An important part of silent comedies was misunderstandings and all the confusion it caused among the characters, which included mistaken conclusions against the good morals of a couple. This is exactly what happened in this film.

The film started in what looked like a department store, both the place and people look sophisticated. Al St. John was smoking besides a well-dressed elderly man who is smoking a pipe, they both worked together in the same office. At that moment, a woman arrived.

Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle crossed the street, entered a place, had difficulties with a revolving door. Roscoe got to solve his problems with the door, a crook arrived at the store and stole the handbag of a lady. The thief bumped into the revolving door and fell and as Fatty was still nearby, the crowd thought he had caught the thief. The lady gave some money to Fatty out of gratitude.

Right afterwards Fatty applied for a job as a janitor. As one of intertitles said, a broker, Mr. I. Steele, has a client who “will arrive about noon with certified check for $ 10.000 to close a deal” and the option expires at three o’clock. The broker left the office and requested a note to be delivered for his wife, letting her know about the upcoming business deal.

Meanwhile, Fatty was carrying out his duties in the most clumsy way possible, even causing accidents involving other passerby people and flirting with beautiful women around him. This scene was an opportunity for a plenty of people falling on their butts in full splendor.

While Fatty was causing all that mess downstairs, a woman caught the elevator and entered the broker’s office. It was his wife. She was greeted by her husbands’ co-workers, received the note and read that he wanted her to entertain his client until he arrived. The husband also wrote in the note that his client was a rather eccentric man.

Fatty was asked by a couple to watch their beauty parlor until they arrived back. However, some seconds later a woman came and asked Fatty to keep his eyes on the candy shop. A short time after the woman left, it arrived a client to the barber and, for any weird reason, Fatty did the job on the poor man’s beard. To add insult to injury, Fatty left the gentleman alone in the barber while he was servicing a female client in the candy shop. Eventually, the barber’s client was “sore, but satisfied” despite the complete inability of Fatty to work as a barber.

Subsequently, Fatty caught the elevator and entered the broker’s office. Fatty noticed there was another guy in the elevator, but kept going. The broker’s wife had mistaken Fatty as her husband’s client and invited him to have lunch with her at the oriental café. Fatty gladly accepted the proposal, unaware of the chaos that would happen soon. The café was lavishly decorated and unfortunately Fatty lacked enough social skills to attend this type of sophisticated place.

The broker finally returned to his office and was told by Al St. John that his wife “went out with the janitor”. The broker was furious and immediately took a revolver that he kept in his drawer. He was determined to take revenge and while his wife and the janitor were having fun in the café watching a rather over the top show, the husband arrived to wash his honor with blood. He tried to shoot Fatty, but the janitor got to run away in fear.

In the middle of all this chaos, the real client arrived at the office and was received by the broker’s co-workers. The real client claimed that the papers must be signed by three o’clock otherwise the deal would expire. And he could not wait much longer because it was actually almost three’ o’clock.

It looked like the employees got to tell the broker about the misunderstanding and the documents were signed on time. Yes “it looked like” because it seems there are some scenes missing in the end and the last scene the audiences see is Al St. John and his colleagues running on the street and then the film abruptly ended. It is not clear if the end of this film is lost or if it is just some printings that don’t show the entire film, though.

In addition to being a funny comedy to this day, this film also has interesting historical value because it enables modern-day audiences to catch a glimpse of 1910s buildings, offices, elevators, typewriters, etc. and compare with how those items look like nowadays. It is like traveling in a time machine and a genuine one-of-a-kind experience.

Something that brings lots of chaos in silent films is two gentlemen competing for the affection of the same sweetheart. This is what happened between the characters of Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle (The Cook) and Al St. John (The Waiter). Al St. John was Roscoe’s nephew in real life and both of them made many silent films together and were skilled in physical gags. Needless to say that such gags were plentiful in this film, Arbuckle remade with St. John and Buster Keaton by the name The Cook (USA,1918).

