Fatty Arbuckle and Mabel Normand in "Fatty and Mabel Adrift."
(©1998 KINO ON VIDEO. All rights reserved.)

Volume Four of the "Slapstick Encyclopedia" features some of the best work of Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle. You'll find Arbuckle working with Charlie Chaplin in the 1914 Keystone Studios' "The Rounders," teaming with Buster Keaton in "Oh, Doctor!" (1917) and "The Garage" (1920), and co-starring with Mabel Normand and Al St. John in "Fatty and Mabel Adrift" (1916). In "The Rounders," Arbuckle and Chaplin play drunks who stumble home to their less-than-thrilled wives, who promptly kick them out--leaving Arbuckle and Chaplin to team up and invade a restaurant. "Oh, Doctor!" and "The Garage" allow us to see how Arbuckle and Keaton worked together. "Oh, Doctor!" was one of their first comedies. Arbuckle takes the lead, with Keaton in a supporting role, but by "The Garage" three years later, Keaton and Arbuckle share screen time equally. In "Oh, Doctor!" Arbuckle plays a doctor with less-than-ethical methods. At one point, he even runs his car into a crowd of people and then passes out his business cards to the victims. Keaton's role places him largely on the sidelines, as the doctor's son. As Arbuckle punches and smacks Keaton, the Great Stone Face uncharacteristically begins screaming and crying.
 

Al St. John moves to the forefront in "The Iron Mule" (1925), directed after Arbuckle had been banished from the movie screen as the result of an infamous scandal. Nevermind that Arbuckle was acquitted of any wrongdoing, his career in front of the camera was ruined, but he continued making comedies, such as this one, which features the same quirky train built for Buster Keaton's Our Hospitality. Buster Keaton himself takes a starring role in "The Boat" (1921), one of his very finest shorts (in a newly remastered and orchestrally-scored version that improves on the version included with Kino's The Art of Buster Keaton). Keaton stars as husband who has built a huge boat in his basement. After nearly demolishing their house while getting the boat through the small basement door, Keaton takes his family on a watery outing.