We’ve
finished looking at Buster’s independent shorts, so now we’re circling back to
the Fatty Arbuckle stuff. I don’t think
this short is as well done as some of the works that came later, but it’s still
very fun and it’s a treat to watch Buster’s onscreen debut.
In
general, it’s tough to describe the plot for these shorts beyond, “Fatty and
Buster (and often Al St. John) are in (insert place here) and get into
all sorts of trouble,” but I’ll give it a shot.
Fatty and Al are working at a mom ‘n’ pop shop, and their rivalry over
the boss’s daughter leads to a huge mess that Buster, a customer, gets tangled
up in. The girl gets carted off to
boarding school over the fiasco, and both Fatty (assisted by his dog Luke) and
Al (assisted by Buster and a third accomplice) launch separate operations to
bust her out.
We’ll
start with the short as a whole. The
first reel is easily the best, I’d say.
I like the various bits of butcher shop comedy, like Fatty’s fancy knife
moves and his habit of putting on an enormous fur coat and hat every time he
has to go into the cold storage. The
customer gags are all fun, I love the dog-powered pepper grinder, and it’s
goofy to watch the sleepy little shop descend into chaos. The boarding-school storyline isn’t as
amusing for me; it’s lighter on gags and mostly leans on the humor of Fatty and
Al disguised as (female) pupils, although I do like that Fatty and the girl can’t
stop kissing even when he’s pretending to be a girl.
But
this is Buster Monday, so let’s talk Buster.
Much of his classic screen presence is already well-established here –
the stone face, of course, but I also love seeing that loping Buster walk, and
some of my favorite tumbles of his are on display, too. His very first scene finds him improvving some
fun business with a broom (shades of his vaudeville days,) he runs into some
trouble with a bucket of molasses (I can’t help but think of the glue scene
from The Haunted House, which Buster executed
so fantastically a few years later,) and he winds up throwing the only pies of
his silent career. The comic chemistry
between Buster and Fatty is evident right away.
Even apart from the sight gag of their greatly-contrastive sizes, they’re
so natural together as Fatty manhandles Buster in an attempt to get him unstuck
from a puddle of molasses.
However,
this short is perhaps most noteworthy for the famous “sack of flour to the face”
gag, Buster’s first onscreen stunt.
Watching the short this time around, I paid close attention to this
excellent specimen of comic suffering, and in particular, I compared it to other
actors who get hit with the same floury projectile. Al St. John and Arthur Earle (playing the
store manager) both go down, but – and maybe it’s just me – they both look like
they’re “doing a fall.” Buster,
meanwhile, looks exactly like he’s
getting the full force of a sack of flour thrown at his face, and he goes down; as Buster describes it, the throw “put
[his] head where [his] feet were!” Now,
this could obviously be my Buster-is-amazing bias coming through (and Buster
himself gave all the credit to Fatty’s devastating throw,) but no one in the
scene has a better fall than Buster.
Absolutely incredible (and 100% all in) from his first onscreen rodeo.
Warnings
Lots of
slapstick violence.
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