The details of how Buster Keaton first met Roscoe Arbuckle are murky, but when they did, the initial encounter introduced to the screen one of cinema's greatest silent movie comics.
Keaton is included in the top handful of comedic actors during that era who's acting continues to have an enormous impact in today's films. His trademark calm demeanor in the midst of utter chaos on the screen stood in stark contrast to the helter skelter world of the popular Keystone comedians, of which Arbuckle was one of them. Yet Keaton's cool film personality not only endured, but created a new kind of comedy acting imitated in future generations of movie humorists.
Keaton's first appearance in film is seen in April 1917's "The Butcher Boy," with "Fatty" Arbuckle starring and directing the two-reeler. He shows up part-way into the movie, examining brooms in their holder at the shop. Keaton does some nifty handling of these sweepers in this debuting sequence. Later on, his struggle with molasses, a cinematic classic, with Fatty literally cements the pair's on-screen association. Altogether, the two actors appeared in 14 movies, proving the first meeting was especially pivotal to the 21-year-old Keaton.
Buster, contracted to play in in the Broadway revue "The Passing Show," met on a New York City street either a mutual friend of Arbuckle's or a professional associate of Paramount Pictures. Either way, the person invited the vaudeville star to stop by the local film studio where Fatty was rehearsing for his next movie, "The Butcher Shop." He did, and Fatty, knowing of Keaton, invited him to play a small role in his movie. Buster had some free time and dived in, and like lightening, the two comedians clicked. An anecdotal tale has Keaton so intrigued by what he had just witnessed in the studio he asked to borrow a camera for the night. He proceeded to take apart and put together again in his hotel room the camera to understand its inner mechanisms.
