Love (Comicque Film Corporation, Paramount, 1919)

by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2022 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved

Ironically, TCM followed up Roiscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle's 1921 feature Leap Year with one of Arbuckle’s shorts, Love (1919), which was one-third the length of Leap Year and a hell of a lot funnier. It begins with Arbuckle introduced driving what’s called in the intertitle “Ford’s economy model,” a truly weird contraption that looks to today’s audience like a cross between a motor scooter and a go-kart. He’s passed on the road by Al Clove (Al St. John, a “regunar” in Arbuckle’s company and usually cast, as here, as the villain who’s trying to get Arbuckle’s girl away from him) riding a high-wheel bicycle (our friend Brandon Carpenter, a high-wheel rider himself, would undoubtedly love this movie). There’s a long sequence in which Frank (Frank Hayes), father of Arbuckle’s love interest Winnie (Winifred Westover), is repeatedly dunked in a well, along with his farmhand (Monty Banks, later a comedy director and star in his own right). To get back at Frank for having decided he’s too fat to be allowed to marry Winnie, Arbuckle’s character sneaks soap into their dinner stew. This causes Frank to fire his cook Kitty (Kate Price), who’s previously lectured Arbuckle about his weight even though she’s as big as he is. Guess who gets the job after Frank fires Kitty. That’s right: it’s Fatty Arbuckle in quite convincing drag. He figures out how to marry Winnie without her dad getting noticed: he announces he’ll stand in for Al at a “rehearsal” for the wedding ceremony, then when the officiant asks the standard “speak now, or forever hold his peace” question, Arbuckle stands up and announces that Winnie can’t marry Al because “she’s already married – to me,” a gag that no doubt plays quite differently to a modern audience than it did in 1919. Love is a brilliantly funny film that suggests Arbuckle’s true métier was in shorts!