The Cook is seen carrying out his tasks in the kitchen by cleaning the floor and cooking -both at the same time. At the same time, the waiter is trying to carry some plates without breaking them and he was not exactly successful. When it came to both workmen, clumsiness ruled. Something they also had in common was that they liked the same woman – the cashier of the restaurant where they worked.

In the next scene the cashier shows an ad to the waiter about the upcoming waiter’s ball. However, there was a problem because the attendees were supposed to wear formal party clothes. The waiter and the cashier started arguing while the cook was trying to sweep the floor without causing any confusion, which did not work. The cook feel on the dining room over the leg on cast of a client and it ended up leaving the poor gentleman in pain.

The waiter showed up in the dining room to sweep the floor into the kitchen much to the annoyance of the cook. They fought and after a while they started working again. The waiter told the clients’ requests to the cook, who brought to the waiter the dishes he was supposed to serve to the clients. This situation brought other physical gags which involved even animals and uncooperative foods and lots of chaos in the restaurant.

After a while it finally came the time of the ball. The cook had a tuxedo, but the waiter did not have proper clothes to attend it. But the waiter did not accept his defeat so easily and he stole the cook’s tuxedo. On the other hand, the cook did not let it preventing him from going to the party and he attended in women’s clothes.

The party was lively and everybody was having fun, at least until the cook caught the waiter wearing his tuxedo. Then, they both fought in the ballroom, which disrupted the fun of the guests. The female dishwasher of the restaurant, after realized that her clothes were stolen, ended up going to the party and when she caught the cook wearing her clothes there was another fight and the party was in deep chaos.

A policeman happened to be nearby and he arrested both the cook and the waiter who by this time had already lost half of the clothes they were wearing and had to cover themselves with a barrel whole the party’s guests laughed at their fate.

If slapstick comedies with frantic pace, “fast and furious” rhythm, overtly physical humor are your piece of cake, you will surely love this silent film. The gags are simple and it makes them extremely easy to be understood by audiences of all eras. Therefore, this film stood quite well the test of time. It is also a golden opportunity to see some high-profile silent actors in action displaying their skills and it is not difficult to understand why they were so popular with the audiences back to the silent era.

Oh, love! That beautiful feeling even though sometimes it is not possible to make things come true. We can see once more the real-life uncle and nephew actors Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle and Al St. John with more mature humor compared with the films they made some years before in the Keystone Studios. They still engaged in physical comedies but with more elaborate plots and more realistic building up of characters.

Arbuckle is a good-natured, naive farm boy, deeply in love with Winifred, the daughter of a man he rescued when he fell into a well. Unfortunately, a rich neighbor offered the farmer large piece of land if he agreed to marry Winifred to his son (played by Al St. John) and her father promptly agree with the proposal and the girl ended up trapped in an arranged marriage with a man she did not like. To make matters worse, it was Arbuckle who Winifred really loved.

Realizing that no one else but themselves cared about their feelings, Arbuckle and Winifred decided to elope. It was all fun and games until Winifred had her neck stuck in a window while she was trying to leave her house and this situation gave room to some hilarious gags. Nevertheless, all this mess had only made Winifred’s father realizing she was running away and the girl was brought back home, to her despair.

After a while (and with a little help of Arbuckle, who added soap to the food that Winifred’s family was about to eat), her father decided to hire a new cook and it was Arbuckle himself – dressed in drag -who showed up in an attempt to get the job. It was not unusual Arbuckle to dress up as a woman in his films, usually as a disguise and a prompt for causing even more confusion in the plot. Anyway, although Arbuckle had problems to provide reliable references, he was hired as the new cook (the family thinking he was a woman).

On the day of the wedding there was a rehearsal, as it was the first time the clergyman was marrying anyone. The cook – who was actually Arbuckle -volunteered herself to play the groom’s role. The clergyman spoke the official words, Arbuckle put the ring on Winifred’s finger. When the real wedding was about to occur, Arbuckle announced in front of all guests that  Winifred was already married to him during the rehearsal and at the same time he disclosed his real identity. This gave lots of happiness to  Winifred and a great shock to her family.

