Safety Last! (film)

• Release Date: 1923
• Director(s): Fred Newmeyer; Sam Taylor
• Writer(s): Hal Roach; Sam Taylor; Tim Whelan
• Principal Actors and Roles: Mildred Davis (The Girl); Harold Lloyd (The Boy)

Safety Last is an American silent movie filmed in black and white. This comedy includes a scene that has become famous, that of a bespectacled young man dangling from the hand of a huge clock far above the city streets. The film was a box office hit and contained many sight gags, as well as a thrilling climb up the side of a skyscraper.

Harold Lloyd ranks high, behind Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, as one of the top silent film comedians. He scared audiences with his daring stunts and made them laugh with his funny pranks. Ambulances stood by at the showings of Safety Last because so many people fainted from the excitement.

The inspiration for Safety Last came when Lloyd saw a "human fly" scale the side of a Los Angeles building and noticed the huge crowd he had attracted. Lloyd wanted to recreate that scary climb in a movie, and the entire story of Safety Last was constructed around that one stunt. The same "human fly", Bill Strother, was cast as the Pal.

Mildred Davis played Lloyd’s love interest, and after the movie was finished, her contract was also finished. She planned to go to a different movie studio but Lloyd proposed and she accepted. They remained married until her death in 1969. Davis was so afraid of heights that two people held her ankles when she was near the edge of the building in the final scenes of the movie.

Lloyd’s 1920s audience indentified with his character as a somewhat inept Everyman, who struggled to become a success despite many obstacles. The climb up the building is often said to be a metaphor for the ordinary man’s struggle to obtain the American Dream.

Plot

The Boy leaves his fiancée and heads for the city. He will send for her when he makes good. Although the Boy has a job in a department store, he and his roommate, the Pal, have little money. The Boy pawns their record player so he can buy a lavaliere for his fiancée and he uses his entire check to buy a nice chain for the pendant. The Girl’s mother urges her to go to the city because a young man with so much money should not be alone.

The Boy and the Pal play a trick on a policeman and the Pal is chased up the side of a building. The Pal tells his friend that climbing the building was nothing. He can easily climb sixteen stories.

At work, the Boy is reprimanded for his untidy appearance. When the Girl sees him emerge from the general manager’s office, she thinks it is his office. The Boy keeps up the charade by giving orders to his fellow workers. The Girl is pleased they will now be able to buy their own house. Later, the Boy overhears the general manager say that he will give a thousand dollars to anyone who can bring a crowd to the store. The Boy remembers how a crowd watched the Pal climb the building to escape the policeman.

The Pal agrees to climb the side of the department store but the policeman recognizes the Pal and chases him. The Boy reluctantly climbs to the second floor where the Pal plans to trade places with him once he evades the policeman. But the policeman is still there on the second floor, and the third, and all the way to the top of the building. The Boy makes the climb with many slips and perils. Pigeons attack him, a net falls on him, a mouse runs up his pants leg, and he clings to the hands of a giant clock to avoid falling. Eventually the Boy makes it to the top, where he kisses the Girl. He is so happy that he walks through fresh tar, loses his shoes, and does not even notice.

Significance

Safety Last was popular with audiences, including President Warren G. Harding. It earned ten times what it cost to make it.

Safety Last was selected for the National Film Registry in 1994. The National Film Registry chooses films that are "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" to be preserved in the Library of Congress. The American Film Institute (AFI) included Safety Last in AFI’s 100 Years . . . 100 Thrills, a list of the one hundred most thrilling American films of all time. Safety Last was ranked ninety-seventh and was the earliest film on the list.

Harold Lloyd performed many of his own stunts. For many years it was believed that he did all of the stunts; however, a stunt double was used in the long shots and in a few other scenes. Lloyd did most of the climbing and dangled from the clock. He performed his stunts with only eight fingers because a prop bomb had blown off his right thumb and forefinger.

Lloyd does not climb a real skyscraper. Instead walls, sometimes three stories high, were built on the roofs of three buildings of different heights so that the distance from the street changed as Lloyd climbed higher. The camera always included the streets below in the scene to show perspective and distance. Mattresses were placed on a platform below Lloyd as a safety precaution, although when they tested the mattresses with a dummy, the dummy bounced off the mattresses and fell to the street. Lloyd did his stunts anyway, sometimes even moving beyond the boundaries of the safety platform. The climb was filmed over the course of two months.

The streets of Los Angeles were recorded for posterity in the background of the climb. Not only does the film show the automobiles and traffic patterns of the 1920s, but it also includes buildings that no longer exist.

The famous action star, Jackie Chan, was influenced by Harold Lloyd’s stunts and the way he could bring humor to dangerous situations. Chan did all his own stunts, paying homage to Lloyd when Chan clings to the hands of a giant clock, slips, and falls three stories. In the move Back to the Future, actor Christopher Lloyd also re-creates the iconic image by hanging from the hands of a clock. The 2011 award-winning movie Hugo not only includes a clip of Safety Last, it has a scene where the boy hangs from the hands of a huge clock.

Bibliography

Bilton, Alan. Silent Film Comedy and American Culture. New York: Palgrave, 2013. Print.

Horton, Andrew, and Joanna E. Rapf. A Companion to Film Comedy. Malden: Wiley, 2013. Print.

Karnick, Kristine Brunovska, and Henry Jenkins. Classical Hollywood Comedy. New York: Routledge, 1995. Print.

Lloyd, Ann, and David Robinson. Movies of the Silent Years. London: Orbis, 1984. Print.

Maltin, Leonard. Leonard Maltin’s Classic Movie Guide: From the Silent Era through 1965. 2nd ed. London: Penguin, 2011. Print.

Roots, James. The 100 Greatest Silent Film Comedians. Lanham: Rowman, 2014. Print.