Go West (Buster Keaton, 1925)

TCM ran this Keaton feature with a two-reeler from 1917, Coney Island, directed by Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, in which Keaton plays a secondary role to Arbuckle. The remarkable thing about the earlier film is that Keaton hasn't found his stone-faced persona yet: He smiles and mugs in ways that we don't expect from him. Adapting the deadpan became, along with the porkpie hat, Keaton's trademark as a film comedian, and it's even alluded to in a scene in which Keaton's character, known only as Friendless, plays poker with a guy who cheats. When Friendless calls him on drawing from the bottom of the deck, the guy pulls out the familiar line from The Virginian: "Smile when you say that." Incapable of smiling, Friendless attempts the expression by poking up the corners of his mouth with two fingers. It all goes to show that when it came to expressiveness, Keaton was a master of body language, able to communicate love or diffidence or fear with the very angle of his stance. No one ever did a pratfall better than Keaton, once he discovered that the trick is to keep your legs stiff when you land on your butt. Go West is one of the lesser Keaton features, not quite in the league of The Navigator (1924) or Seven Chances (1925) or the sublime The General (1926). The gags are plentiful but they're not set up quite as well as in those pictures, or as elaborate as the ones in Steamboat Bill Jr. (1928) and The Cameraman (1928). When the focus goes away from Keaton, as it does in the scenes in which he leads a cattle drive through the streets of downtown Los Angeles, causing much havoc, the film gets a little scattered. Keaton is at his best when he sets up a simple gag, as when he repeatedly arrives late for dinner with the other ranchhands, who get up and leave the table once he sits down, so that eventually he rushes in, sits down first, gobbles his dinner, and then gets up and leave the moment they sit down. This is the one in which Friendless finally finds a friend: a cow named Brown Eyes -- an outcast like himself because she refuses to give milk. Rescued from the slaughterhouse, Brown Eyes climbs into an automobile with Friendless and, seated beside him, rides away. Arbuckle, incidentally, has a bit part in drag in Go West, as a woman in the department store invaded by the cattle.

The Red Mill (Roscoe Arbuckle, 1927)

The Red Mill is a surprisingly well-preserved silent film, with crisp images -- the cinematography is by Hendrik Sartov, a Danish director of photography who also shot La Bohème (King Vidor, 1926) and The Scarlet Letter (Victor Sjöstrom, 1926). It's also a fairly forgettable romantic farce, about Tina (Marion Davies), a Dutch scullery maid, who falls in love with Dennis (Owen Moore), an Irishman visiting Holland, and gets involved with a plot to save Gretchen (Louise Fazenda) from having to marry someone other than her boyfriend Jacop (Karl Dane). The whole thing is very loosely based on a creaky old Victor Herbert operetta. The chief distinction of the film is that it was directed by Roscoe ("Fatty") Arbuckle, who had to take the pseudonym William Goodrich because he had been blacklisted after the scandal over the death of Virginia Rappe -- even though Arbuckle was acquitted. Given that the film is a fitfully amusing comedy, whose chief virtue is that is shows off the great comic gifts of Davies, it might be surprising to find it in such pristine condition when so many other (and better) silent films are available only in patched-together restorations or have been lost altogether. The reason is probably that it was produced by William Randolph Hearst's company, Cosmopolitan Productions, which existed largely to showcase Davies, Hearst's mistress. So MGM, which released the film, took special care not to offend Hearst in its handling of The Red Mill. Davies is, as so frequently, a delight, playing physical comedy without sacrificing her beauty and femininity. She does a wonderful slapstick bit in which she tries to solve the problem of assembling a folding ironing board -- a twist on the familiar struggles of comedians with folding beach chairs. But Arbuckle, who directed dozens of short films, doesn't give this movie the pace needed to sustain itself at feature length. Frances Marion did the screenplay and the cornball captions -- sample: "A summer on Holland's canals leaves an impression, but a fall on its ice leaves a scar" -- are by Joseph Farnham.

Two With Roscoe Arbuckle

The Round-Up (George Melford, 1920)
"Nobody loves a fat man," the kicker line for Arbuckle's 1920 feature, was meant to be wistfully ironic, since at the time, everybody loved "Fatty" Arbuckle (a nickname he hated). The irony went from wistful to bitter in a couple of years, when the scandal surrounding the death of Virginia Rappe turned Arbuckle into one of the country's most despised men, bringing his career to a halt. But when The Round-Up was made, Arbuckle was so popular that he received the featured billing for a film in which he was a supporting player, the comic relief in a somewhat routine Western. Arbuckle plays the sheriff in a small Arizona town, where he's much admired because he uses his dexterity, rather than his fists or guns, to disarm the bad guys. But he's painfully shy around women, which is why he loses the girl he loves (Jean Acker) to someone else. The main story revolves around a prospector (Irving Cummings) who is thought to be dead, so his girlfriend (Mabel Julienne Scott) marries someone else. Meanwhile, a lot of trouble gets stirred up by the "half-breed" Buck McKee (Wallace Beery). Things get sorted out eventually after a lot of chases and gunfights. Arbuckle and Beery are the best things in the movie, along with some location scenery handsomely photographed by Paul P. Perry.

The Life of the Party (Joseph Henabery, 1920)
As a knockabout comedy more in the Arbuckle mainstream, The Life of the Party seems designed largely to provide him with an opportunity to dress up in children's party clothes. The plot has to deal with a women's group who are out to bust up a trust that fixes the price of milk. Arbuckle plays Algernon Leary, an unscrupulous lawyer who is at first willing to go along with the trust, but is converted to their side by a pretty young member of the group (Viora Daniel). She also happens to be engaged to a judge (Frank Campeau) who, unknown to her, is in the pockets of the milk trust. This leads to much farcical running around, especially after the women's group decides to throw a fundraising party to which everyone is expected to come dressed as babies. It all goes on too long. The cast includes Roscoe Karns, an actor who didn't really come into his own until sound arrived, giving him the chance to reel off snappy patter for Howard Hawks in Twentieth Century (1934) and His Girl Friday (1940).

In Life of the Party, Arbuckle attends a party in which the guests dress as babies.