Bumping Into Broadway (1919)
Arguably the most famous image of Harold Lloyd is of him dangling precariously off of the side of a building hanging from the minute hand of a large clock. That film, released in 1923, is called Safety Last! Film teachers will point out that Harold is hanging on to that clock with a few less fingers than he was born with. Harold lost his right thumb and forefinger as well as his sight in an accident which occurred a few months after Bumping into Broadway had been filmed. A prop bomb exploded in his hand during a publicity shoot that blinded him and took part of his hand with it. How it is possible for a prop bomb to explode or to mistake a real bomb for a prop is not something we will be covering today, so don’t get your hopes up. The good news though was by the time Bumping into Broadway was released in theaters, Harold’s eyes had miraculously recovered and he was able to attend the premiere.
This film is the first two-reel picture of Harold Lloyd’s with his “glasses character.” Prior to creating this optimistic every-man character forever recognized by those unique pair of glasses, Harold had been known and successful for his Lonesome Luke character. When asked why he abandoned Lonesome Luke, Harold reportedly replied, “Charlie (Chaplin) had the market cornered on that. He had it down to a science.”
After watching Bumping into Broadway or any other of the films in which he plays the go getting guy with the glasses it’s hard to picture Lloyd as anything else in my opinion anyway.
He was so famous for those glasses that Lloyd found that he could hide his identity simply by taking them off. This last bit of trivia had a notable impact on Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel. In 1938, when they created the look of Clark Kent, they modeled him after the man known for altering his identity through a pair of glasses.
