The Day the Laughter Stopped, page 12
Arbuckle analysed audience reaction to every gag, every foot of film. On one occasion he explained:
The existence of the comedy-producer is a life of doubt. He never knows anything for sure. The director of dramatic pictures knows when he has made a good photoplay because good drama has a universal appeal. The comedy director, however, has no standard of weights and measures to guide him, because what will make one person laugh may bore another, and completely pass over the head of a third. Of course there are the usual sure-fire gags that can be resorted to in a pinch – the chase, or the exaggerated mechanical tricks – but no miner ever dug further or deeper for the elusive gold than does the comedy-maker delve into real life for the little things that will evoke laughter.
Buster Keaton returned from France in March 1919. The village quality of the Hollywood he had left just a year before was already beginning to vanish. Keaton went back to work with Arbuckle, who was completing the 1919 schedule of two-reelers, before starting his feature films. Besides making a number of superb comedies, the two men found time to engage in a series of practical jokes that are still talked about in Hollywood.
It was appropriate that their first and perhaps their best practical joke had as its victim Roscoe’s boss, one of the most powerful men in the industry, Adolph Zukor. He was not an easy man to fool, as others had learned. William S. Hart, the movie cowboy, and Sid Grauman, Sr, who owned ‘Chinese’ and ‘Egyptian’ movie theatres in Hollywood, had once held up a Los Angeles train bound for San Francisco, with the object of robbing Adolph Zukor. Nobody ever got Zukor to part with money easily. While the other passengers panicked, Zukor had stared hard at the masked giant standing before him with a gun in either hand, and remarked, ‘It’s a great idea, Bill; be sure you use it in your next movie.’
On hearing that Zukor was coming out to the West Coast on his annual profit-counting trip, Roscoe invited the great man to dinner.
The dining room at the West Adams house comfortably held twenty-four. Among the guests on this particular occasion were Sid Grauman; Frank Newman, a Kansas City film exhibitor; Bebe Daniels; Anna Q. Nilsson; and the two women Roscoe and Buster were squiring around town, Alice Lake and Viola Dana.
Everything was planned with precision. The guests, who were all in on the joke, were briefed by Roscoe. It was classically simple: Buster Keaton was going to be the butler and wait on table. Keaton had yet to star in his own films and therefore would not be too easily spotted. To be safe, Roscoe dimmed all the lights in the downstairs rooms.
After several rounds of cocktails the guests seated themselves at the table. In through the swinging kitchen doors came butler Keaton, with the first course, shrimp cocktails. Ignoring Roscoe’s indication to serve the ladies first, Keaton marched to the head of the table and, commencing with Zukor, served all the men. The men promptly attacked the shrimps. Deadpan, Keaton returned with another tray of shrimp cocktails, served the women, then went back to the kitchen. Roscoe muttered an apology to his guests and strode out to the kitchen. There, loud enough for the assembled guests to hear, he yelled, ‘You stupid numskull! Don’t you know better than to serve the men first?’ With a look of triumph, Roscoe returned to the dinner table. He was followed by Keaton, who then transferred, sometimes in mid-spoonful, the men’s shrimps to the ladies, and the ladies’ to the men.
Keaton then laid out soup plates for the diners and, returning to the kitchen, created a tremendous noise. He crashed knives and forks about, doused himself with water to create the impression that the soup had spilled all over him, then crashed a tin washtub on the floor. Squelching back into the dining room, he removed the empty soup plates and ladle without a word of explanation.
Roscoe was by now affecting a tremendous rage. Zukor leaned forward from the head of the table and reassuringly cooed, ‘That’s all right, Roscoe. I never eat soup anyway.’ Refusing to be comforted, Arbuckle complained bitterly about the terrible servant problem in Los Angeles. Sympathetically, Zukor advised him that they had the same problem back East. ‘You just can’t get intelligent servants any more.’
