Leap Year

I watched Leap Year last night on TCM, expecting to see evidence of lost brilliance, since Arbuckle has been touted as a comic genius of the silent years. I was very disappointed. Notwithstanding his status in 1920, his performance in Leap Year simply does not age well. While much has been written about the impact the scandal had on Arbuckle's film career, it may be that his career probably would have died anyway. Let's be honest, jumping up and down and grimacing in front of the camera is about all he did in Leap Year (though he did have some nice acrobatics). Arbuckle is not a peer of Chaplin or Keaton. The scene where he "swims to Japan" is forgettable - there is nothing special there. In fact, the long shots suggest that perhaps he did not do his own diving. For a long time I wondered what was lost when Paramount destroyed "Gasoline Gus" and some of the other features they had in the "can" when the Arbuckle scandal broke. If Leap Year is any indication, I don't think that silent film fans are missing anything.

In itself, this is an enjoyable light comedy with a lot of energy. It also represented something of a change of pace from Roscoe Arbuckle, both in attempting to expand his style of comedy into a full-length feature, and in emphasizing comedy ideas involving relationships and situations over and above pure slapstick. It's quite unfortunate that his career was ruined even before this could be released, and in particular this shows the kinds of possibilities that could have been in his future.

The story premise is not a lot different in style from the setup to many of Arbuckle's one- and two-reel features, just a little more complex. Arbuckle plays nephew to Lucien Litttlefield's grouchy uncle character, and Arbuckle's character is involved in all kinds of romantic difficulties; he's unable to work things out with the woman he really loves, and he's pursued by a number of others whom he doesn't love. All of these entanglements are set up in a light, fluffy way, and this part makes for pleasant comedy in itself.

In a shorter movie, the setup would most likely have been followed by a lot of slapstick and then a quick resolution, and indeed Roscoe and the cast could have done this without difficulty, since Arbuckle was an expert in working with that kind of format. But here, the story takes it in a more complicated and interesting direction, with the main character's predicament getting more complicated all the time, even as he resorts to various ruses. The last portion features a pleasantly manic unraveling of the tangled web that has developed, and it includes some witty ideas along with the slapstick.

This may not seem all that impressive now, because in the mid- to late 1920s the other silent comedy greats learned to master the full-length format, leading to many movies that are still among the all-time best comedies. Given the chance, Arbuckle could well have created his own comic gems over time. "Leap Year" is only good, not great, but it would have been a solid first step.

Comedian director/writer and actor Roscoe Arbuckle had just signed a lucrative extension contract with Paramount Pictures in late summer of 1921 to produced 18 movies, making "Fatty" one of the highest paid people in Hollywood. To celebrate his signing, two friends arranged a party in San Francisco, reserving three hotel suites. Their guest list to the party included several actresses linked to the movie business.

One aspiring actress, 26-year-old Virginia Rappe, attended the September 5, 1921 ongoing celebration with a friend, Bambina Delmont. Rappe became sick and was throwing up in the toilet in Arbuckle's suite when the actor, he claimed, came in the room he was sharing with his friend to change his clothes. He carried her to his bed and asked friends for assistance in helping her. After a doctor had attended to her, she died two days later.

Normally her death would be treated as an accidental fatal illness attributed to her heavy drinking and her past addiction to drugs, alcohol and several abortions. But an aggressive state prosecutor who planned to run for California governor, and a press, especially newspaper mogul William Randolph Hearst, who saw a circulation stimulus right in his San Francisco backyard, chomped at the bit to indict and try Arbuckle in a salacious trial. The two forces were motivated by Ms. Delmont, a known grifter, extortionist and fraudster, who claimed Roscoe raped her friend in the most graphic terms.

Arbuckle underwent a grueling three-trial ordeal on manslaughter charges. The first trial, beginning on November 14, 1921, ended in a hung jury, with a 10-2 acquittal vote. The second trial, on January 11, 1922, with new evidence by Arbuckle's lawyers rebutting several claims of the prosecutor, didn't feel a need to put the actor on the stand, so convincing was their defense. That was a big mistake since the jury felt his refusal to personally testify was a sign of guilt and voted 10-2 to convict, still a hung jury verdict.

