Sunday, January 5, 2014

Silent Sunday Nights: Roscoe Arbuckle

Tonight sees the first of two Silent Sunday Nights of Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle shorts. Unfortunately, as is often the case when TCM programs a block of shorts, the starting times of the various shorts are not accurately given. In this case, there are seven shorts between midnight and 2:00 AM, with the TCM online schedule listing all of them as starting at 12:00 AM.

The good news, however, is that all of these shorts were produced before 1923, which means that they're all in the public domain. Some, if not all of them will be available on Youtube, such as Fatty Joins the Force, which sees Fatty become a policeman when he saves the Commissioner's daughter from drowning in the park; Fatty then discovers that being a cop isn't all it's cracked up to be. There are several copies posted to Youtube, with running times between about 12:15 and 13:30:



Fatty Joins the Force is, according to the TCM schedule, the third of tonight's shorts, following The Knockout (27 min) and A Flirt's Mistake (8 min), so if the order listed on TCM is correct, you can figure out what time it's on. Or just record the whole two hours.

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