SAFETY LAST! A-
USA (70 mi)
1923 d: Fred C. Newmeyer and Sam Taylor
Martin Scorsese’s Hugo in 3D (2011) was largely a
loving tribute to the early history of cinema, featuring plenty of clips from
earlier movies, where the main characters sneak into a movie theater and see a
portion of a legendary Harold Lloyd stunt where he dangles above moving traffic
12-stories below while clutching the hands of an outdoor building clock of a
skyscraper, which likely spurned new interest in this film, as it’s the one
time Lloyd topped Buster Keaton for degree of difficulty in a film stunt. Lloyd was always overshadowed by the more
popular Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, whose physical comedy often included
danger to the performers, this film immortalized Harold Lloyd with what is
arguably the greatest stunt in movie history.
Part of the reason Lloyd is less known is his films are so grounded in
the era of 1920’s America, and he had a distinctive business practice of
holding onto the rights to his films, where they weren’t re-released as
frequently as the best of Chaplin or Keaton, so until the era of DVD
collections, many people simply hadn’t seen or heard of most of his work. Also, Lloyd, interestingly, refused to grant
cinematic rights to theaters that could not accommodate an organist, claiming
his work was not intended to be played with pianos. Lloyd also held out for $300,000 per picture
for two showings on television, which resulted in far fewer sightings of his
work than Chaplin and Keaton. His films,
however, often included chase sequences or daredevil feats, where in 1919 he
suffered an injury from an explosive devise that was mistaken for a prop,
resulting in the loss of his thumb and index finger of his right hand, wearing
a special prosthetic glove afterwards.
The film’s ironic title refers to the expression “safety first,” which
places safety as a priority to avoid accidents, and is a lacerating satire on the
potential hazards of work.
Born in a small town in Nebraska, Lloyd, always anxious to
please with his recognizable Clark Kent glasses, plays a typically average middle
class everyman who believes that success can be achieved through hard work, and
while eagerly striving for success and recognition, here he literally and
metaphorically tries to climb his way to the top. Billed only as “The Boy,” Lloyd already has a
small town sweetheart, “The Girl,” Mildred Taylor, who became Lloyd’s real life
wife and retired from acting shortly after the shoot, where he plans to make it
in the big city, sending for her after he’s become successful. Living with a roommate known as “The Pal,”
(Bill Strother), both have a hard time stuck in low end wages, where one of the
better sight gags is both avoiding the rent-collecting landlady by hiding
inside two coats hanging on the wall.
While there’s a lengthy sequence of fate preventing him from showing up
for work on time, Lloyd has a meager sales job selling fabrics at a department
store, an exploitive job where he’s continually debased, where he’s hounded
both by an overly oppressive floor manager (Westcott Clarke), a slave driver
who’s a stickler for rules and maintaining a dignified professional appearance,
all while he’s being besieged by a fanatically crazed mob that overwhelms him
with non-stop customer demands, never allowing him a moment to breathe. When he actually does receive a pay check,
the employee name is interestingly named “Harold Lloyd,” the only time this
occurred throughout his entire career, supposedly edited in without Lloyd’s
knowledge. As a sign of encouragement,
he mails his beloved back home a piece of jewelry, claiming he’s become a
successful business tycoon and that he’d send for her shortly. However, she can’t wait and decides to
surprise him in the city, forcing Lloyd into a series of clever on-the-spot moments
pretending to be the boss. But it’s only
when he overhears his real boss promising $1000 to anyone who could produce a
crowd for the store that he steps in, knowing his “Pal” has an ability to elude
cops by climbing straight up the sides of buildings, a dazzling spectacle sure
to draw a crowd.
The clock face stunt was inspired by an actual Bill Strother
performance as a human fly that could climb up the sides of buildings, where
Lloyd happened to catch his act climbing the Brockman Building while walking in
Los Angeles one day (Human flies were supposedly very popular at the time, as
were flagpole sitters and goldfish eaters.)
The big finale to the stunt involved Strother riding a bicycle along the
rooftop's edge and then standing on his head on a flagpole. Lloyd immediately placed Strother under
contract at the Hal Roach studio, where Lloyd’s own career began in 1913,
creating a comic character named Lonesome Luke, somewhat based upon Chaplin’s
Tramp, but growing tired of that persona after 70 films, he created a new
everyman character famous for wearing spectacles, where his character could
change from being rich in one film and poor the next, but the pictures
consistently featured overriding ambition and optimism as well as a continual
stream of sight gags. While many of the
interior scenes were shot at a Los Angeles department store Ville de Paris,
owned by a friend of Roach, they shot in the evenings working well after
midnight. Everything on the big day is
set, where “Pal” agrees to the climb for half the reward, but waiting at the
bottom is a nemesis cop that has it in for him, so he tells Lloyd to start the
climb up a few floors, and he’ll take over after that, where they could switch
clothes and no one would ever notice the difference. But things don’t go as planned, which means
Lloyd must make the climb himself, overcoming any number of obstacles along the
way. While his friend is too busy trying
to dodge a cop, Lloyd’s epic climb builds in a beautifully constructed
sequence, arguably the most memorable stunt of the silent era, where the real
skill is creating an everpresent sense of danger by continually framing the
exterior shots of Lloyd on the side of the building in full view of the
12-story fall directly behind him, creating and maintaining insurmountable
tension and suspense. For today’s
audience used to seeing computer enhanced stunts, think of the neverending
parade of martial arts superheroes, or expert stuntmen creating death defying
action scenes, what’s particularly stunning is how this feat was accomplished
by a seemingly ordinary guy, a pure amateur with no special talents forced by
circumstances to become a man of action, with each gag building in succession
upon the last, creating a thrilling sequence that is the earliest film listed
on the AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills List of
100 Most Thrilling Movies.
