Safety Last!

Um, we show, we go all the way back to the '20s, so we have, of course, a silent film, and our house organist, Ed Copeland, he'll be, uh, doing a live performance for it, and it's actually his favorite film.

It's called Safety Last! with, um, uh, Harold Lloyd, w- a very famous silent comedian.

Um, and then of course we have some touches to some of our programming that people know and then some kinda fun things.

Like for the 1940s we're doing the original Disney Pinocchio because now The Heights, under our ownership, has bring, has doing, um, classic cinema for families-

So that they can learn from him as well.

So we were planning on trying to make that one of our first trips and then got the invite to take them to Europe next summer where we'll be premiering Safety Last in Vienna.

Yeah.

Robert Israel's course.

What can you tell us now about that in advance? Or is there much nailed down that you can share with us

yet? We're going on in March and we'll be at the Moot.

And we will be performing Robert Israel's newest score for Safety Last full length.

So we'll perform it here at Clemson on February 2nd.

One of the great, one of the iconic silent film comedians of all time, Keaton.

We talked about Harold Lloyd in Safety Last!.

Mm-hmm.

Keaton, and Lloyd, and Chaplin.

The same year, the Harold series expanded from shorts to feature-length comedies.

Those early comedies, including Grandma's Boy, Safety Last, which features his most iconic image, the one where he hangs from a giant clock above a busy street, and Why Worry?, are early, shining examples of quality comedy, which gained Lloyd stardom level.

In 1924, Lloyd and Roach parted ways and Lloyd founded the Harold Lloyd Film Corporation.

Through this company, he produced only feature comedy movies and no shorts at all.

Right?

Um, I'm a big fan of Safety Last.

Okay.

Yeah, yeah.

A guy named Earl Mohan, who was the first guy around Roach to ever wear, you know, lensless Hornbren glasses.

He's in safety last.

He's the guy that kind of promotes the kick me gag.

That's a guy named Earl Mohan.

But he knew what he wanted.

And so, you know, basically how these movies came about and how they were finished.

I mean, by the time Lloyd was making films like Safety Last for Roach, certainly Why Worry, which is his last film of Roach, but even things like Groundless Boy, by that time, he was kind of in charge of his own movie.

I mean, one of the reasons he broke away from Roach was not so much...

Jobyna Ralston's fourth collaboration with Harold had led to a shorthand in their acting chemistry.

Sam Taylor was directing his eighth feature, his seventh with Lloyd, although solo for the first time, but he'd been writing shorts and features for Harold, like Girl Shy and Safety Last!, going back to Now or Never in 1921.

Ted Wilde had co-written Why Worry, Girl Shy, and The Freshman, and would be in the director's chair himself for the next two films, The Kid Brother and Speedy.

John Gray had co-written the stories for The Freshman and Hot Water, for which he also wrote the title cards.

Well, you know, he, he learned a lot of lessons from Girl Shy.

Girl Shy was about as ambitious and open to, you know, that was his first film of his that he produced for his own production company, and he went completely nuts on that film, and he did everything- That he ever wanted to do on that one film

What is it, Carl Sandburg, the poet says, "The final chase was the stuntiest that Harold has had since he hung by his eye winkers from the skyscraper in Safety Last! It keeps him in his unique place on the screen, the best showman the comic spirit has had to date-

Wow