98 VITAGRAPH, SLAPSTICK AND EARLY CINEMA PETER KRAMER REPORTS FROM PORDENONE Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/screen/article/29/2/98/1620707 by guest on 27 September 2021

For a number of years the Pordenone Festival of revisionist perspective, which concentrates on the Silent Film has offered a unique opportunity to development of film form in its relation to film's reassess the history of early cinema, with industrial mode of production and wider extensive screenings of archive material and a economic and social contexts. In this instance the wealth of formal and informal discussions. The focus was the development of early film form as sixth festival, held in September '87', focused on exemplified by the rather undistinguished and changing approaches to the study of early undifferentiated output of what the programme American cinema, in particular comedy and its notes describe as America's 'most important' slapstick variants. A large number of film production company in the 'teens. historians, both traditional (most notably William As a case study of the development of early K Everson) and revisionist, assembled for a American cinema, the Biograph company (with retrospective of Vitagraph films (1898-1925), its star director D W Griffith) has, until now, complemented by an extensive dossier of articles served as the main subject of research in the and a round table discussion by the leading period 1906-1913. In Pordenone the example of scholars in this field - Charles Musser, Tom Vitagraph was expected to support these earlier Gunning, Ben Brewster, Barry Salt and Jon findings and models of development. In fact, the Gartenberg - and a 'tribute to Roscoe Arbuckle' Vitagraph retrospective turned out to be a on the occasion of the centenary of his birth powerful restatement of the diversity of (films from 1913 to 1933, complemented by simultaneous development and the specificity of video interviews with two of Arbuckle's one company's - even one director's - output. collaborators and the presentation of the Italian Biograph specialists like Tom Gunning were translation of David Yallop's biography The Day forced to revise their claims to the representative 2 the Laughter Stopped ). nature of their research. With their different modes of demarcating a A profound shift in film historical research and field of study - on the one hand the oeuvre of a conceptualisation seemed warranted. This star/director, on the other an assembly of films entailed a movement away from a statistical made by a specific production company - the approach (concerned with the dissemination of retrospectives exemplified two approaches to film formal and other features within the industry as a history. In the 'great man' conception, Arbuckle features both as comedian/star and, increasingly, as director/a«r«/r. The festival's programme notes emphasised the 're-discovery of a great 1 Hosted by Cinemazero and the Cineteca del Friuli in comic talent', whose films had been unjustly Pordenone, Italy, September 27-October 3,1987. overshadowed by his unfortunate role in one of 2 David Yallop, The Day the Laughter Stopped: The True Story of Fatty Arbuckle, London, Hodder and Stoughton, 1976. Hollywood's biggest scandals, the Virginia Yallop is mainly concerned with the murder trials and the Rappe 'murder' in 1921. Secondly, there is the proof of Arbuckle's innocence. 99 Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/screen/article/29/2/98/1620707 by guest on 27 September 2021

The comedian as auteur: Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle, celebrated in Pordenone on the centenary of his birth. 100 whole), and towards an attempt to explain the staff. Thus it is not only problematic to propose a specific features of distinct bodies of films teleological development of early film form, but produced by a certain company, directed by a also to conceptualise it as a homogeneous certain director, or belonging to a certain genre. movement across the industry. The impact of this tentative re-orientation can be Comedy is one of the sites of heterogeneity in measured by the fact that it was asserted, if only the development of early American cinema, with jokingly, that 'auteurism is back'. The possibility neither its form nor content fitting existing of analysing specific features of early directorial models of classical American cinema in the work, previously regarded as both 'teens.4 Research in this period has largely been undistinguished and undistinguishable, was based on dramatic genres and, within these Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/screen/article/29/2/98/1620707 by guest on 27 September 2021 reminiscent of the early Cahiers criticism of genres, on feature films, while the special classical Hollywood cinema. development of other forms, especially in the In fact, it was not (yet) the early director and short film format, has been relatively neglected. the formal ideological characteristics of his or her The screening of early US comedies and the work which was under examination at discussions surrounding them at Pordenone Pordenone, but the distinctive features of a opened up different perspectives. company's output in relation to its marketing Across the various sections (Vitagraph, strategy in an increasingly competitive industry. Arbuckle, special events, '20s classics, etc), the Tom Gunning suggested that Vitagraph's return, festival presented, albeit in a rather haphazard in 1908, to an earlier, 'more primitive' mode of fashion, a brief history of American silent representation after the company's cinematic comedy. This history might be written using the innovations in 1906 and 1907 (which were following list of items from the festival actually neglected by Vitagraph, but taken up and programme as an outline, paying special elaborated by Biograph, especially as regards attention, as I will indicate, to the changing cross-cutting) was a result of its specific relations between performer/star, fictional marketing strategy. In this period, Vitagraph character and narrative in order to distinguish the promoted its films as high quality products, often respective bodies of films: based on literary sources, the Bible or actual 1) Vitagraph trick films of the early 1900s built historical events, which imitated theatrical modes around stop motion and super-imposition effects, of representation3 in order to be associated with the animation of drawings, the disappearance and this respected middle-class institution and thus to reappearance of objects and people. The reach middle-class audiences. This orientation extensive use of these devices, and consequently towards a theatrical model also explains the whole