Century Film Project

This movie is one of the more “typical” Keystones that Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle made for the studio. He’s far less likeable in this movie, although in the end, Luke the Dog does show up to save his girlfriend.

Fatty lives with his hard-working mother (Phyllis Allen), who begins this movie by waking him, seemingly long after her working day has begun. Fatty grouses at her and stays in bed, lighting a cigarette and immediately dozing off, starting a fire on the bedsheets. Fatty does wake up and realize the situation, but his response is to leisurely walk into the kitchen and get a small cup of water. When this doesn’t work, he seems to lose interest, and moves on to other things, like combing his hair. Then, his mother comes in and sees the fire, she rushes out to get a bucket and winds up dumping it on him, because he’s too stupid to move aside. Then, once the fire is out, he tries to take the clean laundry out the yard to hang, but instead dumps it in the mud. He becomes a tad more likeable in saving Luke the Dog from Al St. John, the dogcatcher. It’s not clear to me whether Luke and Fatty are supposed to have a prior relationship, or if this is where they meet in this narrative. He also has a cute scene with the girl next door (Josephine Stevens as “Lizzie”) where they talk through a hole in the fence.

In the second reel, Fatty, Lizzie, mom and Luke go to the amusement park, and Fatty encounters Edgar Kennedy running a shell game, with Joe Bordeaux as a shill. Fatty, being an idiot, is taken in by the oldest con in the world, but then retrieves his losses by pointing a fake gun at them. To exact revenge, they kidnap Lizzie with the help of the embittered dog catchers, and take her to an abandoned shack, where they tie her to a post with a gun attached to a timer pointed at her head. Plucky pup Luke follows the crooks, chasing the dogcatchers onto the roof of a shack, and is able to warn Fatty in time to perform the last-minute rescue, with the help of the Keystone Cops. In the closing shot Fatty, Lizzie and Luke embrace in a joint kiss (and lick).

It’s probably obvious that I find Arbuckle pretty unsympathetic in this movie, and maybe it was partly because I was pretty burnt out on his Keystone comedies by the time I got to it. He’s kind to dogs, and at least makes some effort to save his girlfriend, but otherwise in this movie he’s a lazy burden on his poor mother, and even a hazard to have around. The other contrivance here is the contraption the crooks set up in order to have Lizzie shot at 3:00 PM, which is basically a variant on the girl tied to the sawmill conveyor or to the train tracks. As usual, it’s done here for exaggerated comic effect, but even in that context, it’s a cliché by 1915. This was a one-reel idea stretched out to two reels, in my opinion.

Director: Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle

Camera: Unknown

Cast: Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle, Josephine Stevens, Phyllis Allen, Joe Bordeaux, Edgar Kennedy

Run Time: 27 Min

You can watch it for free: here.