On cue Buster reappeared, this time with ice water in a silver pitcher. He moved around the table, filling the glasses, until he got to Bebe Daniels. Ignoring her glass, he moved on to Roscoe. Proffering her glass, Bebe remarked, ‘Could I have some please?’ Buster, suddenly struck by Bebe’s beauty, stared raptly into her eyes as he poured. He missed the glass and poured the water all over Roscoe. Enraged, Roscoe leaped to his feet and, grabbing Buster by the neck and the seat of his pants, rushed towards the kitchen. In a panic Zukor hurried from the table. Fearing that his superstar was about to commit murder or have a stroke or both, Zukor pleaded with him to release Keaton. Allowing himself to be pacified, Roscoe contented himself with throwing Keaton through the swinging doors.
Back at the table he began building up his mock rage again. Eventually he told his guests that he intended to quit the house and that if this was what being a film star was all about, he would quit the business as well.
Zukor looked at his three-million-dollar star and went white. He had already aged many years since the dinner began. He listened aghast as Roscoe warmed to his theme.
Roscoe told his listeners that he had never wanted to live in this style in the first place, that it was all Joe Schenck’s doing.
Zukor sputtered, ‘But, Roscoe, if you left the business, what would you do?’
Roscoe looked at him, then said, ‘Seems to me there’s plenty of potential in opening a catering agency. Supplying trustworthy staff. I’m definitely going to quit this house and go live in a hotel.’
By now Zukor did not know whether he was coming or going. To pacify Roscoe, he exclaimed, ‘I tell you what, Roscoe. I’ll go and live in a hotel, too.’
The assembled guests were having a terrible time trying to keep straight faces. There was a great deal of coughing and choking. Sid Grauman offered an explanation for the butler’s bizarre behaviour. ‘When we were having cocktails, I noticed him helping himself to a couple of large ones. Perhaps he’s heard about the Prohibition law?’
Clutching at straws, Zukor declared that that was obviously the explanation. The butler was merely trying to get into the spirit of things and be sociable.
The next course on the mis-menu was a twenty-four-pound turkey. Buster showed it to his master, who smiled his approval and said quietly, ‘That’s fine. Carve it in the pantry.’
Buster, carrying the turkey, moved towards the swinging doors. As he reached the doors, he stooped to pick up a napkin. This was the prearranged signal for actor Jimmy Bryant, hidden on the other side of the doors. He pushed the door hard, hitting Buster in the backside and propelling him across the turkey. Buster hurtled back towards the dinner table, literally riding the turkey, and smashed into the table before collapsing on the floor. Kneeling on the floor, he began brushing the dirt and dust from the turkey and, pulling pieces from it, threw them on to the guests’ plates.
Screaming with rage, Roscoe picked him up one-handed and headed for the kitchen. Keaton, still clutching the turkey as he hung suspended in mid-air, continued throwing pieces of the bird to the guests. Once inside the kitchen, Roscoe and Buster began throwing dishpans and pots and cutlery all over the place. To the listening guests it sounded as if the two men were locked in mortal combat. Roscoe screamed, ‘I’ll kill you, you damned dumb bastard!’
Zukor, by now quaking, urged Bebe Daniels to try to calm their host. As Bebe reached the swinging doors, Roscoe pushed one of them open. This was to provide the guests, particularly Zukor, with a good view of their host hitting his butler over the head with a full bottle of brandy (a breakaway bottle filled with tea). The bottle was duly smashed over Keaton’s head. What followed was not in the script. Some of the pieces and a fair amount of the cold tea fell on Bebe’s bosom. Not knowing what had hit her and fearing it was blood, she began to scream. Buster took off in the direction of the garden, with Roscoe in pursuit. As Buster leaped over the Japanese bridge and vanished through the Malayan shrubbery, Roscoe allowed Zukor to catch him and gently lead him back into the house.
Keaton, meanwhile, had slipped around to the front, quietly re-entered the house and made his way upstairs. There he changed his clothes, restyled his hair, sat on a bed, and waited.
Roscoe introduced his real butler as his chef, and a second turkey was served. During the dinner Buster telephoned, ostensibly ringing from his own house. Roscoe told him to come around and join them for dessert and coffee. He told the guests who was coming and Zukor remarked, ‘Oh, I know him well. A wonderful performer.’
Sid Grauman, struggling to suppress his laughter, said, ‘He’s a very rare kind of actor. The unforgettable type.’
