The Bell Boy

This silent comedy short in which Roscoe Arbuckle and Buster Keaton play hotel bellboys and Al St. John plays the hotel desk clerk was the funniest of theirs I've seen yet. Plenty of hilarious gags of falling and slipping and missed targets not to mention getting a head stuck in an elevator and Buster getting into a fight with a top-hatted man who happens to be his dad, Joseph! There's also a girl and a bank robbery involved. That bank, by the way, is called "Last National Bank". Since I have to put a few more lines if I actually want this to be submitted, I'll just say how much Mr. Keaton has really come into his own as an accomplished movie comedian under the tutelage of Mr. Arbuckle and sown the seeds of his own solo career. Oh, and like many of these early appearances, he smiles and laughs which is so in contrast of his reputation as The Great Stone Face! So on that note, I heartily recommend The Bell Boy. P.S. The version I watched was on the Image Entertainment "The Best Arbuckle-Keaton Collection" DVD.

"The Bell Boy" features Fatty Arbuckle and Buster Keaton as bellhops in a hotel. Their jobs get complicated by a series of mishaps. It's nothing profound, but I laughed all through it, especially the scenes with the device on the clothesline.

This is only the second Fatty Arbuckle movie that I've seen after "A Reckless Romeo". These shorts aimed to make people laugh and they succeeded. It's particularly good that they launched Buster Keaton's career. Nice, silly stuff. No masterpiece, but enjoyable.

Fatty Arbuckle and Buster Keaton are bellhops at the Elk's Head Hotel. Buster's father Joe is also working at the hotel. As it says at the beginning, Third-rate service at first-class prices.

This is almost pure slapstick. A number of physical gags and a few straight jokes. Both Buster and his father Joe show their physical abilities. Almost all the gags work well and I laughed. That is almost. One scene went on too long and I didn't find funny. Another scene was funny for the first part of the gag but quickly became predictable.

This does show why Fatty Arbuckle was a star. It also shows that Buster Keaton had the potential that lead to his stardom. While a very good silent comedy, it just wasn't great.

'Fatty' and Buster are both in fine form in this short feature. It has a couple slow stretches, and many of the scenes are only loosely connected, but it more than makes up for that with some great sequences. The duo of great comics are working as bellboys in a hotel, and they get involved in quite a few scrapes in just half an hour. There are a couple of great gadgets in the hotel that remind you of some of Keaton's later short features, and they get a lot of mileage from them. Watch also for a funny scene where 'Fatty' fills in as a barber. This is old-fashioned manic slapstick, quite unrefined, but if you're a fan of Arbuckle and/or Keaton, it's great stuff.

Now filming in Los Angeles, Fatty Arbuckle and Buster Keaton occupy familiar roles: twin slackers working menial day jobs, and doing so very poorly. In this instance, they're a pair of hotel clerks, responsible for scrubbing floors and toting luggage, but also trimming beards and operating heavy machinery. As always, there's a girl involved - object of immediate attention and intense competitive interest - who serves as spark to a set of climactic fireworks.

Arbuckle gives us an entertaining skit involving the barber's chair (transforming a ghastly bearded man into several famous political figures) while Keaton absent-mindedly humiliates an upper-class gentleman with his mop, but the story is scattered and disorganized until the closing moments. That's when the duo (along with their constant supporting man, Al St. John) get mixed up in a bank robbery and literally tear the place down. When it's all over and done with, we find that the bank's in ruins, the hotel ballroom is missing a wall, paper money is casually fluttering through the streets and one of our stars has finally, decisively scored the girl. A big finish for what had otherwise been a rather low-key, by-the-numbers effort.