Fatty Joins the Force (1913)
by popegrutch
A friend asked me who Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle was recently, and I said, “before there was Charlie Chaplin, there was Fatty Arbuckle.” This answer serves for casual conversation, but, of course, is an oversimplification, ignoring the degree to which the careers of the two men paralleled and even intersected one another. This is an example of a movie Arbuckle made at Keystone only a few weeks before Chaplin arrived at the lot, and it has a lot in common with the movies I’ve discussed from Chaplin’s Keystone era. It certainly lives up to the formula, “a park, a girl, and a policeman,” with the interesting twist that Fatty himself is the policeman, and a gang of local kids are his nemesis. It includes such recognizable comedic standards as pies in the face, mistaken identities, and clothes stolen while an innocent fool takes a swim. Fatty winds up the worse for the whole experience, even losing his girl (Dorothy “Dot” Farley, later in “The Unholy Three” with Lon Chaney, Sr. and “Pretty Policeman”) to the police captain! Arbuckle may be a bit heavier than the other stars of slapstick, but nearly as athletic in his pratfalls as the stars we remember better today. Mack Sennett, the head of Keystone, makes a cameo appearance as one of Fatty’s fellow officers.
Director: George Nichols
Starring: Roscoe Arbuckle, Dorothy Farley, Mack Sennett
Run Time: 13 Min
You can watch it for free: here.
Century Film Project 
[…] the best things I’ve seen him in. It has a much more complex story than the simple Keystones of earlier years, and time is taken to set up each gag and play it out, while the story often sits on the […]
[…] with shovels, pitchforks, and rifles. The more “traditional” Keystone Kops movies, like “Fatty Joins the Force,” always take place in urban environments, and they exploit the police-as-authority-figure trope […]
[…] (real life wife of Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle, who we saw with him in “The Rounders” and “Fatty Joins the Force”), but she catches him canoodling with the maid and calls off the engagement. Despondent, Charlie […]
[…] the process, several run-ins and chases take place, including a woman (Minta Durfee, who was in “Fatty Joins the Force” and “The Knockout”) with a jealous husband, and several Keystone Kops, who wind up chasing […]
[…] on intertitles to tell the story. George Nichols (who we saw in “The Sealed Room” and “Fatty Joins the Force”) stars as the title character, with future-Keystone-founder Mack Sennett among his cohorts. Mary […]
[…] collection of Arbuckle films includes only five actual Century Films (all reviewed on this blog), but four discs worth of his later work are included. This is quite an achievement, because […]
[…] during his tenure at Keystone Studios (we’ve seen Fatty already in “The Rounders” and “Fatty Joins the Force”). The premise is deceptively simple: Fatty is a powerfully strong “Country Boy” whose girl […]
[…] together nearly all of its star power for this boxing-slapstick comedy. Fatty Arbuckle (from “Fatty Joins the Force” and “The Rounders”) stars as “Pug,” a large, innocent fellow with a yen for Minta Durfee […]