Arbuckle's team of lawyers decided to come into the third trial, held on March 13, 1922, with all guns ablazing. Unveiling the prosecution witnesses' dubious pasts and Rappe's sordid background, as well as Roscoe's convincing recollection of that September event on the witness stand, the jury unanimously decided on a not-guilty verdict. In fact, its members took a very unusual step in reading a prepared statement that "a great injustice has been done him..We wish him success and hope that the American people will take the judgment of fourteen men and woman who have sat listening for thirty-one days to evidence, that Roscoe Arbuckle is entirely innocent and free from all blame."

Unfortunately, because of the constant drumbeat of the press, an event where Hearst saw his chain of newspapers' circulation skyrocket writing in lurid, wildly-exaggerated detail of the Rappe's death, the public didn't see it that way. The movie industry was so shaken by the Arbuckle scandal along with religious organizations calling for federal censorship of movies, its members created the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA). One of its functions was to self-censor its members' movies and lobby various state censor boards not to ban certain films. The new organization was headed by the former Postmaster General, William Hays. Six days after Fatty's not-guilty verdict, Hays banned him from ever working in movies again. In December 1922, once the hysteria died down and the public realized the innocence of Arbuckle, Hays lifted the ban.

Roscoe by that time was a broken man. He was heavily in debt from paying over $700,000 (in 1922 dollars) for lawyer fees, his wife divorced him and movie studios shunned him. He did direct several movies under the pseudonym "William Goddrich," but never attained the popularity he once enjoyed.

The eight months in 1921 before the incident that changed his life, Arbuckle made an aggressive seven feature films for Paramount movies. The movies were planned to be slowly released to the pubic in the fall of 1921, but by that time theater owners refused to show them. Paramount didn't save any of the prints of those feature films he made that year. Some were shown in Europe and the prints belong in private hands. The only viewable movie to the general public of the seven he made that year is "Leap Year." It gives an indication of the direction Arbuckle was heading by the dampening of the knockabout physicality of his humor for a more sublime comedy sustaining an hour's plot. He plays a nephew of a rich uncle who's hounded by women knowing his wealthy background. But Fatty is focused in on his only true love, which he's loyal to a fault. The untimely death of Rappe and the subsequent publicity and trials of Arbuckle begs the question of how Arbuckle's farcical maturity would have produced further classics he was capable of producing, and serves as one of cinema's greater tragic missing chapters.

The negative review of this little seen movie must come from somebody who is a huge Virginia Rappe fan. Leap Year is by no stretch a comic masterpiece but it has it's share of belly laughs. I didn't find that there was much jumping up and down and grimacing in front of the camera in this picture. Arbuckle is a very agile man who could pull off some nice stunts with the best of 'em. The compromising situations Arbuckle's character finds himself in is what sets the tone for the hilarity that ensues in Leap Year. Aside from this movie being shown in 1921 it hadn't been shown until some 60 years later. The picture has a beautiful tint to it and is recommended to fans of silent comedy.

"Leap Year", starring Roscoe Arbuckle, was never released ... as it was about to be shipped to distributors when the scandal broke that destroyed Arbuckle's career. Tragically, the film was banned in Britain and several other nations during the furore over Arbuckle's alleged crimes. (He was eventually acquitted on all charges, yet the ban remained in place.) This film has a large production budget, some splendid location shots, and a witty script. "Leap Year" is excellent proof that Arbuckle was a major film star before his career came crashing down.

In "Leap Year", Roscoe is a wealthy Californian who just can't help attracting gorgeous women, even though he has a "steady girl". Considering Arbuckle's unromantic physique, we have to wonder how much of this female interest is directed towards his bank balance. There's one surprising shot in this movie, in which a man (not Arbuckle) enters a house through the bathroom window. He is clearly shown stepping onto the toilet seat, and using the toilet as a step to reach the floor. Film historians usually cite "The Crowd" (1928) as the first Hollywood movie to show a toilet, but "Leap Year" got there sooner.

One funny sequence, in which Roscoe tries to swim to Japan with his clothes on, shows Arbuckle's agility in the water. He was a very graceful man, despite his bulk. I give "Leap Year" 7 points.