This film was presumed lost for a long time until two prints of it were found and then it was made a compilation that enabled its recovery and restoration. Due to this initiative, modern-day audiences can watch this story in its entirety. Back to 1919, Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle had already accomplished his professional maturity and the peak of his popularity, having even started his successful partnership with Buster Keaton (who did not participate in this film, though). The Arbuckle-Keaton duo was briefly paused when Keaton was in the army during World War 1 and he was replaced by Italian-born Monty Banks (who played the role of Farmhand in this film).

In real life actress Mabel Normand was really ahead of her time. She was not only a beauty, but also a pioneer in many fields. She drove cars, airplanes, had her own financial independence and even directed her own films in her own studio for a while in the 1910s in the Keystone Studios (which was subsequently renamed as “Mack Sennett comedies” as of 1917). As of circa 1915 she was paired with another star of the studio, Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle and they made romantically-oriented comedies, some of them praised by cinema critics to this day.

As usual, Mabel’s character was admired by the guys and had more than one suitor, to the displeasure of her father. One of suitors was Fatty, who was not approved by Mabel’s father either. One day it showed up another suitor, a neighbor (played by actor Al St. John) who was finally accepted by Mabel’s father. Unfortunately, Mabel did not like him and, to make things worse, Fatty was visiting Mabel at the time and felt insulted when he realized there would be another competitor for Mabel’s affections and then it started an argument between Fatty and Mabel’s father and things soon got physically violent. Meanwhile, Mabel herself literally kicked the neighbor suitor out of the living room.

As if things were not messy enough, it resurfaced another Mabel’s suitor (the one who was firstly seen visiting her in the beginning of the film). Mabel’s father tried to force her to accept the affections of her neighbor, but she refused vehemently. Fatty watched it and decided to take matters into own hands by removing Mabel from home and her other suitor tried to do the same thing while Fatty left a note to her father, but fortunately Mabel got to run away. Fatty realized what was going on upon his return outdoors but it was just the beginning of the chaos because Mabel’s father had just called the police.

Who rescued them? The reckless, incompetent Keystone cops, of course. While the cops were on their way, Fatty and the other suitor were fighting, to Mabel’s horror – even though it would not take long until she started laughing at the situation. Fatty and Mabel soon reunited and it was when they saw an empty airplane, which was a relatively new invention at the time. As Mabel’s father and one of her suitors were approaching, their only option was leaving in the airplane. Although everybody else tried to reach them both by car and bicycle, they could not keep up with the plane for obvious reasons. Even the Keystone cops arrived late.

Fatty and Mabel were having fun while Fatty made some maneuvers with their airplane, which gave to the audiences a very interesting chase with multiple vehicles. When Fatty and Mabel finally landed they went to a house where there was a clergyman and Mabel had inadvertently lost her wig, which deeply shocked Fatty and made him have second thoughts about the upcoming marriage. After lots of confusion, Fatty and all other suitors run away and gave up Mabel for good.

All in all, this is a typical 1910s slapstick comedy short, with broad gestures, exaggerated physical gags and simple plots. Those comedies were very popular in their own era and their charm remain due to their easy understanding, ingenuous physical scenes and good acting. Behind the apparently simplicity there is lots of talent and bravery. In case you are interested to watch other Fatty and Mabel films of this type, it is recommended -among others – He Did and He Didn’t (USA, 1916), Fatty and Mabel Adrift (USA, 1916), Fatty and Mabel at the San Diego Exposition (USA,1915), Mabel and Fatty’s Wash Day (USA, 1915).

Again we can see the successful pairing of Mabel Normand and Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle. They made films together in the 1910s that were very popular among audiences and this is one of them. The theme portrayed in this short film is a classic in slapstick comedies: misunderstanding.

We cannot stop love, can we? Fatty and Mabel are a married couple and both of them are bored in their marriage. In the beginning of the film we can see Fatty playing the piano at home livingroom while innocently flirting with the housemaid. Mabel saw it, got furious and expelled the maid out of the livingroom immediately. Fatty kissed Mabel to apologize, but she slapped and physically assaulted Fatty as she was really angry with his flirty behavior. After some minutes Mabel calmed down, regreted her impulsive atitude and apologized with Fatty. Then, she dressed up to go outside with Fatty.

