Top Five Gags: His Wedding Night

August 20, 1917 – the day His Wedding Night was released.  Not my favorite Fatty Arbuckle short and certainly one of the more problematic ones.  Still, there are some good jokes in here, and Buster continues to gain screentime in his collaborations with Arbuckle (and none of the uncomfortable stuff is on his side, so it’s easier to enjoy freely.)  Spoilers.

Fun with Ice Cream

I always like watching Fatty show up while preparing/serving food, and he on the typical soda-jerk show here, twirling the ice cream scoop, catching the ice cream in the cup, etc.  Bonus points for the gross but funny gag of him using a comb to pour the malt more easily into the glass and then using a brush to clean off the sides of the glass where the ice cream spilled over.

Watermelon

This is a little thing, but it cracks me up.  While Al and Alice are digging into some watermelon, Al’s piece is perfectly-sized so that the ends of the rind stick in his ears as he eats down into his piece.  Great moment of messy-eating realism.

The Wink

You’ll notice that, once Buster enters the scene, all my favorite gags here are Buster-related.  In this one, he’s trying to blink dust out of his eye, and Fatty takes his winking as a cue for some non-Prohibition-friendly refreshment.  I like Fatty gradually adding more and more bar elements to the scene, offering Buster a footrest and sprinkling some sawdust(?) on the floor around him.

Losing the Dress

As I’ve said other times I’ve talked about this short, Buster misplaces a wedding dress and checks his pockets for it!  It’s totally a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment with no attention drawn to it, but it’s probably – in my opinion – the single funniest part of the entire short.

Wedding Dress Model

What I like here isn’t just that Buster models the wedding dresses as well as delivers them; it’s that it’s apparently an expected part of his services.  When he starts undressing, Alice is only upset that he’s not doing it behind the changing screen – there’s never a point where either of them doesn’t expect him to put on the dress and show it to her.  It’s just what he does!