Man, the biannual clock change really screwed me up on Sunday. I had tentative plans to see the new movie Champions, but between various chores I had to do and getting up later than usual, it meant I basically decided to stay home and get work done rather than take in an early movie and get that stuff done afterwards. Granted, that did mean I could take in a movie at home, and I settled for Safety Last! a comedy featuring Harold Lloyd. I’ve seen Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, but not Lloyd, a man renowned for his hanging off ledges.
I think most of that came from Safety Last!
Listed as “The Boy” in the opening credits but apparently also “Harold Lloyd” in the movie, young Harold is leaving the small town of Great Bend to go make his fortune in the big city in order to marry his sweetheart “The Girl,” AKA Mildred (Mildred Davis). He believes he needs to make something of himself before the two can tie the knot. But even leaving Great Bend is a challenge in and of itself as he grabs an African American woman’s baby instead of his luggage and jumps on an ice truck when he nearly misses his train. And honestly, that African American woman was clearly someone in blackface, but the baby wasn’t, and this is a movie from 1923 and is bound to have more than a few problematic elements. Suffice to say, Harold may not be making much of a fortune in the big city if he can barely get there without an incident.
In fact, his daily letters home to Mildred suggest he’s a lot more successful at the department store he works in than he lets on. When Mildred comes to the big city herself to see him, Harold has to fake a few things before he overhears how the story manager will pay a thousand dollars if someone can drive customers to the store. Harold has just the trick: his friend and roommate “Limpy” Bill (Bill Strother) is actually an adept climber who could easily scale the side of the 12 story building for a publicity stunt, and he will gladly split the money with Harold. Small problem: there’s a beat cop (Noah Young) after Bill, and it looks like Harold will have to climb the building himself. Can he make it?
As I understand it, Lloyd is the third of the great silent era comedians after Chaplin and Keaton. Chaplin was a virtuoso of mime, expression, and physical comedy. His Little Tramp character is still something of an icon. Keaton played many of his best known roles with a dour look on his face, like he knows the universe is going to crap all over him, so why bother trying to stop it? And as for Lloyd, if this one movie is anything to go by…I got nothin’. He’s adept at the physical comedy and did a lot (though not all) of his own stunts despite missing a couple fingers on one hand, and he apparently married Davis and stayed married to her until her death in 1969. But as a comic persona, he strikes me as very generic.
That’s not to say this is bad. It isn’t. The only issue is Lloyd doesn’t really have much of a comedic persona beyond being a youthful-looking guy. The comedy itself is sharp, and just about everything that can go wrong on his famous climb, especially the infamous clock bit, does happen. There are even a couple of verbal jokes in the caption cards that work. Will I be looking for more of Lloyd’s work? I wouldn’t go out of my way for them like I would a Chaplin if I found one I hadn’t seen, but it’s not hard to see why he was as popular as he was for as long as he was and why his work is still available on streaming services (I saw this on HBO Max) even today. So, I won’t go out of my way to find more, but I won’t say no if the opportunity presents itself either.
Grade: B+
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