Safety Last!
About Safety Last!
Harold leaves his hometown promising to send for Mildred once he has made good. In the city he is only a clerk at the De Vore department store, sharing a room with his friend Bill, but the gifts he sends convince Mildred he is a success. When she arrives, he hears the manager offer $1,000 for a publicity stunt and proposes that Bill climb the twelve-story Bolton Building. A policeman who wants Bill keeps the switch from happening, so Harold climbs the whole facade, clock and all, and kisses Mildred at the top.
Cast & crew
More about Safety Last!
Fred C. Newmeyer and Sam Taylor directed. Hal Roach produced, from a story by Roach, Taylor, and Tim Whelan, with titles by H. M. Walker. Pathé Exchange released it in the United States on April 1, 1923. Sets matching the International Bank Building were built on downtown roofs.
Themes
In film history
The image of Lloyd hanging from the clock hands is the still most often used for him and for the film.
Making
Walter Lundin photographed the climb. T. J. Crizer edited. The alley used near Hollywood Boulevard and Cahuenga was later named Chaplin-Keaton-Lloyd Alley.
Reviews
The New York Times reviewed the film favorably. Photoplay called it one of the big comedies of the year.
Look
Walter Lundin shot the facade from platforms built above downtown streets so the street stayed in frame under Lloyd.
Technique
The Bolton Building climb was staged on a real facade and on matching sets placed on the roofs of other Los Angeles buildings, so the camera could look past Lloyd to the street.
Music
Silent, with titles by H. M. Walker.
Preservation
Selected for the National Film Registry in 1994. The film is intact.
Notes
- Bill Strother, a steeplejack, plays Bill and doubled Lloyd in the long shots.
- Harvey Parry worked on the climb sequence.
- Noah Young plays the policeman who chases Bill from floor to floor.
- Lloyd did most of the climbing himself. A prop-bomb accident in 1919 had cost him a thumb and a forefinger.
- The opening looks like a hanging. It is a railway goodbye, seen through a trackside hoop.
- U.S. copyright on 1923 films, including this one, expired in 2019.
Scenes
- What looks like a scaffold is the hoop at a railway platform as Harold's train leaves.
- Lloyd hangs from the clock hands while the traffic moves below.
- At the top he steps in tar and walks off without his shoes.
Also available
- Criterion Collection Blu-ray and DVD (June 18, 2013)
- Wikimedia Commons (Safety Last! (1923) by Fred C. Newmeyer.webm)
