It includes one of the most famous images from the silent-film era: Lloyd clutching the hands of a large clock as he dangles from the outside of a skyscraper above moving traffic.

The film was highly successful and critically hailed, and it cemented Lloyd's status as a major figure in early motion pictures.

Lloyd performed some of the climbing stunts himself, despite having lost a thumb and forefinger four years earlier in a film accident.

was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

He gets a job as a salesclerk at the De Vore Department Store, where he has to pull various stunts to get out of trouble with the picky and arrogantly self-important head floorwalker, Mr. Stubbs.

She mistakenly thinks he is successful enough to support a family and, with his mother's encouragement, takes a train to join him.

He remembers Bill's talent and pitches the idea of having a man climb the "12-story Bolton building", which De Vore's occupies.

When a drunkard shows "The Law" (the policeman who was pushed over) a newspaper story about the event, the lawman suspects Bill is going to be the climber.

Eventually, Harold reaches the top, despite his troubles with some hungry pigeons, a net, several cheering girls, an old lady, a construction duo, a clock, a rope, a dog, a mouse, a gun man, a wind gauge, and finally kisses his girl.

Lloyd hanging from a giant clock on the corner of a building was seen as an iconic image for him, though it was achieved through a certain degree of improvisation.

[15] Stuntman Harvey Parry also appeared in the climactic sequence, a fact he revealed only after Lloyd's death.

[17] A contemporary review in Photoplay predicted the film's future: "This new Harold Lloyd farce will become a classic of its kind, or we will miss our guess.