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Safety Last! (1923)
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Overview
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Release Date:
1 April 1923 (USA)
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Plot:
When a store clerk organizes a contest to climb the outside of a tall building, circumstances force him to make the perilous climb himself. full summary | add synopsis
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Awards:
1 win
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A Climb to Remember
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Cast
(Complete credited cast) | Harold Lloyd | ... | The Boy |
| Mildred Davis | ... | The Girl |
| Bill Strother | ... | The Pal |
| Noah Young | ... | The Law |
| Westcott Clarke | ... | The Floorwalker (as Westcott B. Clarke) |
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Runtime:
70 min (24 fps)
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1.33 : 1 more
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Trivia:
This film was selected to the National Film Registry, Library of Congress, in 1994.
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Goofs:
Revealing mistakes: When "the boy" receives his paycheck from the store employee, he opens it to see his pay stub, and on it is the name "Harold Lloyd" which is the name of the actor, but is not supposed to be the name of the character. The character, as in most of his films, is only supposed to be known as "the boy". It is the only incident in Harold Lloyd's entire film career in which he plays a character using his true name. The scene was edited in without Lloyds knowledge, and didn't become aware of it until the movie was complete.
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Movie Connections:
Featured in "Calendar: (1962-04-16)" (1962)
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It has truly said that while THE FRESHMAN, or SPEEDY, or THE KID BROTHER, are better films, SAFETY LAST is the film that everyone who never saw a Harold Lloyd comedy recalls. That is because in one moment on the screen he engraved himself forever into the minds of movie lovers (something, oddly enough, Chaplin and Keanton never quite did in a single moment of film). Lloyd, of course, became immortal for being the man suspended from the clock of the building he was climbing in the concluding half hour of this wonderful comedy. There is more to the film than that of course. Harold, here in love with his home town girlfriend Mildred Davis (who was his wife in real life), has sacrificed money to buy her jewelry, and has been sending her letters lying about his business success. He claims he is a bigwig at the department store he is a clerk in. Actually he is constantly in hot water with the pompous floor walker, Mr. Stubbs (Westcott Clarke). After he sends a second gift to Mildred she decides to join him in the city. He manages to pass himself off as the store's general manager (don't ask - you have to see how he does it). But she wants to get married now - he's making enough supposedly for a house. His best friend is a human fly (Bill Strother), so Harold proposes to the actual general manager a publicity stunt wherein a mystery man will climb the department store facade (15 stories). Unfortunately, Police Officer Noah Young has a grudge against Strother, and keeps preventing him from climbing. So Harold has to climb up the side - with Strother promising to take over at the right moment once he shakes off Young.
Although Chaplin and Keaton's physical comedy included dangers to them (Keaton and the water fall in OUR HOSPITALITY, for example), the climb up the store's facade is considered in a class by itself. Certainly it is one of the few comedy stunts that have been taken apart and analyzed over the years (even when we know how it was done, it still impresses us). The stunt got a life of it's own, beyond the famous clock photograph, because the film's theme is the success theme in American business life. Harold wants to make it in business, and he's just a down-trodden clerk. To make it rich, and to get his girl, he has to risk all on a $1,000.00 gamble. He does in the end, with his "climbing" having been cleverly compared to "climbing" the business ladder or getting ahead in America. When he seems to retreat at one point some of the onlookers shake their heads and point upward. Once he is on his route to success, he can't turn back.
The film is more fun than that particularly good interpretation makes it sound. It deserves a 10 for it's success at remaining a humorous and lasting peace of cinematic comic art, and a fitting monument to that comedy master Harold Lloyd.