On the day he is fired after 22 years as a bank clerk, Harold Diddlebock (Harold Lloyd) drowns his sorrows at a bar. He recklessly places a large bet at the track and wins, and with the cash he buys a circus. Soliciting banks to buy the circus, he visits them with his new pet, Jackie the lion, and ends up in jail for his stunt. He is flooded with offers, promptly starting another wild spree that leaves him even richer --- and married!

In Harold Lloyd's last film, he recreates his famous ledge gag (from Safety Last), dangling on a chain from a lion's neck on the top floor of a skyscraper. A modern sequel to Harold Lloyd's classic silent comedy, The Freshman, The Sin of Harold Diddlebock (aka Mad Wednesday) was written and directed in lavish screwball comic style by Preston Sturgess.

Directed and written by comic maverick Preston Sturges, this film tells the unlikely story of Harold Diddlebock. Harold, a middle-aged bookkeeper with his glory days far behind him, finds himself fired from his job of twenty years. After a drunken spree and a series of hilarious and unforeseeable events, Harold finds himself the owner of a bankrupt circus. THE SIN OF HAROLD DIDDLEBOCK is considered actor Harold Lloyd's most hilarious work in the postsilent film days. See MAD WEDNESDAY for producer Howard Hughes's edited version, released nine years later.