Meanwhile, in another house it is shown a husband (played by actor Harry Gribbon) who was also flirting with the housemaid and his wife (played by actress Minta Durfee, who was real-life wife of Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle at that time) saw it and got as furious with her husband as Mabel did in the previous scene. After an argument, it is shown that this couple had also gone out.

Fatty and Mabel sit down on the bench in a park and there was a sign besides the bench saying “No spooning allowed”. This can be an alert to the audience that it will not take long until a misunderstanding happen. Then the other couple arrive in the park and sits down on a similar bench, with a similar spooning sign. The husband starts smoking a cigar and there was lots of smoke, his wife stood up angrily and approached the bench where Fatty and Mabel were sitting down. After a while, she left and Fatty followed this other woman and started flirting with her.

At the same time, the other husband was alone on the bench and started at Mabel (who was also alone) while she was reading a newspaper and got immediately interested on her. Weirdly, he tried to catch Mabel’s attention by throwing some pieces of food towards her. After one of those pieces hit Mabel’s face he started flirting with her and she was enjoying the attention she was getting from that total stranger without realizing that Fatty was actually flirting with the wife of that unknown man.

Finally, the stranger sat on the bench besides Mabel, but he was caught in the act by a hiding policeman, who saw everything while he was sitting on the branch of a tree. Keep in mind that spooning was prohibited and who was called to restore order? The mega incompetent Keystone Cops, who chased Mabel and the other man out of the blue. They both ended up parting their ways after being chased.

However, it was not the end of the problems because that same policeman who was sitting on the branch of a tree saw Fatty flirting with the other woman and the Keystone Cops were called again but this time they got to arrest both Fatty and the woman and both of them ended up being taken to the police station. They would either pay thirty dollars of fine or would be jailed for thirty days. Everyone started to argue but Fatty and the woman could not avoid being thrown in jail.

Both Fatty and the woman called home to ask their respective spouses to take them out of jail and both calls were answered by their maids. The spouses went to the police station, Mabel arrived first and started to argue with the other woman. Then the husband of the other woman arrived a short time later and Mabel realized he was the man who was flirting with her at the park earlier that day. Both couples had finally reunited and continued arguing on the sidewalk of the police station after they were released. A policeman showed up outside in order to stop with the confusion and this is how it ended what was supposed to be a relaxing walk on the park on a sunny day.

Although this film is no different than the average films of the era and is far from revolutionary, it remains an interesting film to simply watch, relaxing without taking things too seriously or analyzing every detail. It is also a nice historical witness of parks back to the 1910s and how people had fun out of home. The gags easy to be understood and the aura of innocence in the so-called marriage life remain appealing to this day.

Comedians Mabel Normand and Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle are paired again, this time as a married couple and the plot of this film deals with another commonplace in silent films (both comedies and dramas): A wife -within the typical damsel in distress stereotype – has to face a burglar all by herself while her husband is away to work. Sometimes the danger was genuine, but it could also be a false alarm.

In the beginning of the film it is shown the intertitle “She reads exciting books” and Mabel was sitting on a park bench while she was reading books and Roscoe was her company. They were likely discussing the book and then Roscoe spotted an organ grinder and a short time later the monkey ended up jumping on Mabel, who was really scared. Roscoe got the monkey, threw it away and the organ grinder was furious when he saw it. Both Roscoe and the organ grinder started to fight and Roscoe beat up the guy. Feeling deeply insulted and humiliated by this defeat, the organ grinder takes “an oath of vengeance”, as one of intertitles stated. Roscoe did not feel intimidated and beat up the organ grinder even more.

