StarD_Bean_1910s_final

by Ellen Dawson

  Yet, rather than marking a major paradigm shift in his output—equivalent

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  Advertisement for “Fatty” Arbuckle’s Paramount Series.

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  to, say, Chaplin’s roughly contemporaneous work at Mutual (1916–1917)—

  the Paramount shorts are best seen as a development and elaboration of the basic comic apparatus already established in his later Keystone films.

  Arbuckle’s gentler, bucolic strain would continue in rural comedies like A Country Hero (1917) and The Hayseed (1919), while his narrative experiments would surface again in Good Night Nurse (1918), which offers the same dream-reality interplay earlier evidenced in He Did and He Didn’t. Another common denominator lay in the continuing displacement of his performing body as a source of humor and an incremental stress on the mechanisms and techniques of filmmaking. What began to surface notably in Arbuckle’s Paramount films was thus not a development at the level of pantomime—

  again, a contrast with Chaplin’s work at Mutual suggests itself—but rather a playful reflexivity and willingness to make comedy out of the devices of filmic representation. The standout film of the series in this respect is most certainly Moonshine (1918), a comedy that reviewers described as a “takeoff on Kentucky mountain dramas” or a “burlesque of the once popular moonshiner picture,” but one whose comic tone owes more to its broader awareness of film as film, beyond any specific parody. At one point, Fatty excuses himself to the father of his love interest: “This is only a two-reeler, we have no time to build up to love scenes.” “In that case go ahead,” the father responds; “it’s your movie.” Later, Fatty escapes the moonshiners, climbs on a rock, raises his arms, and yells, “And now the world is mine!” whereupon the film cuts to co-star Buster Keaton (about whom more below) applaud-ing Arbuckle’s performance and shouting “Bravo!” This knowing stance toward cinematic contrivance elsewhere surfaced in The Sheriff (1918), a lost film in which, according to Motion Picture News, Arbuckle played a movie-struck sheriff who, “having often seen Douglas Fairbanks in pictures saving the heroine at the risk of his life, aspires to emulate him” (Neibaur 124). In all these instances, comedy arises from a perspective that invites us to view the performances as, specifically, fictive; there is a comic redoubling that enframes our perception of the action as a filmic construction. While this comic strategy hardly originates with Arbuckle—Vitagraph’s 1914 Goodness Gracious provides an earlier, oft-noted example—its significance in the Paramount films lies in the way it reinscribes Arbuckle’s comic creativity on the side of his filmmaking, not merely in his performative presence. Above and beyond the onscreen action, there is a “somewhere else” that provides the source of the film’s comedy: namely, Arbuckle’s off-camera presence as a skilled, and wittily reflexive, star-director.

  The constant displacement of Arbuckle’s performing body also registered as a dispersal of comic energies onto other performers. Upon his

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  departure from Keystone, Arbuckle had declared his intent to “develop new people” in his Comique productions, and the films were soon recognized as much for their co-starring talent as for Arbuckle’s individual star turns (“Arbuckle to Leave Keystone,” Motography, 7 October 1916, 832). “Roscoe Arbuckle, like Charlie Chaplin, likes to dope out his funny stunts right in front of the camera,” Photoplay declared in 1918, “but ‘Fatty’ is more generous with his footage so far as his colleagues are concerned—he lets them

  ‘get’ the laugh if it improves the completed product” (Neibaur 86). Those colleagues included his nephew and fellow former Keystoner Al St. John, female leads Corinne Parquet and Alice Lake, the eccentric dancer Jackie Coogan Sr. (father of the future child star), and, most notably, the knockabout vaudevillian Buster Keaton in his screen debuts. Arbuckle clearly appreciated the security of a stock company of performers and filmmaking personnel—something that he had previously developed at Keystone’s Fort Lee unit—but it was only at Comique that this approach significantly impacted the form of the films themselves. Despite Arbuckle’s ongoing efforts to elaborate comic narrative, a number of the Comique films move in a quite different direction, offering a thinly plotted, modular structure akin to that of a vaudeville performance, with different comedians doing their “bits” for the camera. Notable examples include The Bell Boy (1918), The Garage, and, above all, The Cook (1918), whose first reel unfolds as a virtually plotless series of comic turns set in a beach café: Roscoe, in the titular role of cook, offers one of his trademark displays of juggling, flipping pancakes in the air and catching them behind his back; Buster Keaton, the waiter, performs a parody of Orientalist choreography; next, Al St. John,

  “the toughest guy in the world,” sashays into a spectacularly rough “grizzly bear” dance with cashier Alice Lake.