genre, seems to have become obsolete Vitagraph's later inability, from 1913 onwards, to between 1908 and 1910 when a stronger interest use cinematic devices with any degree of in cinematic realism - as the duplication of reality effectiveness for the purpose of narration. or, rather, as a duplication of theatrical modes of Gunning described scene-dissection, close-ups representation - replaced the older fascination and cross-cutting in Vitagraph films as a kind of with the fantastic effects of the cinematic surplus to a story narrated primarily through apparatus and thus with the imaginary status of staging and intertitles, while Biograph had cinematic representation itself. This shift seems already made these devices the very motor of to have occurred earlier in other production narration. companies. This analysis suggests that the development of early film form can not be seen as unified and 3 This includes theatrical sets using detailed and lavishly linear. Specifically cinematic devices and painted backdrops, the presentation of the narrative in narrational strategies might come into use and unedited scenes making complex use of object positioning then be dropped again by one company, while and movement within the frame. another might elaborate them, in accordance with 4 The most comprehensive model has been set forth in David the various models (derived from older media) Bordwell, Janet Staiger and Kristin Thompson, The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of adopted to differentiate a company's product or Production to 1960, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, fulfil the aesthetic and social ambitions of its 1985. 2) Vitagraph social and situation comedies insertion of a 'tamed' comedian (playing a 101 starring John Bunny or Sidney Drew, each of dramatic role more or less straight) into a whom played fairly consistent comic characters, conventional western plot in The Round Up mostly placed within a domestic setting and (1920). confronted with domestic issues, throughout a 6) Classic sophisticated social comedy of the late series of films in the first half of the 'teens. In 'teens and '20s in the tradition of Vitagraph's Bunny's case there is a decisive effort to establish Sidney Drew comedies, but without their not only a marked stability of his character from concentration on comic stars, relying instead on film to film, but also an identification of the actor intricate narrative construction, complex Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/screen/article/29/2/98/1620707 by guest on 27 September 2021 himself with the role he is playing by using his characterisation, realistic situations and name for the character and featuring it in the behaviour, one of the most famous examples films' titles, e.g., Bunny All at Sea (1912). being Lubitsch's Lady Windermere's Fan (1925). 3) Early Keystone slapstick comedies and The danger of producing an account of the parodies of contemporary dramatic genres from history of American silent comedy along the lines 1912 to 1916, featuring star comedians like of this list of six genres and sub-genres (or stages Mabel Normand and Arbuckle, who often in a genre's development) is the temptation to appeared as a team. Again, their characters construct the 'classics' of the '20s as a teleological remain fairly stable from film to film, being realisation of the potential inherent in early identified with the actors whose names often cinema, a potential just waiting to be discovered appear in the films' titles, e.g., Mabel's New Hero and made manifest by the 'great' directors. 5 (1913) and Fatty Again (1914) . Yet, in contrast According to this perspective, the development of to social comedies, slapstick focuses on comic slapstick leads necessarily from the 'crude', action rather than on the characterisation of its 'primitive', 'infantile' beginnings of Keystone protagonists. films (produced by Mack Sennett, 'the father of 4) Slapstick 'comedian comedies'6 of the late American screen comedy'8) to the 'maturity', 'teens and early '20s, more exclusively concerned 'humanism', 'realism' and 'refinement' of the with the character and performance of the star classic comedians of the '20s, who were mostly comedian than early slapstick, differentiating his/ both performers and directors, always both her status and performance from that of all the 'pupils' of Sennett and 'masters' of the form he other actors, thus turning the star into the film's created, yet couldn't fully comprehend. main attraction. Examples range from Max The history of social comedy could be viewed Linder's first American films in 1917 (produced similarly, if film historians considered this by Essanay who employed him as a replacement genre's specific development as exceptional for Chaplin after the latter's departure to Mutual in 1916) to Arbuckle's late Keystone films and his Schenck productions between 1917 and 1919, to Larry Semon's Vitagraph shorts of the late Interestingly, Arbuckle's screen persona is identified with 7 features of his body, naturally giving rise to his nickname, 'teens and early '20s . rather than with his personality which would be signified by 5) Classic comedian comedies of the '20s, more or use of his proper name. less successfully integrating the persona, the A term coined by Steve Seidman in his Comedian Comedy: A comic and acrobatic performances of the star Tradition in Hollywood Film, Ann Arbor, UMI Research Press, 1981. Seidman's analysis of the genre has been comedians into seriously presented dramatic elaborated by Frank Krutnik, 'The Clown-Prints of story patterns taken from contemporary genres, Comedy', Screen, July-October 1984, vol 25 nos 34, pp typically realised in the feature format. 50-59. Arbuckle's Paramount features of 1920 and 1921 7 After Bunny's death and Drew's departure in 1915,Semon became Vitagraph's main comic attraction, marking, after the (produced for a release schedule of one feature replacement of trick films with social comedies around 1910, every two months) cover the whole range of a second shift in the company's comedy production: from possibilities for the construction of feature-length social/sophisticated to slapstick comedian comedy. comedian comedy - from the extension and In James Agee's words from his essay 'Comedy's Greatest sophistication of slapstick shorts into a rather Era' (published originally in the September 1949 Life) - still the most brilliant and influential traditional account of the episodic narrative in Leap Year (1921) to the development of North American silent comedy. 102

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Left, Mabel Normand in Mickey, 1918; right, Lubitsch's Lady Windermere's Fan, 1925.

