When I watched "Matinee at the Bijou" on Saturday afternoons on PBS during the early '80s, this was one of the movies featured there. It was also my first exposure to Buster Keaton having previously read about him in an encyclopedia of movie comics called "The Funsters". The most funny parts I remember from that first viewing was when he kept trying to do his "I Love You" routine while extending his arms to various women in a mechanical way. Now that I've watched this again on the "Industrial Strength Keaton" DVD collection, I found it even more funnier having just seen many of his silent shorts with Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle and his later TV appearances and industrial films. Okay, so maybe some of the dialogue was a bit contrived and some scenes were a bit frantic but still I managed to laugh during the whole thing especially during the free-for-all-finale. Also, Cliff Edwards as the bell boy and Charlotte Greenwood as the woman Buster was supposed to meet at the hotel deserve special mention for their chemistry with The Great Stone Face. Oh, and the reactions of Joan Peers as Nita, who's trying to get her husband jealous, as she reacts to Buster's accidental "moves" were also funny to me. Really, I was just doubled over with laughter at this one especially during some visual stuff like that car-train sequence or the wet-floor-everyone-slips-on scene. So on that note, if you're a Keaton fan curious about these early talkies with him, I highly recommend Parlor, Bedroom and Bath. P.S. Ms. Peers was another performer who's from my birthtown of Chicago, Ill.
