Variety Magazine: Harold Lloyd Clocks In Again, 100 Years Later
Harold Lloyd Clocks In Again, 100 Years Later: Academy Museum Celebrates ‘Safety Last’ Centennial With Live-Orchestra Screening
Suzanne Lloyd talks about why her grandfather’s legacy of comedy and thrills is enduring, and what will make Sunday’s Academy screening especially sentimental
The classic Harold Lloyd comedy “Safety Last” is turning 100 years old this year. But with its heavy dollops of action and a superstar’s real-life derring-do, it doesn’t seem a day over 10, even if it does date back to the silent era. The film screens this Sunday as the climax of the Academy Museum’s “Silent Sundays” series, with a live score from a 24-piece orchestra helping heighten the suspense in the ultimate fear-of-heights movie.
Lloyd’s granddaughter, Suzanne Lloyd, will be on hand for the anniversary screening. As the keeper of her granddad’s flame for decades, she has perspective on how “Safety Last” resonates with contemporary audiences, especially an extended final act that has the ‘20s star climbing a skyscraper in downtown L.A. and finally hanging from a wayward clockface, in one of the most iconographic images in all of movie history.
SlapstickFest Celebration
SlapstickFest’s celebration of @TheHaroldLloyd’s thrilling comedy masterpiece Safety Last is less than a week away! Tickets are limited & going quickly! Don’t miss out on your chance to experience this film on the big screen w/live music accompaniment!
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NYT: A Man Hanging From a Clock
It is one of the most enduring images from the silent film era, and arguably the movie stunt that led to the cliffhanging, skyscraper-loving action hero of today: the actor Harold Lloyd dangling from the hands of a clock on the side of an office building.
The film, “Safety Last!,” released in April 1923, was in many ways Lloyd’s zenith as a major Hollywood star. He is said to have come up with the idea of dangling from the side of a building after seeing a man scale one in Los Angeles.
But Lloyd wanted the stunt to be even more outrageous on film. Enter the clock.
“Harold was such a realist, and every scenario in his movies had to be a real event or a real situation for a person to be in,” his granddaughter, Suzanne Lloyd, 71, said during a recent video interview from her Los Angeles home. “The clock was another tool on the side of the building to perpetuate the stunt. He thought, ‘I can really play off of that.’”
Baz Luhrmann To Receive Harold Lloyd Award
Elvis filmmaker Baz Luhrmann has been tapped to receive the Advanced Imaging Society’s Harold Lloyd Award at the 2023 Lumiere Awards, which are taking place at The Beverly Hills Hotel on February 10.
Named after the iconic 20th century movie star who over the course of his career starred in almost 200 comedies — both before and after the transition from silent films to talkies — the Harold Lloyd Lumiere Award is a recognition of distinguished achievement in filmmaking. It’s presented annually, in partnership with the Harold Lloyd family, to directors who have marshaled technology to empower their storytelling.