The Allure of 1917 Coney Island
Note: This is the ninety-third in a series of historical/critical essays examining the best in film from each year. Essentially, I am watching films from the beginning of cinematic history that interest me and/or hold some critical or cultural impact. My personal, living list of favorites is being created at Mubi, showcasing five films per year. All this being explained, what follows is an examination of my third favorite 1917 film, CONEY ISLAND, directed by Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle.
By 1917, film had expanded industry-wide to feature length and shorts were becoming essentially relegated to comedy (and animation, in short order). And yet these comedy shorts, from budding comedic geniuses who would receive even greater acclaim when they would move into features in the 1920s, still provide me, perhaps, an outsized level of enjoyment. This is all to say that in 1917, one of the great film comedians of the silent era (and all time) got his start in 1917: Buster Keaton. And one of the great comedians of the 1910s was reaching new highs with his own directorial efforts and creating a solid comedic team around him: Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle. As a few of Keaton and Arbuckle’s collaborations come up on my list of favorites within the next few installments, I thought it’d be a good idea to compare the paths of their careers as they closed out the 1910s together. And of course, to examine the best products of their partnership.
First, I should address the fact that Arbuckle was at the center of one of the key Hollywood scandals of the 1920s; he was accused of raping, and in the process, murdering actress Virginia Rappe in 1921. This event is a crucial part of understanding the pending moralization of the film industry in America, regardless of whether or not Arbuckle committed the crime. He was, however, acquitted after three lengthy trials, and among the few industry personalities who defended him publicly were Keaton and Charlie Chaplin. But there are plenty of people who still argue it either way. I won’t get into it now (I’ll save that for a later essay), but it’s impossible not to discuss Arbuckle without this case looming over him, even a few years into the future as it was from 1917.
Before those life-taking and career-destroying circumstances, however, Arbuckle was one of the key comedians of the film industry. He, like comedy pioneers Mabel Normand and Chaplin, began his film career at Keystone Studios in 1913 (at age 26), and worked with both of him there. Well, Arbuckle made a sporadic series of films with Selig Polyscope Company from 1909 until this time, but Keystone was Arbuckle’s true genesis as a film actor. Before that, however, his passion was singing. Arbuckle had a career in vaudeville before turning to the silence of film, and was quite the talented singer from all accounts. He married actress and frequent co-star Minta Durfee in 1908, who was also close friends with Normand, Arbuckle’s first true on-screen partner.
Arbuckle also usually had a third personality in the mix, his nephew Al St. John. St. John was a constant fixture in Arbuckle’s films, usually as a scheming villain or rival, and when Arbuckle formed his own production company in 1917 (whose films were to be distributed by Paramount for a huge amount of money), he brought St. John with him. At this point, Normand and Arbuckle had parted ways, but he brought in another male influence to create a three-way of slapstick comedy. Yeah, I’m referring to Keaton.
Keaton made his film debut in Arbuckle’s THE BUTCHER BOY (1917; I’ll get to it next week), despite some reservations. Keaton’s vaudeville upbringing is well documented. Born in 1895, Keaton was on stage by age three as part of The Three Keatons, which also included father Joe and mother Myra; Keaton used his parents in a number of his films. The crux of The Three Keatons’ act was essentially child abuse of Buster (who apparently got his nickname from Harry Houdini at 18 months of age). But Keaton was supposedly never hurt when his father tossed him around the stage; he would claim it was all about technical execution. In any event, the act came up against child performing laws and general distaste from the authorities due to how Buster was being treated on stage. Nevertheless, Keaton grew up as part of a show business family, informing much of his physical humor and even the deadpan style he would refine later. By the time he was 21, Buster and his mother had moved to New York and broken up the family act due to Joe’s alcoholism. He served in France during World War I, and lost some hearing capability in one ear due to an ear infection.
Keaton somehow met Arbuckle in New York in 1917, and although his stage training gave him some reticence to join the film industry, he was quickly hired as a gag writer and co-star. He appeared in 14 of Arbuckle’s shorts, often in the capacity, as mentioned, of another point on the combative triangle formed by Keaton, St. John, and Arbuckle. CONEY ISLAND was a high point of this early period for the comedian, and an interesting look at a persona before “The Great Stoneface.”
