Safety Last (1923) gave us the image everyone associates with Harold Lloyd, the man hanging off the side of a skyscraper. However, this was hardly the first time Harold sent what he called his "glass character" to dangle from a large building. Look Out Below (1919) was the first and this film, High and Dizzy (1920), was the second. It was a title that summed up the great appeal of what were called "thrill comedies."

Even in the twenties, Harold's thrill comedies were his audience's favorites. "Doesn't anyone remember my other pictures?" he would later complain. "I made close to three hundred and only five were thrill pictures." However, even reviewers of the time praised his other comedies but held them secondary to his skyscraper antics. Even Harold felt the pressure. "We made [Safety Last] because after High and Dizzy everything seemed to be an anti-climax. We just had to do another thrill picture."

"High and dizzy" comedies did not start with Harold Lloyd. Stage comedians Bert Williams and Leon Errol had done a routine on a girder above a stage in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1914. However, the source for Harold's acrobatic adventures came from a misplaced camera and an accident of Los Angeles geography. Working on another film, Harold's producer/director Hal Roach had a scene with a couple standing on a terrace atop the Hill Street tunnel in Los Angeles. The cameraman failed to include in the frame any of the surrounding hilltop, which led to the impression that the couple was suspended high in the air over the city. For Harold's films, two or three floors of a skyscraper set was built on top of the hill and, with the same accidental framing, Harold seemed to be dangling off a ledge hundreds of feet above the pavement.

So how does Harold end up on the side of a tall building? In High and Dizzy it starts with his friend showing off his collection of then-illegal liquor. A few bottles start popping their corks and, to keep the stockpile secret, Lloyd and his friend are forced to drink up the runoff. Thoroughly under the influence, a none-too-steady Harold is sent out onto the ledge to save a pretty sleepwalker. The results are literally hair-raising, as performed by Lloyd in a wonderful special effect.

Roy Brooks, who gives a hilarious performance as Harold's drunken friend, was a friend to Harold in real life. After leaving acting behind, Harold hired him as his secretary and he lived on Harold's estate Greenacres for the next forty years. Closer still was the pretty sleepwalker, Mildred Davis. She and Harold married three years later and stayed together until her death in 1969.

Turner Classic Movies is proud to show High and Dizzy for the first time in a new digital transfer from Harold Lloyd's own original nitrate print.

Director: Hal Roach
Screenplay: Frank Terry
Cinematography: Walter Lundin Cast: Wallace Howe (Her Father), Harold Lloyd (The Boy), Mildred Davis (The Girl).
BW-25m.

by Brian Cady