enough to demand special attention. But on the set up in 1917 to produce Arbuckle short films., whole, the development of social comedy is seen later hiring out Arbuckle to Paramount and as being part of the general development of all the replacing him with Buster Keaton.9 major genres. Slapstick, however, in almost every Comedy studios seem to have marketed their respect has been regarded as a special case, output largely on the popularity of their stars, different from the mainstream of (dramatic) who displayed their special abilities and genres, although there has seldom been a direct characteristics in the films in a manner often comparison of the two and the history of North quite independent of any actual storyline. This is American cinema has often been written in true even for Sennett's early group comedy relation to the dramatic genres only. approach - paradigmatically realised by the Nevertheless, critical and historical accounts Keystone cops who never acted as individuals. always seem to have associated slapstick, in Complementing the cops, Sennett featured contrast to the dramatic genres, with children individual stars from the start of the Keystone and/or the working classes rather than with adults production, most notably Fred Mace, Ford and the middle classes, with anarchistic and Sterling and Mabel Normand. In their reliance subversive tendencies rather than with the on stars, comedy studios didn't differ much from support of established power relations and the the rest of the industry, but in slapstick enhancement of political and psychic repression, production star performance and popularity seem etc. to have been less balanced by other qualities and This generic differentiation fits in well with the attractions attached to the films - those renewed interest, shown at the festival, in the connected with the story and its 'proper' heterogeneity of film historical development and presentation. Thus major problems arose when, the specificity of particular bodies of films within in the late 'teens, story values began to be this development. To a certain extent the interest attached to films featuring slapstick stars. This in the specific development of slapstick coincides happened either when a stapstick studio changed with the revisionist historical analysis of the its marketing strategy to gain a share in a more unique characteristics of specific production companies' output, since many companies seem to have concentrated exclusively on slapstick Soth Keystone and Comique were, however, parts oflarger production. The most famous example, of enterprises, which were mainly concerned with the course, is Mack Sennett's Keystone (founded in production of quality features: Keystone lost its status as an independent company in 1915 when it became the comedy 1912). Other examples include Hal Roach's unit, still working in its own studio, of Triangle. Comique, Rolin Company (founded in 1915) and Joseph on the other hand, was from the start only one branch oi Schenck's production activities, the other two branches being Schenck's Comique Film Corporation which was the studios for the Talmadge sisters. profitable market segment (feature films as Normand's early partner and first successor in 103 opposed to shorts), or when a comic star moved the major comedians' move to feature to one of the major studios which, since the first production, whose career also ended abruptly half of the 'teens, had mainly been concerned with the Rappe scandal in September, 1920. But, with the production of quality pictures (i.e., those in contrast to Normand, Arbuckle is beginning to with high story values, literary sources, etc). In be rediscovered, as evidenced in the major such a situation, the quality standards connected retrospective of his films at the Pordenone with feature film production clashed with the festival. specific qualities of the slapstick comedians, the To some extent the interest in Arbuckle is Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/screen/article/29/2/98/1620707 by guest on 27 September 2021 former being mainly concerned with narrative, grounded in traditional notions of the greatness the latter with a form of screen presence, of of the classic silent comedians, the question being performance, which is often directly whether Arbuckle belonged to them or not. The opposed to narrative integration and coherence. rediscovery and re-evaluation of his films is very The 'successful' result of the attempt to reconcile much concerned with the injustice done to him these opposites, both on the level of film form first by the courts, the industry and and on that of marketing, are the 'classics' of the contemporary audiences, and later by the '20s: Chaplin, Keaton and Lloyd's feature films. historians who neglected him as one of the In addition to these classic comedians, there primitives who never really transcended the existed a variety of comic stars who either failed Keystone formula. The retrospective of his films to move into feature production, or were in Pordenone, particularly of his Paramount employed and marketed in the feature film features and of the Al St John shorts, invited a format in an unsuccessful manner (unsuccessful, critical re-evaluation of the variety and that is, from a modern point of view accustomed