  Ironically, in his efforts to “develop new people,” Arbuckle unwittingly prepared the way for his eventual disappearance as a star of slapstick shorts.

  There is no question that the Comique productions gave Buster Keaton crucial early exposure while playing a formative role in his filmmaking prowess.

  Keaton recalled how Arbuckle “took the camera apart for me so I would understand how it worked and what it could do. He showed me how film was developed, cut, and then spliced together. . . . I could not have found a better-natured man to teach me the movie business, or a more knowledgeable one” (Keaton 93, 95). Nor did Keaton’s contributions to these films go unnoticed by other studios. In 1919, lucrative offers arrived from other production companies, with Jack Warner and William Fox each offering contracts of $1,000 per week for his services. Keaton’s loyalty to Arbuckle prevented him from taking those offers, but Joseph Schenck and Paramount

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  head Adolph Zukor soon masterminded an arrangement that would turn the situation to mutual advantage: Zukor approached Arbuckle with an offer to graduate him to feature-length movies for Paramount Pictures, at a salary of $3,000 a week for three years, plus 25 percent of the Comique Film Corporation’s continuing profits; Schenck, meanwhile, promoted Keaton to Comique’s creative head, for a scheduled eight two-reelers per year to be released through Metro.

  Arbuckle thus became the first of the major comedians to break into features, although it was a move that drastically altered the coordinates of his stardom. At a time when the slapstick feature was not yet a proven commodity, Arbuckle’s talents were employed simply as an actor in light comedy dramas. Reviews of the first of these, The Round-Up—a relatively

  “straight” western released in October 1920—struck an understandably perplexed note. “It is evident Fatty Arbuckle of the mammoth breaches and slapstick funnies has given way to Roscoe Arbuckle in a regular hero role, entirely serious in personation with but a modicum of comedy for relief,”

  Variety noted (“The Round-Up,” 10 September 1920, 35). Others, however, seem to have recognized this deferral of knockabout as a necessary gambit in further solidifying Arbuckle’s claims for artistry. “Unlike most comedians,

  [Arbuckle] is an artist,” one critic observed of the acting in his new features,

  “and his artistry is manifested with pleasing frequency” (Young 63); Arbuckle’s performances, chimed another, suggested that it was now “not at all necessary for him to interpolate any of the horseplay of the farce in order to win pure comedy” (“Brewster’s Millions,” Moving Picture World, 5

  February 1921, 725). With the move to features, Arbuckle at last seemed to have secured the mantle of respectability, but only by fully divesting himself of his slapstick physicality. His success would prove short-lived.

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  ✩ Conclusion

  In what sense, finally, might Arbuckle have been paradig-

  matic of the operations of film stardom duri
ng its first decade? Not simply as a sensational body, to be sure, but rather as a field of tension in which his

  “fat” was but one pole in a continuous dialectic of cultural meanings. This is where it becomes possible, however briefly, to offer some closing observa-tions on the scandal that has forever dogged critical readings of Arbuckle’s career. Whereas most of those readings have understood the scandal as a policing of the excess symbolized in Arbuckle’s body (e.g., “the massive system could not permit unregulated individual massiveness”), the context of meanings traced in this chapter suggests precisely the reverse. What the

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  scandal effectively disavowed was instead Arbuckle’s ability to be more than just a body, to define a star identity that bridged his physicality as a “low”

