The Butcher Boy (1917)

Fatty Arbuckle + Buster Keaton = Awesome

Directed by Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle
Starring Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, Buster Keaton, Al St. John, Josephine Stevens
Produced by Comique Film Company

The Butcher Boy chronicles the romantic rivalry between Fatty and Slim for the love of Amanda, daughter of the general store manager.  The movie starts in the general store and follows Fatty, the butcher boy, through his interactions with customers.  When the manager gets angry and sends his daughter away to boarding school, Fatty and Slim hatch their own plans to find their love.  But men are not permitted beyond the gates of the boarding school.  What will Fatty do?

This is Buster Keaton's first movie and he is hysterical in his small piece of screen time.  He plays a customer buying a bucket of molasses.  When Fatty asks for payment, Buster explains the money is in the bottom of the molasses-filled bucket.  Fatty pours the molasses into Buster's hat and retrieves the money.  Buster then finds the hat stuck to his head and his feet stuck to the floor.  While the description may sound ponderous, the execution is funny and both actors do an amazing job of wringing every drop of laughter out of the set up.

The main plot however follows Fatty's amorous gaze at Amanda. There is some great physical humor as Fatty nonchalantly tosses knives and meat that land with precision.  Arbuckle is a large, but agile presence in the film, vaulting counters and flying about on ladders.  I loved the general store sequence.

Once the action moves to the boarding school, we get Fatty and slim in drag.  There is a lot of manic energy to these scenes and they are certainly amusing, but they are not funny and, by the end, the gags become repetitive.

On the whole, I'd recommend The Butcher Boy (particularly the first half).  Keaton's scene is very funny and there is a food fight that is visually captivating (it involves flour).  Keaton is a bit player in the second half, but he like the other actors spend their screen time racing around without much else to do.

Watched on YouTube
Photo from Silent Era