Good Night Nurse

There is a pretty good variety of material in this short feature, with a lot of Arbuckle-style humor and also a more fanciful sequence of the kind that Keaton later refined and used in a lot of his own comedies. Here, the material is mostly unrefined, but it has some very good moments.

The opening sequence on the street corner starts to drag a little after a while, but things pick up when Arbuckle's wife sends him to a private sanitarium, where he meets up with Keaton and Alice Lake, resulting in some weird adventures. Keaton has some very funny moments in taking advantage of Arbuckle's confusion, and the dream sequence is quite imaginative.

Most Arbuckle/Keaton fans should find more than enough here to make "Good Night, Nurse!" enjoyable. Though much of it is a little unpolished, it has plenty of humor and energy.

Roscoe Arbuckle stars as a man with alcohol addiction. His wife commits him to No Hope Sanitarium where they are greeted by the doctor wearing blood covered gown (Buster Keaton) and crazy female patient (Alice Lake). The film is quite loose on plot (like Arbuckle's movies usually), but this one is one of the most incoherent ones. That doesn't mean it is not funny or enjoyable. 'Good Night, Nurse!' is not so much of slapstick stuff, but it works rather as dark comedy. Still, one over the top sequence follows the other, until all the adventures get little bit unsatisfactory conclusion.

One interesting scene is where Arbuckle dresses up as female nurse and then starts to flirt with Buster Keaton's doctor. Scenes, where Buster smiles so long, are really rare. There are brief glimpses of his smile in some other movies, but in this movie, we don't see one bit of Keaton's usual stone face - he is thoughtful or smiling throughout the film.

There's an old phrase, "Good Night Nurse," so popular in the 1920's. The expression meant a disastrous or a surprise ending. It originated from Roscoe Arbuckle's July 1918 "Good Night, Nurse!" During one scene, Fatty disguises himself as a nurse trying to escape a sanitarium his wife had committed him to for his excessive drinking. When he's confronted by the hospital's head doctor, played by Buster Keaton, he begins to flirt like a fourth grader with him in the hallway. Keaton returns the shy mannerisms, creating a classic scene that is still talked about today.

One of the reasons Arbuckle was so impressed with Keaton is the synergy both created when they spent hours bouncing ideas off one another and expounded those jokes into a coherent, yet memorable progression of visual compositions on film. Keaton returned a year later after being honorably discharged from the Army, and appeared in a trio of films with Arbuckle before he was rewarded with his own film production unit under movie executive Joseph Schenck.

Exiled to the No Hope Sanatorium by his wife after drunkenly returning home with an organ grinder and his monkey, Roscoe comes face-to-face with Doctor Buster Keaton sharpening knives in his blood-smeared smock. This surreal humour infiltrates much of Good Night, Nurse, but while it provides a welcome relief from the more generic style of slapstick humour with which the big man is associated, the laughs are hard to find until the climactic foot race.

The sequence in the rain that opens this short is fantastic, maybe one of the best comedic portrayals of being drunk. There are so many funny bits here, including Arbuckle repeatedly trying to light a cigarette in the downpour, a woman with an umbrella (Buster Keaton!) being blown into him and then down the street horizontally by the gale, and Arbuckle trying to mail a fellow drunk (Snitz Edwards) home after writing his address on his shirt and stamping his forehead. Check out the high kick to the face Keaton gives him, one of two in the film (the other is delivered by Joe Keaton, Buster's father).

His wife (Alice Lake) has seen an advertisement that claims alcoholism can be cured by an operation at the "No Hope" Sanitarium (never mind that right below it is an article claiming sensationally "Seasickness Cured!"). At the entrance to the place, they meet a heavily bandaged man walking out on crutches (Joe Keaton) saying he is fully cured which gives Arbuckle pause, and allows for a little effect work when he throws the man his crutches and he catches them in perfect walking pose, done with reverse motion. When they get inside, we meet the doctor (Buster Keaton) who has blood all over his surgical gown, sharpening a giant knife as if he were going to carve up a holiday roast. We get a further glimpse of the wickedness of Arbuckle's humor when a "crazy" woman (also Alice Lake) runs into the room and throws herself into his arms. With his wife looking on, he realizes he can take advantage of the situation and after looking at the viewer, gives her a couple of kisses.

Much of the second half consists of trying to physically subdue Arbuckle to have the operation, or capture him when he tries to escape. Some of that is typical slapstick fare, like a pillow fight that results in a million feathers in the air, but there are lots of other enjoyable bits, starting with the camera gradually going out of focus when Arbuckle is sedated. At one point he disguises himself as a female nurse and then flirts awkwardly with Dr. Keaton, both men putting a finger in their mouth and bashfully looking away, Buster grinning sheepishly, a hilarious moment. Arbuckle shows once again that he was light on his feet, a result of having had dance lessons. Just watch him gracefully leap sideways into a pool to distance himself from the woman who during the escape now wants to go back, just as he pranced around so well in his living room early on. He finds himself in a race of the "200-Pound club" which amusingly has the other contestants keel over by the side of the road, and him dashing to victory.

It's certainly not politically correct today and interesting to note it wasn't politically correct in its day either, something that would eventually come back to unfairly haunt Arbuckle when he was put on trial in the Virginia Rappe case. Enjoy him here with his pal Buster, possibly at the height of his career.