Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle | The Waiters' Ball / 1916

formal redress

by Douglas Messerli

 

Roscoe “Fatty" Arbuckle (director) The Waiters' Ball / 1916

 

In the early Fatty Arbuckle films, Arbuckle spends the first half of the work in playing out various slapstick skits before he moves, in the second half, into the narrative heart of his short film. In The Waiters’ Ball, this first part is spent showing the cooking deftness of Arbuckle as the head cook and the incompetence of the restaurant waiter (Al St. John).

 

    Arbuckle tosses a pancake with one hand while flinging a knife over his head that falls perfectly into place upon the wooden chop-board counter. The waiter is also smooth and almost suave as he serves up the plates and dishes, but is coarse as his voice is loud when calling out the in-house nicknames of the dishes ordered up, such as “Adam and Eve on a raft,” (two eggs on toast) or “java juice” for coffee. And he is absolutely clumsy with regard to a customer whose foot is in a cast, stepping upon it several times in a matter of moments before the victim rises and leaves the establishment in pain and anger.

      So too is he anything but adroit when he sweeps the mess of the front room floor into the kitchen, which Arbuckle has just cleaned up. The event ends in a broom spanking contest between Arbuckle and real-life nephew St. John. The stock comic tricks end when St. John orders up “cremated carp.” Arbuckle takes a fish out of the freezer that suddenly springs into a leap, flopping across the floor as the cook attempts to sedate it, and finally jumping into the front room where all the customers become involved with attempting to bring the flying fish to a standstill, one diner, in typical American fashion, picking up a rifle and shooting it dead.

      The two, cook and waiter, are also vying for the attentions of The Cashier (Corinne Parquet). St. John makes a date with her to attend the upcoming Waiter’s Ball, but rereading the newspaper announcement realizes that it requires “formal dress,” which he doesn’t have, putting a kibosh to his plans.

      Meanwhile, a man arrives with a delivery of a rented formal tuxedo for Arbuckle and a dress for the stout dishwasher (Kate Price) who clearly also plan to attend and have prepared for the event. When Arbuckle goes to kiss the cashier, reminding her of his date, the waiter becomes incensed, taking a cleaver to his competition, who momentarily retires in terror to a barrel.

     Nearby, St. John discovers the rented clothes, and quickly absconds with Arbuckle’s tuxedo. When Arbuckle is ready to leave, he finds the tuxedo missing and, without hardly a second thought, grabs up the woman’s dress instead. And soon after we see a very lovely, if heavyset, woman dancing at the ball with a man, Arbuckle clearly enjoying himself as he generally does in drag. When the waiter, however, returns to the dance floor after a drink at the bar in the other room, Arbuckle goes on the chase, finally pulling the tuxedo off of him, leaving St. John in striped long johns.

      The dishwasher, meanwhile, having discovered her missing attire speeds off to the dancehall and does to the same to Arbuckle, retrieving her gown but pulling it off his hefty frame. The two men, in their underwear, waddle out of the front door of the dance hall to encounter a policeman who knocks them both in noggin and trots them off to jail wearing barrels around their improperly undressed bottoms.

 

Los Angeles, January 31, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (January 2023).