Never Weaken

Harold Lloyd's last short, 1921: a boy who thinks he has lost the girl decides to die, and the city will not let him. Fred Newmeyer directed. The girder, the girder again, the drop that is a construction site. It is Safety Last in miniature, a year and a half early. Lloyd's body as a man who has scheduled his own death and been interrupted by a beam. Mildred Davis is the girl. He does not jump. He falls upward.