Released in 1923 and directed by Fred C. Newmeyer and Sam Taylor, Safety Last!is a masterpiece of silent cinema and the definitive vehicle for comedian Harold Lloyd. The film follows an ambitious young man who moves to the big city to make his fortune and marry his sweetheart, only to end up working a lowly clerk job at a department store. To earn a cash prize, he organizes a publicity stunt that forces him to scale the exterior of the skyscraper himself. The movie is immortalized by its "thrill comedy" climax, which produced one of the most iconic images in film history: Lloyd dangling desperately from the hands of a giant clock face, suspended high above the traffic of Los Angeles.