Keaton, having crept downstairs and rung the front-door bell, joined the guests. Sitting next to him was Frank Newman, who said excitedly, ‘You should have been here earlier, Keaton. We had the damnedest waiter you ever saw.’ Then, pausing for a moment, he wickedly added, ‘The odd part is that he looked just like you.’
Zukor reacted. He stared long and hard at Keaton. His eyes moved from Keaton to Arbuckle and back again. Grauman pointed his finger at Zukor and said, ‘Came the dawn.’
Zukor did not smile. He just said very quietly, ‘Very clever, boys. Very clever.’ Later in the evening, when he had recovered from the traumatic dinner, he also thought it was very funny. And the following day he gave the story to the press, thereby proving not only that he was a good judge of comedians, but that he also had a rare sense of humour – and, of course, an eye for publicity.
Contrary to popular opinion, Buster Keaton did smile, at least when he worked with Roscoe. And at the end of 1919 both men had a great deal to smile about. Roscoe was moving into features, and Buster was to inherit the two-reeler Comique Company. The sky seemed the limit for both men.
At the end of 1919, Roscoe went on a European holiday, expecting to travel quietly as a regular tourist. What happened was New York 1916 over again, but more spectacular. In London he was besieged by the press and public. He stayed at Claridges, where there were four press agents and two managers to protect him, but at every meal they were swept away by a rush of reporters. Wherever he went in London, he was followed by cheering crowds. He sailed for France and was greeted so enthusiastically that he was injured: several men in the crowd tried to carry ‘their hero’ on their shoulders; but they miscalculated his weight, and he fell to the pavement. His reception in Paris was a personal triumph. Roscoe placed a wreath on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and the city rose in salute. The public loved this man, and they let him know it. Dazed but happy, Roscoe returned to the West Coast to do his first feature film.
The Round Up was a seven-reel western romance based on Edmund Day’s successful Broadway play of the same name, in which the lead had been played by Roscoe’s namesake, Maclyn Arbuckle. The Round Up gives a clear indication of the distance Arbuckle had travelled artistically since his Keystone days. It is deliberately paced, with far greater emphasis on characterization, and it gave Arbuckle his first opportunity to show himself an actor as well as a comedian. He played a sheriff, Slim Hoover, and was joined briefly by Buster Keaton, who played an uncredited part for fun – and for an extra’s fee of $7.50. (If you see the movie, watch for an Indian biting the dust in a spectacular way.) It was the last film the two men worked on together officially. The public rushed to see The Round Up; it was a box-office success. Some critics lamented Roscoe’s departure from the Keystone format, but admitted grudgingly that perhaps the man had some acting ability.
Buoyed by the success of The Round Up, Arbuckle quickly began work on his second feature, The Life of the Party. Again he used material that had already proved successful in another medium, in this case as a story written by Irvin S. Cobb for The Saturday Evening Post. Roscoe and Walter Woods rewrote it for the screen, and Roscoe chose Joseph Henabery (who was trained by Griffith) to direct. The result was an even bigger hit. The reviewer in Kinematograph Weekly observed, ‘Fatty Arbuckle, unlike most comedians, is an artist, and his artistry is manifested with pleasing frequency.’ It seemed that Arbuckle could do no wrong.
The Life of the Party was released in November 1920. The owner of a string of Paramount cinemas in Colorado took out ads that boosted Paramount for its quality and decency, saying, in part: ‘The management of the Princess Theatre makes it a personal business to see that every photoplay shown in its house is irreproachable both in morals and good taste. It shows Paramount pictures because Paramount stands first in the motion picture industry for its insistence upon decency. When you see the trademark of Paramount pictures, you need never hesitate about taking your family.’
The ad campaign was quoted in trade magazines in April 1921, as showing patrons not only that Paramount was decent, but that Paramount’s actors were, too. Both Paramount and Arbuckle were riding the crest of a tremendous wave, and they eagerly publicized their success, a success that would work against them in the days to come.
To many, it was far from clear that decency was the message Hollywood was sending out to the nation through its films. The film industry had come a long way from the innocent days when the heroine of Sigmund Lubin’s Her Secret could boldly admit in a screen title, ‘Jack, I will be equally frank with you. When we were married, I thought my little vice would shock you. You had placed me on a pedestal. Perhaps I was wrong, but I concealed the little puffs from you, and you, silly boy, suspected a conflagration.’ (Her secret vice was cigarette smoking.)