  comedian with intellectual and artistic ambition. Arbuckle thus became a target not simply because he was at the wrong wild party at the wrong time, but because his star identity was perhaps Hollywood’s boldest proclamation of its ability to mix cultural registers, to locate artistry within the grotesque. The New York Times, for one, seems to have had an inkling of that logic, and, in a 1922 editorial, declared Arbuckle’s personal innocence to be irrelevant to Hollywood’s broader need for expiation: “Sometimes it is expedient that one man should be sacrificed for his group. Sometimes Christian charity comes too high. Arbuckle was a scapegoat; and the only thing to do with a scapegoat, if you must have one, is to chase him off into the wilderness and never let him come back” (“Hays and Arbuckle,” 22 December 1922, 13). To be a scapegoat, Terry Eagleton has recently written, is to become an obscene creature; it is to become ultimately grotesque, not as a comic figure, but through the inner structure of the tragic; and it is, finally, to become just a body, a polluted piece of matter, that nonetheless signifies more than just itself, an incarnate sign of the community’s broader culpability (Eagleton 128–40). It is in this context of “embodied” expiation that Arbuckle’s scandal can be said to have found its necessity: the Keystone “fat boy” was being loudly and decisively restored to the carnal realm of low culture, “a fat, vulgar, coarse man,”

  in the opinion of Gloria Swanson; “a disgrace to the film business,” according to one of his former directors; or a “beast” and “degenerate bastard,” as Buster Keaton recalled his friend’s public abuse (Oderman 157; “Miss Rappe’s Fiancé Threatens Vengeance,” New York Times, 13 September 1921, 2; Keaton 160). Arbuckle’s career thus imploded at the moment that his meaning was returned to and limited by his fat: the interplay of cultural meanings that had kept his carnal identity as “Fatty” in tension with its negation was brought to a halt, and he finally became a scapegoat, but no longer a star.

  N OT E S

  1. As historian Shelley Streeby has argued, an interest in physical thrills and spectacle made sensationalism an aesthetic mode that corresponded to an emphasis on laboring bodies and the “embodied relationships that workers have to power” (Streeby 31).

  2. Interestingly, this prioritization of the body had not been the case during Arbuckle’s earlier career as a stage performer, where his act depended less on his physical abilities than on his talent as a tenor singer, whether as a performer of illustrated songs or, later, as one of the stars of theatrical producer Ferris Hartman’s comic opera company (including a touring production of The Mikado in Asia in 1912) (Oderman 1–39; Young 12–29).

  3. For further analysis of Arbuckle’s development at Keystone, see Rapf.

  4. Arbuckle’s interest in comic byplay is also indicated in the amount of rehearsal time he spent perfecting virtuoso turns and other bits of comic business. According to Kalton

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  Lahue and Terry Brewer’s Kops and Custards: The Legend of Keystone Films, “The rotund comedian spent one week just to shoot the kitchen scenes for Fickle Fatty’s Fall (1915). He used over 10,000 feet of film for that sequence. One scene called for him to flip a pancake over his shoulder and catch it behind his back. . . . The cameras rolled all day, but it was not until 4:00 that afternoon that Roscoe was able to do it” (117).

  5. Tinting involves dying the film stock, lending color to the clear portions of the film; toning chemically alters the emulsion, coloring the black portions.

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  Douglas Fairbanks

  Icon of Americanism

  SCOTT CURTIS

  The rise of Douglas Fairbanks (1883–1939) in the late 1910s was nothing short of spectacular. In a variety of films for Triangle, Artcraft, and United Artists, Fairbanks played cheery, athletic young men who bounded their way over obstacles and rivals to get the girl and the prize. His first film debuted in September 1915, but in a fan survey three years later, Fairbanks already ranked third in a long list of popular stars behind Mary Pickford and Marguerite Clark ( Motion Picture Magazine, September 1918, 6).

  By the end of the decade, after only four years in the industry, Fairbanks was the most popular male star in Hollywood, second only to Pickford in fame and fortune. Among the reasons for this quick ascent we can count a Douglas Fairbanks, circa 1919. Courtesy of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

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  successful filmmaking formula that displayed Fairbanks’s sound business sense and his ability to surround himself with top talent, as well as a well-oiled publicity machine that kept him constantly in the public eye. We can also count hard work: from the fall of 1915 to the end of 1919, Fairbanks made nearly thirty films, published two books and countless articles, formed his own production company, criss-crossed the nation several times selling Liberty Bonds for the war effort, and co-founded United Artists. We must also not underestimate the vigor and flexibility of the Fairbanks star persona, which he trained and developed on Broadway, adding bulk, definition, and endurance in Hollywood. Everybody liked “Doug,” it seemed, and this amiability was certainly a key to his success. But there was something deeper and more meaningful in the Fairbanks persona. Perhaps this energetic, even indefatigable star became so popular because he projected an image of Americans as they wanted to see themselves, and as they still want to see themselves: as youthful and athletic, optimistic and adventurous, decisive and democratic. Ultimately, at a crucial point in the nation’s entry on the world stage, Fairbanks gave his domestic and worldwide audience a pleasing vision of what it meant to be American.

