Harold Lloyd first tested the safety precautions for the clock stunt by dropping a dummy onto the mattress below. The dummy bounced off and plummeted to the street below.
Harold Lloyd married his co-star Mildred Davis on 10 February 1923. They remained married until her death on 18 August 1969. They had three children.
Stuntman Harvey Parry revealed for the first time in the television documentary, Hollywood (1980), that Harold Lloyd actually climbed a fake building facade that was constructed over another building's rooftop, positioned so the camera angle could capture the street scene below. Harvey Parry also revealed that he doubled for Lloyd in the long shots of him climbing the building in the distance. Up until then, even the Time-Life version of Preferisco l'ascensore (1923) that was aired on PBS contained an opening title declaring that Harold Lloyd climbed the building himself and without the use of a stuntman or trick photography. The stuntman chose to suppress this information until Lloyd's death, and yet, he did not want to detract from the danger of Lloyd's actual stunt work. Lloyd performed the majority of the stunts himself on the rigged facade over a small platform, which was built near the rooftop's edge and still had to be raised a great height to get the proper street perspective for the camera. The size of the platform did not offer much of a safety net, and had Lloyd fallen, there was the risk he could have tumbled off the platform.
In 1919 Harold Lloyd was handed what he thought was a prop bomb, which he lit with his cigarette. It turned out to be real and exploded, blowing off Lloyd's right thumb and index finger, and putting him in the hospital for months. When he recovered, he went back to making movies, wearing a white glove while on screen to hide his damaged right hand. Stuntman Harvey Parry stunt doubled Harold Lloyd in this film dangling from ledges, clocks and windows.
Harold Lloyd got the idea for this film when he saw Bill Strother climbing the Brockman Building in Los Angeles as a stunt one day. Lloyd - who had a difficult time watching anyone else perform a dangerous stunt because he had no control over that situation - hid behind a corner, peeking to check on Strother's progress every few moments. After Strother reached the roof, Lloyd went up and introduced himself.