More recently Paramount had released ads like that for the movie The Sheik, starring an Italian gardener named Rodolfo Alfonzo Rafaelo Pierre Filibert Guglielmi di Valentina d’Antonguolla, better known as Rudolph Valentino:
SEE:
The auction of beautiful girls to the lords of Algerian harems. The barbaric gambling fete in the glittering Casino of Biskra. The heroine, disguised, invade the Bedouin’s secret slave rites. Sheik Ahmed raid her caravan and carry her off to his tent. Her stampede his Arabian horses and dash away to freedom. Her captured by bandit tribesmen and enslaved by their chief in his stronghold. The fierce battle of Ahmed’s clans to rescue the girl from his foes. The Sheik’s vengeance. The storm in the desert. A proud girl’s heart surrendered.
By today’s standards the films of the early 1920s seem tame, but the studios made them sound naughty. To civic groups and reformers who had been suspicious of the movies all along, ads like that for The Sheik were powerful evidence of the evil influence of films. Standards of behaviour were changing all over the country, and many Americans found it easy to believe that Hollywood was leading the country into a state of moral decay with its focus on sex and crime – by its Celluloid portrayal of such things as sophisticated sex and divorce as part of the glamorous life. Whether Hollywood simply reflected changing mores, or whether it speeded a change in attitudes, or both, to those who were dismayed at the course things were taking, it was handy to have the motion picture to blame.
It didn’t help matters any that on 2 March 1920, Mary Pickford finally did what most of Hollywood knew she had been planning to do for years: she divorced her husband, Owen Moore, reassuring her fans that she did not intend to marry again. (‘Do you think my people will ever forgive me if I divorce Owen?’ she asked Adela Rogers St Johns.) Twenty-five days later she married Douglas Fairbanks. On 16 April the attorney general of Nevada, Leonard Fowler, asserted that there had been ‘collusion’ in the Pickford divorce, and for a while America’s sweetheart (and Nevada’s divorce industry) was in trouble. The situation was saved by a smart lawyer named Gavin McNab, a lawyer who was soon to play a role in Roscoe Arbuckle’s life too.
Beginning in 1921, a series of scandals would rock Hollywood and the nation, diverting the attention of reformers from the contents of films to the highly-publicized off-screen behaviour of Hollywood’s stars:
Paramount’s biggest comedy star, Roscoe Arbuckle, would be accused of raping and murdering a young woman.
Paramount’s most respected director, William Desmond Taylor, would be murdered and posthumously accused of crimes ranging from witchcraft and drug-trafficking to sexual perversion and adultery with at least four different women.
Paramount’s top actress, Mary Miles Minter, would have her career shattered because of her alleged involvement with the murdered Taylor. (Another actress whose career would be ruined for the same reason: Mabel Normand, who would die of tuberculosis in 1930 at the age of 36.)
Paramount’s writer Zelda Crosby, one of the women linked with Taylor, would commit suicide.
Paramount’s biggest matinee idol, Wallace Reid, would die in an asylum after fighting a losing battle against heroin addiction.
On 16 January 1920, the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution outlawed liquor. In Norfolk, Virginia, evangelist Billy Sunday (later immortalized in song as the man who could not shut down Chicago) exulted: ‘The slums will soon be a memory. We will turn our prisons into factories and our jails into storehouses and corncribs. Men will walk upright now, women will smile, and the children will laugh. Hell will be forever to rent.’ The Temperance Society of America’s ‘Thou shalt not drink’ was no longer a vain plea. The reform movement had achieved a stunning victory with Prohibition. No doubt teetotallers all over the country expected the angel Gabriel to deliver them the keys to heaven. They were met instead by Al Capone bearing a tommy gun and a bottle of bootleg liquor.
Though there was a powerful movement by some people to clean the country up, to curtail liberty – if that’s what it took to keep America moral – there was at the same time a strong movement in the other direction, and Hollywood seemed to be taking the lead in that loosening of moral standards.
