MONEY IN FILM (a.k.a. HEY, IS THAT A...?)

      I had my VCR reconnected recently to help out my Best Friend with something. After I was finished, I remembered I had a recording of a Harold Lloyd silent film called Safety Last, a film which you are likely aware of solely from this still:

Safety Last starring Harold Lloyd (1923)

      The movie is actually entertaining and is the first silent film I ever sincerely watched (I remember as a kid, a chain restaurant called the Ground Round would show Charlie Chaplin films throughout the evening but I didn't watch them for more than a few seconds at a time). It has moments of genuine humor and is engaging to watch if only for glimpses of life and fashion in 1920s America. The main character, conveniently named Harry, works as a sales clerk in a department store for a whole $15 a week.

55 hour workweek

There's a scene showing a "Businessman's Lunch" in a local diner for 50¢:

      How enviable, right? But I liked the minor attentions to detail like the fact that real money was used in the film. (I guess it became illegal to show real money at some point - that would always take me out of films, even as a kid, to see obviously fake money being used on screen) In the film, Harry moves to the city to become a big shot in order to impress his monumentally stupid girlfriend (who is never given a name - referred to only as "The Girl"). He never makes it but tries to convince her otherwise by buying her expensive things in an effort to show off. In the scene with the lunch, just after he was paid, he went to a local jewelers and purchased a platinum necklace for $15.50. Harry pulled out five dimes from his pocket:

Safety Last - dimes

      How appealing to a collector to see in his hand, three Mercury and two Barber dimes (1916-1945 and 1892-1916 respectively). He spent his entire paycheck plus these five dimes. A course from the Businessman's Lunch would be shown disappearing with each dime paid. There were three notes in the pay envelope which I can only imagine were $5 bills, but no shot was ever clear enough to show what type they were. However...

      Later in the film, The Girl comes to the city to see how her impressive boyfriend lives. Shenanigans ensue. She first spies Harry leaving the General Manager's office (he was being reprimanded for being only in shirt sleeves on the sales floor - the scandal!) and dummy thinks he's actually a manager. She wants to see "his" office. Harry makes excuses until he sees the G.M. leaving his office and then offers her a quick look. In the office, Harry absent-mindedly pushes a button summoning an assistant. Wanting to further impress his girlfriend, he drops a $1 bill into the garbage, making sure the assistant sees it so that he will be in on the gag and then orders him bombastically to remove the garbage at once. The assistant starts to leave when Harry calls him back for a piece of paper he missed and Harry snatches the $1 bill back as the assistant picks up the piece of paper :-)

Safety Last - Silver Certificate

      That's an 1899 series $1 Silver Certificate (also known as the "Black Eagle Note"), the current series at the time this movie was produced. It is also of the large-sized paper currency which was replaced by our current-sized notes in 1929 (see comparison of the two note sizes here). It's also visible in the garbage can:

Worth about $13.40 today

And the winking exchange:

"Pretend I'm the boss." --- "Gotcha!"

      So in addition to being a fun film to watch from the bygone silent film era, it also provides some nominal bonus entertainment for numismatists who almost certainly wish they could've lived in an era when what is now collectible coin and currency was simply money to buy things with.