It should be mentioned that Arbuckle hated being called “Fatty” in person, even though he used his weight to comedic effect in his films. The crux of the Fatty character, in fact, was a flirty, attractive rascal. Actually, the personas of all three of the main performers in Arbuckle’s films were pretty self-serving, mean, and physically aggressive. Arbuckle never really got to the point of humanizing the man who so desperately wanted to get away from his wife in many of his films, as he played in CONEY ISLAND. But his delivery as a kind of pouty, even child-like man in his pursuit of any and everything that caught his eye is one of the more skilled performances of this era of silent comedy. The whole bunch of characters feel like petulant children, down to the ill-fitting clothes of Arbuckle and St. John and the manic fights over a singular, swingin’ girl, who was actually Keaton’s date to begin with!
CONEY ISLAND has an interesting approach to its three leading men. It essentially weaves together three disparate starting points for each of the characters, bringing them into conflict with each other and love for Alice Mann’s pretty girl. St. John is sitting on the beach when Arbuckle’s wife (played by Agnes Neilson) stumbles upon him as she searches for her husband (who hid himself in the sand). St. John and Neilson are old friends, and both separately go into Luna Park on Coney Island. At this point, St. John woos Mann away from Keaton because Buster actually has no money to get into the park; Keaton sneaks in via a trash barrel. Once in the park the action and the gags really get going.
CONEY ISLAND, by the way, opens with night shots of Luna Park, itself a beautiful sight. But once in the park, a modern viewer like myself can be taken aback by the look at a 1917 amusement park. Two rides are especially featured, “Witching Waves” and “Shoot-the-Chutes”; the pair are janky but look oh so fun. Amusement park and circus themes are personal favorites of mine, so CONEY ISLAND had my heart before the layers of hilarious comedy were applied to it. And it’s not just a setting; the gags incorporate the rides, carnival games, and ice cream stands of the park.
I’ve commented on Arbuckle’s performance in the film, but not his directorial skill. He plays it relatively straight, technique-wise, but he uses two interesting camera moves that play with the audience. Near the beginning of the film, when he’s digging a hole to bury himself in, Arbuckle faces away from the camera (his posterior looming large) and throws sand behind him, which cascades in front of and on the camera. Later, when Arbuckle initiates a puzzling cross-dressing sequence, he directly breaks the fourth wall. His waist and upper thigh area are in shot as he gets ready to change, but then he notices the camera, and motions for it to move its gaze upward, which it promptly does. These are two small things, but the latter especially foreshadows Keaton’s own approach to Sybil Seely’s bath scene in ONE WEEK (1920).
Speaking of the cross-dressing: the practice was a quite common one for comedy at the time, but Arbuckle especially turned to it often. His films had a frankness about sexuality that, while not radical by today’s standards, certainly stand out among 1910s contemporaries. For example, the very joke of the camera moving upward plants the image of potentially seeing Arbuckle naked in your mind. But he also shows Mann’s pretty girl in a very tight leotard-like piece of clothing, which prompts Fatty to bat an eyelash or too and Keaton (who’s standing outside the changing rooms at this point of the film) to straight up swoon.
Arbuckle also flirts with St. John in woman dress near the end of the film, which precipitates the final, over-the-top slapstick fight. St. John’s prominent front teeth and arching facial and bodily contortions are a little too creepy for my taste, but this is the kind of performance he gives throughout the film; his rival/villain characters are always a bizarre counterpoint to the relatively placid Fatty character.
As for Keaton: boy does he look good in a lifeguard outfit. His acrobatic skills are on full display in CONEY ISLAND. He does a standing backflip upon getting his new job as a lifeguard and spins in a fast, dizzying motion that puts him on his butt when swinging a hammer from a “test your strength” game. The lithe, young, fresh-faced Keaton also hasn’t taken his stoic vow of staid facial expressions either; he mugs, laughs, and cries throughout the film. It’s certainly a novel thing to see for fans of his most famous work, and his crying face especially rings of Stan Laurel, who Keaton was a self-professed admirer of.
CONEY ISLAND is certainly strengthened by the appearance of the fledgling Keaton, but the short as a whole is a great indicator of Arbuckle’s own development. This is a film representative of the silent film comedy scene and its growth from its Keystone origins. The narrative is woven from three storylines, and the great central performances are augmented by the setting and Arbuckle’s little innovations with the camera. CONEY ISLAND provoked me to laugh out loud a number of times, and I think that’s a good measure of a silent short.
