Tu trembles, Fatty

Leap Year (1921)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Fatty Arbuckle plays a man who suffers from the sickness of falling in love with every woman he meets. This doesn't sit well with his fiancé when three other women show up to his house, all claiming to be his fiancé. This is a really poor film, the first feature I've seen from Arbuckle. Everything Fatty was good at is missing in this film and it seems like there wasn't any effort put into it. The only real highlight is when Fatty tries to scare off the three women by pretending to have violent fits. The most interesting thing was that this was made prior to Fatty being accused of murder. When he was accused, Hollywood put a ban on his films so this was never released until the early 1980's, nearly fifty years after his death.

Waiter's Ball, The (1916)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

A waiter and a cook (Fatty Arbuckle) fight over who will take a waitress to a dance.

There's some good stunt work inside the kitchen and Fatty has a few nice scenes with a dead fish but not all of the jokes work. The ending is very good however.

"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.

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.

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.

This 4-DVD set has been a long time in coming and should go a long way in helping to restore Roscoe Arbuckle to his rightful place in the history of film comedy. One of its most rewarding aspects is the tracing of Arbuckle's development as a comic genius and having the opportunity to see the antics of some of the lesser known people he surrounded himself with. The collaborations with Mabel Normand and Al St John have been around for years but you almost never get to see Minta Durfee (Arbuckle's first wife and lifelong friend) or Edgar Kennedy (when he had hair) before his Hal Roach days. It's great to have the early Keystone comedies in decent prints (paper prints from the Library Of Congress) although the formula does wear thin after awhile.

Of special interest are discs 3 and 4 devoted to Arbuckle after Keystone and to his directing efforts after the 1921 scandal which wrongly resulted in his being banned from the screen as a performer. This material is very rare and features comics Lloyd Hamilton and Lupino Lane as well as a special treat from Douglas Fairbanks called CHARACTER STUDIES which features Carter DeHaven and a surprise postscandal appearance by Arbuckle. There is also an over the top sound film with Al St John (before he became a B Western sidekick) called BRIDGE WIVES which must be seen to be believed.

This brings me to the three minor issues I have with this otherwise sterling set. It would have nice to have one of the late Arbuckle sound shorts included so that we could hear Roscoe talk as well as see one of his last onscreen appearances. Why are there two versions of HE DID AND HE DIDN'T (only the tinting differs) when there could have been one more comedy added? It would also have been nice to have more commentary to give background on these films as they unfold. Out of 30 films only 7 have this feature.

But these are minor complaints with one of the best packaged silent sets in recent memory. The film presentations are fine, the musical accompaniment ideal, the commentary good, and the choice of material is great (Fatty's only surviving feature film LEAP YEAR is especially valuable to have and see). This release also comes with a comprehensive 35 page booklet on Arbuckle and the restoration work that needed to be done. Anyone who has any interest in silent film comedy should acquire this collection as soon as possible to be put up on the shelf with their Chaplin and Keaton sets. At long last Roscoe Arbuckle is finally getting his due and it's about time...For more reviews visit The Capsule Critic.