  Surveying the films and press about Fairbanks reveals a remarkably consistent picture, an almost seamless identity between private actor and public character. To be sure, this is the goal of all early star discourse—to present the actor as the embodiment of his or her roles, and to emphasize the compatibility of these roles with the “real” life of the actor (see deCordova). In Fairbanks’s case, however, the discourse is unusually insistent in this regard. Even from his days on the theatrical stage, reviewers noted that “off the stage, one imagines, Mr. Fairbanks must be very much the sort of young man he is called upon to play” ( New York Times, 23 August 1908, 9). When plays were written especially for him, as in this case, we can imagine this fit to be particularly apt, but throughout his career Fairbanks insisted that he was not a great actor, instead emphasizing the importance of “personality” for his success. Early serial characters were often named after the actors who played them (Kathlyn Williams in The Adventures of Kathlyn [1913], for example) in order to stress the identity of actor and character; in an interesting twist on that strategy, many of Fairbanks’s early films have characters with such obviously contrived names (Sunny Wiggins, Passin’ Through, Steve O’Dare, Blaze Derringer) that it has the same effect, with a sly, satirical wink: Fairbanks is just playing himself.

  For our purposes, this “self” is, ironically, an effect of his representations in film and in the written discourse about him. Any screen persona is an amalgam of different qualities in vari
ous measures. If we were to melt down

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  and separate Fairbanks’s winning alloy, forged by his numerous appearances onscreen and in the press, we would find at least four distinct but related elements. Foremost, the films and publicity emphasize his youthfulness. Even though he was thirty-two years old when he started making films, he is nearly always portrayed as carefree and adventurous, as someone who brings boundless enthusiasm and energy to whatever tasks he faces. Gaylyn Studlar argues persuasively that there is something Peter Pan–like in this fantasy; Fairbanks’s boyishness means that he was never weighed down by commitments or responsibilities ( This Mad Masquerade 50). Work is not work for Fairbanks or his characters—it is play. This manifests itself most obviously in his extraordinary athleticism. Fairbanks runs, leaps, rides, tumbles, and climbs his way through his films as if they were pentathlons. Every piece written about him stresses his incredible physical prowess, and his sheer joy in physical activity is palpable on screen. Physical vigor is more than a healthy attitude for Fairbanks; it is a moral imperative akin to (even borrowed from) Theodore Roosevelt’s concept of “the strenuous life.”1

  Yet he does it all with a smile so infectious that they called him “Old Doc Cheerful.” His smile was, like Buster Keaton’s lack thereof, a trademark. It signals his ready optimism, his confidence, and his good humor. “Doug” lets nothing get him down. There is a purity to this optimism, a straightforward-ness, and a guilelessness that allows him to be comfortable in any situation.

  Whether in the East or in the West, with men or with women, at a society dinner or in a working-class pub, Fairbanks is at home. One commentator wrote, “Take my word for it, he is every inch all that he looks . . . a regular fellow, one who ‘belongs’ in any company” ( Moving Picture World, 24 June 1916, 2213). This ability to belong in any social situation is absolutely central to the Fairbanks persona. He is able to move freely among the classes, as if he belongs to all of them; he has a uniquely unfettered social mobility. Confidence is not his only means here; there is something inherently democratic about the Fairbanks persona. Fairbanks is represented as transparent, sincere, and unpretentious—he is just a “regular fellow.” Yet he is also often represented as a member of the upper classes. This dual citizenship is not contradictory or adversarial in his films. The true democrat presumes equality wherever he goes, and this is exactly the Fairbanks attitude. It is not simply that he has the equipment and background to move freely among different social milieux—although he does, as we shall see. Unique among the characters in any of his films, Fairbanks has skills that accommodate—or as Studlar argues, reconcile—opposite worlds. He can ride a horse with as much assurance as he wears a tuxedo, and he can do both better than anybody else in the film. But, again, the “democratic” aspect of his persona depends not on