Retroscena

Back Stage (1919)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Later day two-reeler has Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle and Buster Keaton playing stage hands who run off The Strong Man after insulting him. When everyone walks out the duo must go on stage and try to make the paying crowd happy.

BACK STAGE isn't the greatest collaboration between Arbuckle and Keaton but if you're a fan of the two legends then this here is certainly worth watching, although you can't help but wish it was better. The biggest problem is that the story itself just doesn't give our two leads much to do. The first portion of the film contains a few laughs and especially the scenes with Arbuckle and the kid that is annoying him. The second portion has Keaton in drag but this here just never gets a big laugh. Again, if you're a fan this is worth watching but the duo certainly made a lot better.

This is my favorite of all the Buster and Roscoe shorts, and that's a difficult statement to make--because they're all great! I think the capper for me was the "ballet" with Buster and Roscoe, with Buster in drag. Roscoe was so wonderfully graceful for such a large fellow, and Buster makes a terrific ballerina in slap shoes. It makes you wish they could have worked together forever!

This is an Arbuckle/Keaton comedy that, for once, actually have them as a true team as they both are stagehands who end up performing themselves when the actual troupe quits before showtime. The strong man's female assistant who's been abused by him is only one of that troupe deciding to stay. I'll stop there and just say there are plenty of funny gags involving Roscoe and Buster together that are quite funny like when they team to electrocute the strong man with his bar bells after the way he treats his lovely assistant or when during the performance the font of the house falls on Arbuckle and Keaton and they attempt to get it back up! There's also Jack Coogan, Sr. as a long-legged dancer that keeps knocking Buster and Al St. John down that's also good for a few laughs. This is the same Coogan whose son Jackie would later become famous as the title character of Charlie Chaplin's The Kid. I've said enough so I'll just highly recommend Back Stage.

Buster Keaton had appeared in a number of Roscoe Arbuckle films before he volunteered for the United States Army in the summer of 1918 during the Great War. He was shipped over to France shortly before the war ended in November 1918. Because of his acting talent, the Army decided to have him entertain the remaining troops in Europe before he was discharged in April 1919. Keaton immediately returned to Los Angeles to pick up where he had left off with Arbuckle, appearing in three films with the comedian, the first being September 1919's "Back Stage."

Arbuckle and Keaton are stage hands getting ready for the upcoming show's star performer, a strongman who turns out to be very abusive toward his female assistant. Well before the 'Me-Two' Movement, the pair take it upon themselves to set the larger man straight. Because no one treated him like that before, he refuses to go on the stage. So Arbuckle and company decide to improvise the entertainment, much to the delight of the sell-out crowd. Trouble is, Mr. Muscleman doesn't appreciate their act.

A notable sequence shows one of the stage set's large false wall designed as a side of a house collapsing onto Arbuckle, who is standing underneath it. Thankfully, an open window frame on the second floor falls directly on top of him, allowing Fatty to escape without a scratch. Keaton remembered that trick and used it twice in his movies when he went solo, most famously in 1928's 'Steamboat Bill, Jr.'

Egos collide in the wings of a weekly variety show, leading the talent to walk out en-masse and two stagehands (Fatty Arbuckle and Buster Keaton) to perform in their stead. Both comedians owe their careers to the live circuit, where they learnt the ropes with a traveling vaudeville act or two, and that gives the behind-curtains stuff a sense of validity. These guys know which corners to prod, which props to rig for spectacular failure, where and how to poke the pompous stars to push them over the edge.

On-stage, too, they exploit every last opportunity for misadventure, from heckling audience members to collapsing scenery (including an early example of Keaton's famed "falling edifice" gag, best-known from 1928's Steamboat Bill Jr.), with the usual amount of reckless tumbles and messy melees thrown in for good measure. More balanced than some of the duo's earlier pictures, with a number of fresh new bits, but it's missing a certain spark. Maybe their rigorous filming schedule (a dozen comedies together in the preceding two years) was beginning to take a toll.