Tuesday, 10 April 2007

Fatty's Spooning Day (1915) Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle

Fatty is apparently a kid here, merely a really huge one, who gets beaten up all the time by his mom played by the omnipresent Mabel Normand. At least that's what I initially thought. It turns out that Mabel is really his wife, though why she would marry an oversize kid I really don't know. Anyway the two of them head off to the park where the spooning of the title is not allowed, according to the prominent signs next to the benches. Presumably this isn't what I know as spooning, such is the impact of ninety intervening years. Apparently it has something to do with keeping company with a member of the opposite sex, as the cops are hiding around, up trees and behind bushes, to nab anyone who tries anything so indecent.

Obviously they didn't have real crooks in 1915 as the sentence for walking aound eating ice cream with someone is thirty dollars or thirty days in jail. That's what happens to Fatty and another lady that he accidentally hooks up with, even though nothing untoward seems to be happening, so Fatty's wife and the other lady's husband have to come and get them out. The end. Very confusing.

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