Fatty docteur

Considered a missing film until quite recently, Oh Doctor! marked the fifth collaboration between Roscoe Arbuckle and Buster Keaton. The surviving print turned up in Norway, which might account for the somewhat awkward English of the re-translated title cards, but no matter; this is an exciting and fascinating find for silent comedy buffs, and an offbeat film in many respects. Not hilariously funny, but novel and enjoyable in its own way, and of course a real treat for fans of the two stars.

Viewers who've seen Arbuckle's other "Comique" brand comedies will notice right away that Oh Doctor! is plot-driven to an unusual degree for this series. In some of the other films it seems as though the guys started shooting with only enough material for a one-reel short, then had to switch gears midway through and come up with a whole new storyline. (You find that in some of the Sennett comedies too, suggested by weird hybrid professions for the lead comic: barber/jailer, sheriff/photographer, etc.) But for this film screenwriter Jean Havez provided a strong storyline, and while some of the gags appear to have been improvised along the way, director Arbuckle and his crew clearly stuck to the script for the most part. Most of the laughs derive not from slapstick or pratfalls -- although you'll find a fair amount of roughhouse here -- but from the situation. Oh Doctor! is essentially a situation comedy with farcical elements, and that alone makes it unusual in Arbuckle & Keaton's output from this early period.

More striking still is Buster's far-from-deadpan performance as Roscoe's obnoxious son. He wears a sort of modified Buster Brown outfit, and plays much younger than his actual age (only 21!) at the time the film was made. Although Buster can be glimpsed smiling, laughing and weeping in some of the other collaborations with Arbuckle, right up to The Garage, their last co-starring effort, he really mugs up a storm in Oh Doctor!, sobbing with enthusiasm in almost every scene. Then again, he has good reason to cry, for he has one mean daddy here. From the very first scene "Dr. Holepoke" is hostile to his son, deliberately sticking him with a pin, kicking him, pushing him over a table, etc. Sure, this is only a silent comedy from a simpler era, and maybe we're all too self-conscious about this sort of behavior now, but still as I watch this I wonder which came first: the kid's bratty behavior or Dad's slapping and punching?

It's notable that Roscoe Arbuckle, like W.C. Fields later on, often chose to portray such unattractive characters, as he does here, and that audiences loved him anyway -- up to a point, that is. In this film Roscoe is not only mean to his son, he's chilly towards his wife, flirts openly with a dark-eyed vamp at the race track (where he also brusquely snatches his wife's binoculars away), squanders his family's money on a losing horse, and deliberately crashes his car into a crowd of pedestrians so he can distribute his business card to the injured. Then to top off his perfect day, he gets tipsy with the race track vamp in her apartment, and for the finale, steals cash from a bookie joint while impersonating a cop, stuffing wads of bills into his clothing. In the final shot, when Mrs. Holepoke kicks her husband, he kicks her back.

And yet, despite all of the above, when this movie is over we somehow like Roscoe nevertheless. On screen he is doggedly sympathetic, and even when his character acts like a jerk his own likability as a performer transcends everything. Arbuckle had a special star quality, and it lasted until his luck ran out. But he shines in Oh Doctor!, and we can be grateful that this highly unusual and entertaining film has been rediscovered.

Though much of it is rather silly, "Oh Doctor!" has some good material too, and it is generally entertaining. The story is goofy and implausible, but it is told and played with verve by a pretty good cast. 'Fatty' Arbuckle plays a pretty disreputable character who is not really sympathetic, yet Arbuckle's good-natured energy is enough to make you hope that things will turn out all right for "Dr. Fatty". Buster Keaton's performance as the doctor's son (mostly a foil for 'Fatty') is rather interesting, because it is the exact opposite of the stoic manner that he adopted in his own later pictures - his performance here is even more exaggerated than in some of the other short features he made with Arbuckle.

The story hops around between a number of settings, and without a good cast it might not have worked very well. But the different settings do give rise to some worthwhile comedy material. There are a good number of Arbuckle/Keaton shorts that are better, but "Oh Doctor!" is still worth seeing if you enjoy the lively antics of Arbuckle & company.

Oh Doctor (1917)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Dr. Fatty gets in trouble when a woman he flirts with turns out to be a thief with his wife's jewelry on her mind. The best aspect is Buster Keaton playing Fatty's son and being constantly abused by daddy.

His Wedding Night (1917)

** (out of 4)

Fatty once again has to fight for the woman he wants to marry. Going through these films in order I've noticed that each one basically has the same storyline and always has a food fight. This is getting a tad bit boring but Buster Keaton has a small role and brings some laughs.

Out West (1918)

*** (out of 4)

Spoof of the western genre has Fatty Arbuckle landing in a small town being over run by thugs. Buster Keaton plays the timid sheriff. There are minor laughs throughout the film but it really works due to its wonderful charm and the fact that the spoofs work for westerns even made within the past few decades. There's some off colored racial humor, which might insult some.

An impulsive doctor takes his small family to the horse track for a bit of front-row excitement. Overhearing a hot gambling tip, he dumps his savings into a losing bet and swiftly tumbles into the manipulative paws of a crooked married couple. This nasty pair does their best to remove him from what's left of his estate, though they're really just as fundamentally inept as their quarry.

I wasn't feeling this one. The plot is transparent from the start, the constant shifts in scenery limit the crew's opportunities for ad-libbed laughs and Buster Keaton is wasted in an ill-fitting role as the doc's irritating young son. The story gets more direction than usual, given the age, genre and format, but that comes at the expense of the free-wheeling humor that is Arbuckle and Keaton's mutual forte. Nobody bats a thousand.

Roscoe Arbuckle's comedic persona has none of the sweetness or vulnerability of the giants who would dominate the decade following his own heyday - Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, and Harold Lloyd. I mean, he sticks a tie pin into his son's leg to make him scream in pain and divert his wife's attention so he can sit next to a woman who's flirting with him, for god's sake, and that's not the only abuse he doles out. He gambles at the racetrack, using beer bottles for binoculars and gripping the legs of both his wife and another woman in his excitement. He dispenses potent alcoholic beverages while making a house call as a doctor more readily than medicine. There is an impish malevolence in his mischievous grin as he tries to cheat on his wife, walking into a trap set up by a couple of thieves to rob his wife of her necklace while he's doing so. There is also darkness in a funeral home asking a doctor for a list of his critically ill patients, and the doctor turning his unmanned car loose upon a crowd of pedestrians to scatter them and then distribute his business card.

Arbuckle is probably harder to like over a century later or maybe he's just an acquired taste, but I started to see his appeal in this, his 4th film with young protégé Buster Keaton. He's like a dark libidinous force, unafraid of what you may think of him. When his wife kicks him out of frustration at the end, he kicks her back - there is no syrupy redemptive arc at work here, which I actually appreciated. Plus, you get Buster at 22 playing a child, crying and expressing frustration before trying to track the bad guys down. The names are amusing too, Dr. I. O. Dine, M. Balm Moribund & Co. Funerals and Interments, and Digger O. Graves. This two-reeler won't be for everyone, but I thought it was a decent way to spend 24 minutes.