refinement of his performance and directorial to the balance of dramatic narrative and comic skills. This was particularly the case with The performance in the work of the 'great' Iron Mule, made, in 1924, only one year after comedians). Al St John, Arbuckle's partner from Keaton's first classic feature Our Hospitality, and the early Keystone days until his move to feature being a kind of remake of its opening train production, is an example of the latter: when he journey, apparently even using the same was featured as the main attraction of a series of machine. Although the direction of a number of slapstick comedies in the mid-'20sl0, it was still films attributed to Arbuckle is still in dispute, the in the slapstick short format of the 'teens. discussion about his status as a director/a;/f«/r Arbuckle and Normand on the other hand, the has been opened, to the extent of again posing the two most popular comedians of the late 'teens question of his direction of Keaton's Sherlock Jr (rivalled only by Chaplin), starred in feature films (1924). which seem to be unable to integrate narrative Russell Merritt, who presented videotaped and performance. Nevertheless, Normand's interviews with Karl Brown (the cameraman on features ranked among the most popular films of Arbuckle's Paramount features) and Addie their time, especially her first, Mickey, which was McPhail (Arbuckle's third wife and stage partner) released by Keystone in 1918 ", at a time when Normand was just beginning a series of quality features for Goldwyn. 10 Ironically these were directed by Arbuckle who wasn't allowed to perform in films after his fall from grace. Although Normand was the first slapstick star to make the transition to feature production and Production of Mickey had begun in 1916. The completion and release of the film were delayed because of the thus paved the way for Lloyd, Chaplin and insecurity of all parties involved as to what kind of product Keaton, her films and even her name have drifted Mickey should be. Later this very fact was made the into obscurity, and she is remembered only for cornerstone of its publicity campaign. A contemporary advertisement reads: 'Miss Normand is essaying the greatest her involvement in a number of scandals in the adventure of her surprising career. Firmly established as the early '20s - most notably the William Desmond Queen of Slapstick, she abdicated her throne and is now bending her talent toward comedy-drama. A daring move, Taylor murder in February, 1922 - which but Mabel is capable of anything' (reprinted in James brought her career to an abrupt end. The same Robert Parish and William T Leonard, The Funsters, New could be and often has been said about Arbuckle, Rochelle, New York, Arlington House, 1979, p 484). 104 concerning his life and work immediately before director James Cruze) his kind of classic comedy, and in the years after the scandal, was .hus joining the ranks of Chaplin, Keaton and particularly interested in the amazing changes Lloyd. But, of course, the Virginia Rappe scandal that Arbuckle's persona and his performance, and denied Arbuckle this opportunity.n their relation to the films' narratives, underwent Merritt's observations on the relation between when he appeared in Paramount features. Merritt film f6rm and marketing strategy in the case of accounted for this transformation with reference Arbuckle's Paramount features are yet another to the truism that mere slapstick can't sustain a example of the very recent renewal of interest in ninety-minute film and therefore has to be historical analysis which accounts for the complemented, and consequently restrained, by a specificity of particular genres and the output of Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/screen/article/29/2/98/1620707 by guest on 27 September 2021 strong narrative interest. He attributed the particular production companies. Thanks to various usages of the feature format, generic occasions like the Pordenone Festival it has narratives and modes of integrating Arbuckle's become clearer that, even though they set out to performance - as well as the extremely tight, overcome traditional film historiography's even hectic release schedule - to Paramount's narrow focus on great men and masterpieces, apparent insecurity as to the most profitable revisionist film historians have so far had their marketing policy for their new comedy star who, own biases toward Biograph (for the period 1906- it has to be remembered, was one of the highest 1913) and the dramatic features of the 'teens. paid of his time. Merritt argued that, given After the 1987 festival it will be very problematic enough time to experiment, Paramount might to generalise findings in these areas across the well have hit on a formula which would have whole of US film production. Instead it has allowed Arbuckle to develop (together with his become necessary to analyse the peculiarities of specific bodies of films, before a more complex and comprehensive account of the development 12 Although he did direct two-reelers in the '20s and even of the early North American cinema can be starred in a series of Vitaphone shorts in the early '30s. presented. Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/screen/article/29/2/98/1620707 by guest on 27 September 2021