Buster Keaton | Seven Chances / 1925

groom without a bride’s kiss

by Douglas Messerli

 

Clyde Bruckman, Jean Havez, and Joseph A. Mitchell (screenplay, based on a play by Roi Copper Megrue), Buster Keaton (director) Seven Chances / 1925

Seven Chances is a wonderfully funny satire of heterosexual marriage, having very little to do with LGBTQ life, and appears in this volume only because of one scene. But given just how many of Keaton’s personal films and those of Fatty Arbuckle’s in which he performed in drag it seems important to at least talk about the work within the LGBTQ context.

 

     If the film had merely continued in the manner of its introductory scenes, beautifully filmed in early technicolor—in which Keaton and the girl he loves stand before her house in Summer, Autumn, Winter, and finally in Spring without the shy hero Jimmy Shannon (Keaton) being able to tell Mary Jones (Ruth Dwyer) that he loves her—I would have reviewed it in an entirely different manner, the way I have so very many straight films over the years.

       But despite his love for Mary, by the time the movie proper begins Jimmy and his senior partner, Billy Meekin (T. Roy Barnes) are hovering over a desk and each other facing financial ruin, evidently for an impending lawsuit of which the details are never revealed. One thing is certain, they will not receive any lawyer—one of whom is sitting in the outer office determined to get their attention—in fear of a formal summons.

        Throughout the early US film history, characters are regularly left huge financial rewards by previously unknown uncles or other relatives. Sweedie received several over her film career, and Laurel and Hardy, Peter Shanley in Urban Gad’s Lady Madcap’s Way, Jean Bradley in Grandpa’s Girl, and the lazy Weedles couple of Robert F. McGowan’s Baby Clothes all are written either in or out of the relatives’ wills if they can only meet seemingly unreasonable conditions such as marrying a girl you don’t love, graduating from college, having babies, or in this case the man’s nephew being married by 7:00 p.m. on his 27th birthday, which for Jimmy just happens to be the day when the lawyer in his outer office is waiting to tell him about his potential inheritance.

      In fact, you might almost describe this entire work as being centered around difficult to deliver or misunderstood communications. If they only had had computers or cellphones in 1925, the entire film would be quite meaningless. In this case, however, comic actor Snitz Edwards has a nearly impossible time simply making contact with Jimmy, who occupied with Billy, manages to utterly escape the lawyer’s numerous attempts to confront him. Elevator doors close seconds too quickly, their car speeds off second before he reaches it, and secretaries, doormen, and hosts all kinds eject him from the places where Jimmy and Billy work and dine. It is only by pasting the words noting his inheritance on the outside window where the two are dining that he finally gets an audience with the young man, whereupon he reveals the sum to be a fabulous amount of seven million dollars, if only....

       Jimmy and Billy realize that all their fears of financial ruin will be alleviated it Jimmy can simply find a bride. Obviously, his first thought is of the girl he loves, but, as we know, he has never told Mary, and rushes off immediately to her house. Waiting for her arrival on a lawn bench, he practices what the loving words he has never before been able to utter; she fortunately arrives without him noticing and overhears his proclamations, accordingly, replying—upon his finally asking her to marry him—with an immediate “yes.” But when he insists that it must happen immediately, he explains that he has to find someone to marry before 7:00 to inherit a fortune, not something a special “someone” might want to hear. And when he clumsily attempts to clarify the situation by describing the someone “as anyone,” it gets worse, she finally sending him on his way, with the always glum-looking Keaton meekly accepting his disastrous fate.

       Billy and the lawyer, however, are far more literal, arguing that it could be anyone, while his protests of wanting the someone to be only Mary go unheeded. Billy takes him back to the country club to where they dined for lunch to look over the girls. Some look like flappers, others are simply silly, one is dressed as a male-looking suit (code for lesbian), and others are simply plain. Nonetheless, they make up a list of seven girls, “seven chances” for him to find someone to marry in order to win the jackpot just out of reach.

       The first one turns him down quickly with a howl of laughter that gets the attention of the entire room; and the second just as quickly rejects him despite the coaching from Billy and the elderly lawyer. For the third go-around, Billy himself attempts to propose to a girl on Jimmy’s behalf; the girl at first seems quite interested, prepared to make out with the more assured Billy right in the open, but when he points to Jimmy as the party for whom he is asking, the lawyer stands in the spot where only a moment before Keaton stood; naturally, she is outraged!       

      Time after time the truly beautiful Keaton is outrightly rejected. As he narrows the list down to 2 and then 1, he finally stares into a mirror to wonder what it is about him that makes him appear so utterly unattractive to the opposite sex. When the door to which the mirror is attached opens up revealing a black man, Jimmy is momentarily startled, an obvious racist joke; but to be fair, Keaton’s film has several black actors at a time when mixed casts were generally not permitted.

       When the last of the “seven choices” turns him down, he even ponders the hatcheck girl, who, before he can even ask, shakes in head in the negative.

        In the meantime, having discussed the situation with her mother, Mary Jones decides to give her man another chance and quickly writes out a letter inviting him back to her home, reporting that she shall remain in for the entire day. She hands it over to one of her hired men, asking to rush immediately over to Jimmy’s office and deliver it. The go-between (Jules Cowles) rides a horse that breaks down, takes streetcars, trams, and various other forms of transportation without successfully reaching his goal, travels that are played out simultaneously with Jimmy’s own meandering through the city.

