Harold Lloyd

Harold Clayton Lloyd Sr. was born April 20, 1893, and by 1914 had begun cranking out silent comedies at a furious pace. His signature character - bespectacled, resourceful, always climbing - captured the ambitious churn of 1920s America across nearly 200 films. In August 1919, a publicity-shoot bomb he mistook for a prop exploded in his hand, costing him a thumb and index finger; he hid the loss with a prosthetic glove so seamless audiences never caught it. Safety Last! arrived in 1923, its clock-hang stunt exaggerated by camera angles but still dangerous, and it became one of cinema's indelible images. He kept performing his own stunts - though scaled back - through the talkies, working until 1947. Lloyd died March 8, 1971, having spent half a century making people gasp and laugh in the same breath.