The couple left the park shortly afterwards, but it was only the beginning of problems. Roscoe left Mabel at home and then went out, but he soon realized that he had forgotten his papers at home and returned home to get them. Roscoe was followed by his driver, who Roscoe asked to wait for him in the livingroom. Meanwhile, Mabel was apparently a little bit uneasy for being alone at home and started reading the newspaper in order to distract herself. She read a headline saying that there were bands of thieves operating in the residence district and needless to say that it only made Mabel more nervous.

Roscoe opened the drawers, looking for his papers, Mabel heard the noise and took a revolver to defend herself as she thought the house was being burglarized. Roscoe ended up being shot on the butt and locked himself in the closet in sheer horror. Mabel kept on shooting and the driver entered the house to check what was going on, but he was also scared with Mabel’s shootings. After a while, Roscoe left the closet and Mabel fainted in his arms. When she woke up, Roscoe asked Mabel to calm down. They said good bye, Roscoe left home and met the driver (who at this point was hiding himself in the car after all that mess inside the house).

Roscoe finally left to work and Mabel was not completely calm yet. Meanwhile, the organ grinder and another man arrived to Roscoe’s house and they wanted revenge due to the previous incident in the park. Mabel saw them through the window and engaged in sewing to relax, which did not work. She made a brief phone call and a woman picked up the telephone. Some minutes later, Mabel went to the door and bumped into the organ grinder, who was trying to force his entrance into the house. He eventually got it and Mabel threw all sorts of things on the organ grinder to defend herself but it was not enough to keep the organ grinder at bay. Mabel ran away and locked herself in the bedroom.

The woman Mabel had previously called ended up calling the police and the incompetent Keystone Cops were employed to solve the problem. When the policemen arrived, it looked like the neighbors saw that Mabel was in trouble and there were many people gathered on the porch, which created a huge confusion. The policemen went upstairs while the organ grinder was by the bedroom’s door, trying to enter. Mabel opened the door and guided one of the policemen to the window, as she thought that the burglar was there. In the middle of all this chaos Roscoe and the driver arrived back home. It turned out that the noise that came from the window was made by the monkey, who the organ grinder brought with him. Roscoe thought that all the chaos had happened because Mabel called the police without any reason and got angry with her at first, but after a while he managed to laugh at the situation.

Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle and Mabel Normand were very popular on their era and we can see why. Even though this plot was not new not even in the 1910s, the tenderness of the couple, the innocent confusion and witness of a lifestyle that has been already over for a long time remains of interest to modern-day audiences. Without mentioning the physical gags and the stunts, which are challenging in any era. It is not likely that actors would do their own stunts virtually all the time nowadays like actors did in most slapstick comedies.

In the first years of Keystone Studios (founded in 1912 in California, USA) we could see a plenty of one reelers and it did not take long until the studio forged its own identity with the Keystone Cops, the Bathing Beauties, Fatty Arbuckle, the sweet and bold Mabel Normand and even a very young Charlie Chaplin and his little tramp. Actually, many comedians who would become famous later started working at Keystone studios to the point of the following sentence being made: “Start with Sennett, get rich somewhere else”.

Ford Sterling was very popular among audiences of the era, usually in the roles of mustached villains and ready to make the lives of other characters hell on Earth. Many of his films are lost nowadays but luckily The Thief Catcher was founded in 2010. Today it’s not remembered due to Sterling but because Charlie Chaplin played a bit role as a villain.

The film has a very simple plot and it is quite easy to be understood by audiences of any era. It started with the incompetent Keystone cops, who could barely take care of themselves let alone facing criminals. Those characters were an opportunity for making films laughing at authority figures and were very successful among working classes of the first decades of the XX century.

The Keystone cops were told about some crooks and a certain “suspicious John“ (played by Ford sterling himself) is shown holding a dog. The crooks started to beat each other and one of them is thrown downhill. John saw it and the remaining crooks ran after him. John, followed by his faithful dog, decided to hide himself in a household where a woman was hanging clothes. Someone was trapped on the clothes being hanged and was caught by the crooks, but unfortunately the person was the woman who was hanging the clothes, not John. The woman promptly kicked the guys out of her house while John was hidden with his dog nearby.