        So intent are his two friends to see him married, and so involved are they with his marital plans that when Billy announces that he is going out to find a girl for his friend to marry, you almost wonder whether he might have decided, as in a similar situation faced by Laurel and Hardy, that he will come back dressed in drag and marry the boy who up until this moment in the movie has had his whole attention. But Keaton is far too clever to play for those kind of laughs, and what Billy does instead is to advertise Jimmy’s situation in the local newspaper, inviting any woman who might want to marry a multi-millionaire to rush to the Broad Street Church by 5 p.m. where the young man will be waiting.

      Just in case, the lawyer suggests that Jimmy should continue looking for someone, and if he comes back with one, he’ll marry the other one, suggesting that he too has a vested interest in wedding his client.

      Jimmy does precisely that, looking everywhere throughout the city for a potential bride. Early on he finds a young woman who readily agrees to marry him, until her mother pulls her away, revealing that she is not even of age. Observing a woman in a hair parlor, he enters to propose, but in the next second the hairdresser pulls off the female’s head, obviously a manikin. Entering the next room, Jimmy sees another woman and, attempting to verify her reality, tries to pull her head off also before discovering that she, a real being, is outraged over his behavior. At another point he tries his luck with a slightly older woman carrying a basket, which she soon uncovers to reveal a baby.

 

      In another instance, Jimmy sees a poster on the side of a theater of a rather glamorous female star, and enters the stage entrance by bribing the doorman to get in. He comes out soon after looking dazed and confused, his hat having been broken into pieces. While he was inside a worker came by to remove a chest that was lodged up against the banner, revealing the name Julian Eltinge. Today’s audiences must certainly witness this scene with some confusion, but the audience of the time would certainly have recognized the name of the most popular female impersonator of the day, probably a closeted gay man, but known for his temper and male macho when anyone dared to insinuate that he was queer. This scene constitutes, I am sorry to say, the film’s only outward reference to the LGBTQ community.

       Utterly exhausted from his attempts to find a bride, Jimmy arrives at the church to find no one there. He sits down in the very front pew of the large church and promptly falls asleep.

        In the meantime, Keaton achieves cinematic magic by showing in the background the arrival of a couple of not very attractive women, who sit in different aisles in the very back. They are followed by a group of five others, like first two dressed in simple wedding attire, but just as ugly as the earlier duo. Another group arrives soon after, and a gathering of ten or more follows. As the camera pans down the aisle to get a better look at the harridans, we see outside masses of women arriving to the church from all directions, and almost before we can take it the quantity of extras employed by the director, we see masses more approaching, attempting to push their way into the now fully filled church. 

        With all the noise of the harridans’ feet and, soon after, screaming, Jimmy awakens and sits up, still totally unaware to what is behind him. Seeing him, a couple of women quickly scurry up to the front pews, sitting as close to him as they possibly can, each arguing with the other about who gets to hold his hand. Stunned by their sudden presence, the wide-eyed young man looks behind him in shock.

         Billy and the lawyer arrive, but are unable to push their way through the crowd in order to get near to their man. The minister appears, finally quieting the noisy bunch to tell them that he believes it has all been a practical joke, that they should all return home. But spotting the only man amongst them, the woman now all turn on him, while Jimmy, immediately recognizing their ferocity, goes on the run, eventually escaping through a church window at the very moment when Mary’s hired hand is attempting to climb a ladder to enter the church in order to deliver up Mary’s missal. The two accidently collide, sending them both to the ground, Jimmy finally discovering that Mary is ready to make amends.

 

       Yet he has no time to take pleasure in that fact as the women come running toward him, a gathering of hundreds of angry women storming toward him from all directions. The rest of the movie in fact is a long exposition of the masses in chase of the individual they insist have wronged them, taking him through the city streets—where he momentarily hooks up with Billy and the lawyer once again, telling them to meet him at Mary’s before the witching hour—in and out of streetcars, taxis, various structures, a junk yard, a train yard, across a mountainous Southern California landscape where he leaps cliffs, slides down hillsides, and most amazingly, lets loose a landslide of small and increasingly larger boulders (made up of 150 papier-mâché and chicken wire fakes made in various sizes, up to 8 feet in diameter) which threaten to flatten him and ultimately are the only force which disperses the harpies waiting for him at the end of his trail. Not since Gilbert Saroni's newspaper announcement of a wealthy man seeking a wife in Sigmund Lubin's 1904 one-reeler Meet Me at the Fountain, have so many women chased after one man.

       He arrives at Mary’s house, the wicket gate in hand, with what he perceives as just a few moments left to marry her, only to be told by the equally dispirited Bill, Mary and the lawyer that he is too late.

     Mary argues that she still wants to marry him; might they not be just as happy without all that money? But he refuses to put her through what his potential bankruptcy and possible jailtime might do to her. He leaves the house the way that only Keaton can, his body representing his broken heart. As he looks up, however, he spies the nearby church clock, realizing that Billy’s watch has been fast. Returning to the Jones living room, he explains the situation as the two are quickly married, Billy, Mary’s mother, and even the lawyer rushing forward to kiss Mary before Jimmy can.

     Finally pulling her away from the chaos of their congratulations, he sits her down on the bench where he first proposed to her earlier that morning, ready for his reward of a marriage kiss. The family’s dog, however, leaps up to kiss Mary’s lips, refusing to budge. Even the joys of marriage seem just out of reach for our sad hero, who as we might have expected, is now a groom without a kiss.

 

Los Angeles, February 15, 2022

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (February 2022).