The most famous death-defying stunt in silent film history shows a man in round glasses dangling from a skyscraper clock. Now imagine doing it while missing half your dominant hand, concealed beneath a specially built prosthetic glove.

This episode tells the story of Harold Lloyd, the third genius of silent film and the highest-paid film performer of the 1920s. We follow how a scrappy Nebraska kid built a comedy empire, survived a bomb blast, and fiercely guarded a legacy that nearly faded from cultural memory.

• How he snuck past a studio gatekeeper in disguise during a shift change to break into the movie business
• The 1919 prop-bomb explosion that severed his thumb and forefinger and temporarily blinded him
• Why his everyman glass character outshone Chaplin’s tramp by embodying 1920s American ambition
• The 1943 nitrate film vault fire that nearly killed him as he rushed into toxic chlorine gas to save his work
• His refusal to let his films air with cheap piano scores, pricing himself out of television and cultural memory