius. Though not as well-known as Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton, his films are no less remarkable. In his early days of his film career, Harold was simply a Chaplin imitator with his “Lonesome Luke” persona. However, by 1917, he had invented “The Glasses Character,” an original creation with a decidedly simple appearance. It was the lens-less, horned-rimmed glasses and boater hat that separated him from the other comics. In his career, Lloyd would make over two hundred films, including many “one-reelers.” His films, particularly his features, were consistently great throughout the 1920s. Unfortunately, because Lloyd the businessman never released his films to television, generations of film buffs grew up not having seen his best work. Today, Harold’s granddaughter, Suzanne Lloyd, has done much to restore his film legacy.
Safety Last! was Harold’s fourth feature film. In it, he plays a small-town boy trying to make good in the big city. He gets a job as a dry goods clerk at a department store. Harold’s motivation is simply to impress his girlfriend (Mildred Davis) who remains back home. When she makes a surprise visit to the city, Harold gives her the false impression that he is the store manager. But in order to marry her, Harold needs to make good and earn enough money. Always a character who used his wits to solve a problem– reflecting the can-do spirit of the time– Harold convinces management to stage a publicity stunt in which a man will climb the building and bring hundreds of spectators to the store. Harold’s roommate (Bill Strother) is a “human fly” and agrees to do the stunt for him, but when he is sidetracked by a policeman, Harold is forced to do the stunt on his own.
The film is filled with inventive gags that show the character’s ingenuity in solving problems.The funny bits of comedy business are set up and executed with perfect timing. Harold Lloyd was an innovator but also a collaborator who worked closely with his team. The top comedy talent in town worked on his films. Lloyd’s pictures were always technically superb. He had one of the most accomplished cameramen, Walter Lundin, some of the best writers, including “Beanie” Walker who wrote the clever inter-title cards, and some of the funniest gag men in Hollywood.
Everything was first class with Harold Lloyd’s films, and that’s why they hold up so well today. Additionally, Harold always listened to his audiences. He was the first to use a preview system in which he tested his films on various audiences. Based on their reactions– that is, where they would laugh (or not laugh) during the film– he would go back and re-edit and re-shoot the films. Charlie Chaplin never did this because he didn’t want to give anything away for free with a preview. But Lloyd worked on his films until they were the best they could be. The shine he put on these films is what makes them hold up a hundred years later.
Mildred Davis and Harold Lloyd, soon to be married in real life.
Another aspect that makes these old films so fun, especially with Harold Lloyd, is the outdoor, on-location shooting. It’s part of their charm. These were authentic locations in Culver City and Los Angeles. The movies provide a valuable record of what America was like in the 1920s– not only in terms of locations and historic sites, but in the way it captures the American ethos. This was the era of the stunt– of flagpole sitters and daredevil stunt pilots– things you’d only find in the Jazz Age. Safety Last! reflects this as well as both sides of the American dream– the exhausting and the exhilarating aspects of one’s climb to success.
In modern cinema, there is no real audience suspense anymore with stunt-work because all the thrills that we see are typically done in a computer or are assumed to be. But audiences in the 1920s were literally on the edge of their seats when they saw this film. They really believed Harold was climbing a building. The sequence was in fact shot at four different locations and at different heights. At each location, a façade of a building was built at the edge of a roof. The camera placement then created the perspective that he was as high as he appeared. Though there was a roof below Harold, there was always the danger that he could fall and bounce off the mattresses beneath– his only safety net. What is even more impressive is that Harold Lloyd did his climbing and hanging with only one complete hand. His right hand had lost the thumb and forefinger in a well-documented accident in 1919. Ever since, he wore a prosthetic glove to conceal the handicap.
The climbing sequence was actually shot first during the production. It took two months during the summer of 1922. Afterward, Harold made the rest of the film and devised the important motivation for the climactic climb; Mildred Davis became that motivation. Shortly after the film’s completion, Mildred married Harold. They would be together until her death in 1969.
Safety Last! was a tremendous success with the public. Lloyd was, at this time, one of the biggest stars in the world. It was Harold Lloyd who was the dominant comedian at the box office. Audiences were comfortable with Harold and they could relate to his Everyman persona. He wasn’t an outsider or an oddity. He was one of us.
The following is an amusing anecdote I came across back in 2011 when I screened the film at the library. The story comes from a book called Skyscrapers: A Social History. Author George Douglas writes,
“Some people expected him to perform his human spider act on a moment’s notice. In 1923, shortly after the release of Safety Last, Lloyd was in Chicago to promote the picture in a town where three dominant distributing organizations had the town’s theatres sewn up and were not offering enough money for Safety Last. Lloyd and his producers decided to sponsor the film themselves. To gain publicity somebody in Chicago got the idea of having Lloyd dedicate the twenty-fourth-floor clock on the central tower of the newly opened Wrigley Building.
“Lloyd made it clear that he had not the slightest intention of climbing around on the Wrigley Building, an intention his local supporters had obviously anticipated. To pull the stunt off they had hired a stuntman to dress in Lloyd’s clothes and go up on the tower. He was to be lowered over the edge of the building in a boatswain seat and then make a daring pass at the giant clock with a bottle of champagne. The idea was that Lloyd would greet crowds out in front of the building, have photos taken, and then disappear inside the building, after which the paid human spider would take over, dressed in identical clothes and wearing the expected Lloyd-like spectacles. There were thousands of people waiting for the great moment, prompting Lloyd to exclaim, ‘My God, is everybody in Chicago here?’
“But the prank never came off. The winds were blowing in typical Chicago fashion, and the substitute human spider would have nothing to do with being whipped around on top of the Wrigley Building. He decided against attempting the stunt.
“’What are you going to do now, Harold?’ asked the promoters. ‘Would it be possible for you to substitute for the human spider like you do in your movies?’ A typical Harold Lloyd plot seemed to be in the making, but Lloyd insisted that he most certainly would do no such thing. ‘Instead,’ he recalled, ‘I asked for a megaphone and permission to speak to the crowd from the top of an automobile. I told the crowd exactly what had happened, play by play. The story was so funny that the audience took it as a substitute for the deed.’ The clock on the Wrigley Building was never dedicated.”
Safety Last! will be screened Wednesday, May 12, at 7:30 PM at the Pickwick Theatre. Park Ridge paramedics will be on call for those faint of heart! For more about this event and how you can purchase tickets, please visit The Silent Film Society of Chicago.
~MCH