Fatty Joins the Force

As Keystone comedies go, this is a pretty dark and disturbing piece of work. There's an amusing moment or two along the way, thanks largely to Roscoe Arbuckle's physical dexterity, but ultimately the story is more harrowing than funny, with an ending that's like something out of Kafka. And once you know the details of Arbuckle's tragic life and career the distressing impact of Fatty Joins the Force is only compounded.

Like so many Keystones this one begins in a park. Fatty and his wife encounter cop Edgar Kennedy, who apparently tosses off a sassy remark (about Roscoe's girth?) en route to a flirtation with a nursemaid. While the cop and the maid are chatting, the nurse's charge, a little girl, wanders off and then falls into the lake. Fatty comes to the rescue and saves the girl, who turns out to be the Police Commissioner's daughter. Fatty the hero is 'rewarded' with a position on the police force, but quickly gets into trouble. He falls afoul of a group of teenage boys who easily get the better of him. And then, due to a misunderstanding, the one-time hero is mistaken for a dangerous "wild man" and winds up in jail himself, disgraced and sobbing with frustration while his wife flirts with the Police Commissioner.

How funny is that finale? Not so funny, if you ask me. When you consider that, several years after this short comedy was produced, Arbuckle himself plummeted from a position of popularity and respect to genuine and lasting disgrace, the weepy close-up of Roscoe in his jail cell that concludes this film is far more upsetting than it might otherwise be. The most credible research indicates that Arbuckle was not guilty of any crime, but he was ruined and Hollywood was never the same, afterward. Of course, when this short was made all of that was far in the future, but it's difficult not to think of it while watching. The final close-up suggests an infamous composite photo that ran in the tabloids at the height of the scandal in 1921, showing a grim-faced Roscoe supposedly behind bars in San Francisco, facing rape and manslaughter charges. (The charges were real, all right, but the photo was faked.) Even taken on its own terms, Fatty Joins the Force is short on laughs. Roscoe executes a couple of funny falls, and reacts strenuously to a pie in the face, but otherwise, given the unhappy connotations, this movie is about as comical as Hitchcock's The Wrong Man.

Fatty Joins the Force (1913)

*** (out of 4)

Good Keystone comedy has Fatty Arbuckle saving a little girl from drowning and luckily for him it turns out she's the police captain's daughter. This lands Fatty a job on the force but he soon realizes it's not all it's cracked up to be. As far as Keystone comedies goes, this one here is pretty good and especially considering how extremely good Fatty is here. I thought he does a pretty good job at keeping the film moving at a fine pace even though many of the laughs are scattered around. One of the highlights is a sequence where a pack of boys are picking on Fatty and this eventually leads to him taking a bath in a pond at which time the boys cut up his pants. This here leads to an even funnier bit where a couple women mistake Fatty for a wild man running loose. For the most part there are enough laughs to make this film worth viewing even if it doesn't come close to some of the actor's better pictures. Still, fans of Arbuckle and his style of comedy will certainly enjoy this one.

Part of the ship-board entertainment on the U.S.S. Missouri (BB-11) on August 25, 1915. The ship was en route to Annapolis through the Panama Canal on a summer training voyage for the midshipmen.

My great-uncle was a midshipman on the voyage and kept a journal of his life aboard the U.S.S. Missouri that summer. In addition, he kept several pieces of ship-board memorabilia including the program for the "Homeward Bound Smoker and Entertainment" on August 25, 1915. It lists "Beauty Parlor Graduate" and "Fatty Joins the Force" each as a Moviograph that was part of the night's events. In his journal, he uses the term "movie" (his quotes) when writing about a film, so apparently he felt that Moviograph was the real name and "movie" was the colloquial version. Since even Google hasn't seen the term Moviograph, it must have been in use for a very short time at the start of the 20th century.

Roscoe Arbuckle is invited to join the police after saving the Commissioner's flighty daughter from drowning (cos that how they did things back then...) but proves to be less than competent. He may be light on his feet for a big man, but Arbuckle is something of a lightweight compared to his comic contemporaries. This poor comedy is thin on both ideas and laughs.

While quite uneven overall, this has some good slapstick and other gags, and it is also of interest as one of the earliest starring roles for Roscoe Arbuckle. It has a rather odd collection of material that leaves you wondering whether it was all supposed to be funny or not, as it is only amusing if you decide not to take it very seriously. Arbuckle's character is not especially sympathetic, yet he is treated rather roughly by the plot.

The story starts with 'Fatty' being rewarded for an act of heroism by being appointed to the police force, only to find how little respect policemen are often shown. The story mostly pieces together a series of stock elements, and they do not always fit together seamlessly. The clothes-stealing gag and some of the other ideas fall rather flat, but at other times Arbuckle's skill and timing make some of the slapstick work better than it might have on its own.

The main reason to watch this now would be to see Arbuckle, who shows that he could carry the action and handle a starring role, even when the material was not all that good. With a more nondescript actor in the lead, this movie would have been completely forgettable. It's still nothing great, but at least Arbuckle provides some reason for watching it.