However, peace would not last for too long because somebody threw water on John and the crooks were still looking after him and they had guns. After leaving his hideout, John took refuge in an abandoned wooden house, with the crooks always on a short distance from him. The crooks ended up finding John. While one of crooks was trying to kill John, the other one was waiting outside the house, but then it came the Keystone Cops. John’s dog was also outside and dig a hole below the fence and found John, who wrote a note and left it on the dog’s leash. Thinking that nothing particularly bad was going on, the cops left the house.

The cops returned to the police station and the chase between John and the crooks still went on. But the dog went to the police station and the cops noticed the note with the dog and read it. After realizing there was someone in danger in the house, they returned with the dog leading their way. This gave room with a typical car chase involving the Keystone cops while John was kneeling down in the house, begging for his life.

Finally, the cops returned and it was the turn of the crooks to start hiding themselves and John, in an attempt to defend himself, beat up the cops by mistake and then the film end with him and one of the cops fainting in the most exaggerated way.

Keystone Studios (which was opened in September 1912) is remembered by Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle, Charlie Chaplin, Ford Sterling and many of it’s great comedians but also of Bathing Beauties, which was a group of beautiful women in bathing suits and carefree antics, always so lively and happy, who joined the action with the comedians in order to arise more interest in the audiences.

In this one-reeler film (which means it is circa 11 minutes long), Arbuckle visit Mabel at home and bring her some flowers while two other women listened to that behind a door. Mabel is not very flattered by the attention of Arbuckle and take him by the ear and kick him out of her house. Mabel enter the room where the other two women were and catch them both spying on her. Arbuckle returned to the house, opened the door and entered the room where the three women were. He brought flowers again and seemed very determined to win Mabel’s affection.

Then we see on the street a fellow called called “Handsome Harry”, a “Divil” among the women, according to an intertitle. He seem to be a mix of a Don Juan and an unpleasant womanizer and has the typical villain look.

The bedroom is shown again, the two women leave and Mabel and Arbuckle are alone. Mabel is furious and slap Arbuckle but fortunately they reconcile a short time later. Meanwhile, the other two women meet “Handsome Harry” on the street, apparently by chance. They go swimming and “Handsome Harry” follow them. Mabel and Arbuckle go to the same place and also bump into “Handsome Harry”, who start watching Mabel from a distance. Both Arbuckle and Mabel exchange clothes to put on swimming suits. When Arbuckle leave his dressing room to meet Mabel he realize what “Handsome Harry” was doing, tell to Mabel about what was going on and both men start fighting. The other two women also returned from their dressing rooms and “Handsome Harry” followed them.

On the beach “Handsome Harry” make advances on the two women, who promptly beat him up. While it happen there is another confusion, as another man made advances on Mabel and Arbuckle beat him up to defend her. When Mabel is a bit away from Arbuckle, “Handsome Harry” approach her and bully her and Mabel also beat him up. Arbuckle run to Mabel and is involved in another fight to defend her. Mabel run away and find the other two women and a policeman on the beach. The policeman try to prevent both man from fighting but end up being hit instead.

Afterwards, for any crazy reason, Mabel is in a balloon (Yes, it makes no sense why) and “Handsome Harry” untie the rope of the balloon, making it fly away too early and Mabel is terrorized. Arbuckle get to find a telephone and call the police. The Keystone Cops, with their usual degree of incompetence, quickly arrive in the scene while Mabel struggle inside the balloon. Arbuckle and the policemen get to bring the balloon a bit down so Mabel could slide through the rope in safety and she meet everyone upon her return to the soil. The film finish with Mabel and Arbuckle embracing after all the mess.

This is one of the very simply short films made in the first years of Keystone Studios. The plot remain easy to be understood by audiences and entertaining. The frantic, lively and good acting of actors is captivating regardless of era and the sample of 1910s swimming suits provide a unique historical witnesses of an era that has been gone long ago. Both Roscoe Arbuckle and Mabel Normand had short-lived careers and were caught in real life in controversies beyond their control but it is easy to understand why both actors were so popular in their own era. They were really good comedians.