The Garage

That kind of collaboration giving a gem, because the clash between two different characters and two meanings of a garage are well used for fun, for inspired gags and as frame of a special form of nostalgia. A lovely short film reminding the genius of two great commedians.

The last Arbuckle/Keaton collaboration is one of their best. Stripped of romantic interest and Al St John, all we have here is Roscoe and Buster doing what they do best - having fun for everyone else's enjoyment. Working the dual jobs of mechanics and firemen the boys keep the laughs coming thick and fast. Most of the jokes work and some are positively inspired. The scene where Buster dresses as Sir Harry Lauder still has me laughing. There's also the first appearance of a piece of action where a trouserless Buster is dodging a policeman aided by Roscoe. This gag resurfaced years later when Buster appeared in The Twilight Zone. It's a shame they didn't make a few more films as Buster and Roscoe were well into their stride at this point and understood each other perfectly.

Keaton and Arbuckle have come a long way since "The Butcher." It's wonderful to see how well they work together in this one.

Leave it to Buster to go *up* the firehouse pole routinely!

There is indeed a lot of "The Blacksmith" (1922) in this one; maybe that, as well as "Cops" (1922), were both Keaton's homage to Arbuckle during his legal trials (which began in late 1921).

Also, now I finally understand the bathtub scene with Sybil Seely in "One Week," which came out in September 1920 ("The Garage" came out at the beginning of that year). The cheesecake seemed out of place in "One Week," but I see now that Keaton was duplicating the scene with Molly Malone here in "The Garage." He did it so well, I had to look both shorts up to make sure different actresses played them.

"One Week" was the first short that Keaton made on his own, and perhaps that explains why "The Garage" is the last Keaton-Arbuckle collaboration.

Also, I used to think Seeley was the most athletic of the Keaton female co-stars, but Malone is even better here.

The scene with Buster running on that spinning disc is also done, in a very different setting, in "The Haunted House," a Keaton short that came out a little over a year after "The Garage."

Buster Keaton and Fatty Arbuckle team up for the last time for "The Garage", in which they play mechanics for whom everything goes wrong. It's clear that these two made a great comedy team. I'd go so far as to say that they were the Laurel and Hardy of their day. Probably would've continued had Arbuckle not gotten mired in a scandal.

As for the antics, there's a bathtub, a pole, and grease. I try to imagine how much fun everyone must've had filming it. I don't know if it's widely available (I saw it on YouTube).

Fun stuff.

The Garage marked the end of an era, as it was the final short Roscoe Arbuckle and Buster Keaton would make together. The 1920's would see Keaton's solo career skyrocket into immortality, and to Arbuckle's credit, he fully supported Keaton going his own way. Meanwhile, Arbuckle's career would of course be brutally derailed by the injustice of the Virginia Rappe case less than two years later, the public fanned into a frenzy by the tabloid journalism of William Randolph Hearst and willing to believe the worst about a star whose screen persona always had a dark streak. Knowing the impending parting of ways and fates of these friends makes watching this short special.

There are lots of amusing bits here, including getting several gags out of an automobile turntable (Buster running on it like a gerbil among other things), Arbuckle walking behind Buster and hoisting him up so Buster can swipe a pair of pants and instantly put them on, and Buster getting stuck in the fence and having a dog (good old Luke) attack his backside. The garage mechanics are also firemen (of course!), and the contraption they rigged up to whisk the covers off their beds as well as their nightshirts in response to a fire alarm was hilarious, my favorite. As James Curtis writes in his biography of Keaton, Buster believed this was the best of his films with Arbuckle ("It was a honey," he said, "It was a pip."). While I don't fully agree with him, it's certainly entertaining.