Back Stage (film)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Back Stage

Directed by	Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle
Produced by	Joseph M. Schenck
Written by	Jean Havez
Starring	Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle Buster Keaton
Cinematography	Elgin Lessley
Distributed by	Paramount Pictures
Release date(s)	1919
Running time	26 min.
Country	United States
Language	Silent film English intertitles
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

Back Stage is a 1919 comedy, one of the last films that Buster Keaton would appear with Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle before they went their separate ways, Keaton would get his own studio, and Arbuckle got into feature length films.

In this film, Keaton, Arbuckle, and others, work as stagehands, backstage of course, in a playhouse trying to help and in some cases, stay far away from the eccentric and diva-like performers. When the performers rebel and refuse to do the show, the stagehands, along with Arbuckle's love interest, whose one of the rebelling performer's assistant, perform in their place- including Keaton showing his ability to do butterflies, no handed cartwheels, while in drag.

Like in other Arbuckle shorts, this one shows a gag that would later be elaborated on by Keaton in later films of his (in the Rough House, Fatty does the "oceania roll dance" that Charles Chaplin would later elaborate on and make his own in the Gold Rush). The famous gag in this film is the falling wall sequence, where a piece of the set falls on Fatty but the only thing that saves from being crushed by it is a window in set piece. Keaton would later use this gag in his first short One Week and much more famously in Steamboat Bill Jr..