His Wedding Night

A strictly routine Arbuckle comedy in which most of the laughs are to be found following the belated entry of a young Buster Keaton, who is mistaken for store assistant Roscoe's bride-to-be. Modern-day viewers will no doubt find some racist gags and a scene in which Roscoe deliberately chloroforms a young woman so that he can kiss her as she sleeps offensive.

Buster Keaton had practically grown up on the stage. At three, the son of the owner of a traveling show along with the magician Harry Houdini, joined his father in a skit which had him disobeying his dad, only to be physically tossed around for his insubordination. Occasionally, Joe, his dad, was arrested for child abuse after the show. But young Keaton showed authorities his body sustained no bruises despite tossed into the scenery, the orchestra pit and even into the audience. The young boy learned how to fall. "The secret is in landing limp and breaking the fall with a foot or a hand," Keaton later said. "It's a knack. I started so young that landing right is second nature with me. Several times I'd have been killed if I hadn't been able to land like a cat. Imitators of our act don't last long, because they can't stand the treatment."

Buster was having such a good time getting thrown around he would giggle after he landed, causing the audience to become silent. He saw if he possessed a deadpan face after the stunts, the theatergoers howled in laughter. Transporting that trait onto film, he earned the nickname "The Great Stone Face."

It's a rarity Keaton was caught smiling in film. One of the few times he does appears in his third movie with Fatty, Aug. 1917's "His Wedding Night." Keaton plays a delivery boy bringing Fatty's fiancee, Alice, her wedding dress. Alice asks Buster to try it on to see if she likes it. He does, and he emerges from behind a partition smiling.

In a scene earlier in the movie, when a luxurious car pulls up to Fatty's outdoor gas pump, seen in the back seat are two women. One was Natalie Talmadge of the famous acting Talmadge sisters, who later were owners of their own studio. Natalie worked for Fatty as a script girl/secretary when she met Keaton. The two later fell in love, married, and had two children.

Buster Keaton posing after trying on the wedding dress is hilarious, and worth the price of admission. Roscoe Arbuckle using chloroform to knock a woman out and then kiss her is not. Giving the black customer charcoal as a skin product was regrettable too. On top of those things, not much of the exaggerated antics work, e.g. The rival for the woman's affections choking people and trying to gnaw their faces when angry (Al St. John, Arbuckle's real-life nephew). Arbuckle tries to get the most he can out of each bit though, like randomly taking a sip from the gasoline pump as if it were a garden hose at the end of that scene, or sticking his head between the donkey's legs from behind in the effort to get it to move. He's not that appealing, but it's watchable for Buster Keaton. Just seeing Buster smile and wink at the end in this pre-Great Stone Face period was fantastic.

In something of a thematic follow-up to The Butcher Boy from just a few months prior, Fatty Arbuckle plays a drug store clerk with a thing for the owner's daughter. Despite the sweetness of his immediate wedding proposal and the usual array of silly antics and messy customer confrontations, Arbuckle's character explores some strangely dark corners in this one. Price-fixing the gasoline and taking swigs from the pump may be one thing, a disconcerting throwaway gag, but swapping perfume samples for chloroform is another, especially when he uses the opportunity to make advances on the kayoed shoppers. It's weird and out of place, a dirty turn for what's, otherwise, a very light-hearted romp around the soda fountain. Buster Keaton is kicking around the store, too, as a harried delivery boy recruited to model gowns for the bride-to-be, but he's a less active participant than usual and the comedy suffers for his absence. The best scene, pictured in most promotional materials, involves Arbuckle's ill-fated attempts to somehow get a live mule up on his shoulders. Strange but mostly amusing.

Buster Keaton got his start in movies alongside Fatty Arbuckle. Keaton obviously ended up more famous due to the collapse of Arbuckle's career following a scandal. Nonetheless, their collaborations were usually enjoyable. An example is 1917's "His Wedding Night". It's basically an excuse for them to pull a series of zany gags, one involving a watermelon.

One of the most famous things about this short is that we get to see Buster Keaton smile, one of the rare instances when he did so onscreen. But even beyond that, it's just a funny short. It just goes to show that talent is main thing required to make any performance work. You're sure to enjoy it. Available on Wikipedia.