There’s a Tango Whirl happening but all men require dress suits in order to attend. When two rivals fight over the same suit, chaos and abrupt nudity ensue. Oh my!
Home Media Availability: Released on DVD.
The Vanishing Dress Suit
Mack Sennett’s comedy brand thrived on keeping things simple: the plot was a clothesline upon which to hang the gags and it quite often started with a love triangle.
In the case of Fatty’s Magic Pants, the three corners are Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle, Minta Durfee (Arbuckle’s real-life wife) and a mustacheless up-and-comer named Charley Chase. Chase is, of course, one of my favorite comedians and I was very interested to see him so early in his career.
The story opens with Durfee and Arbuckle reading about a tango whirl ladies’ night. Gentlemen must pay fifty cents and arrive in evening dress. Arbuckle doesn’t have the suit or the money but Chase does. The pair tussle over who will be taking Durfee and Chase’s suit ends up getting mussed in the turmoil.
When Chase returns to his room, he cleans his suit and puts it on the line to dry. Meanwhile, Arbuckle, his next-door neighbor, can’t persuade his mother to give him more money to hire a dress suit, so he reels the clothesline in and steals Chase’s clothing. A bit of rearrangement and the strategic use of a tablecloth to cover his lack of a white shirt, and Arbuckle is ready to tango the night away.
Of course you know this means war and Chase follows the couple to the dance, determined to make Arbuckle pay for stealing his suit. This is where the comedy turns into the kind of wild affair that put Arbuckle (who also directed) at odds with censors of the day. Chase attaches Arbuckle’s trousers to his chair and peels them off, leaving him in flamboyantly striped undershorts. Arbuckle quickly loses his jacket as well and terrorizes the dance floor with his nudity.
Things go from bad to worse when he takes shelter in the women’s changing room and Chase continues to pursue him armed with a convenient pistol. In the end, Arbuckle’s attempt to hijack the dance ends with him in police custody as Chase and Durfee giggle from the window and wish him the best of luck in jail.
I understand why the title Fatty’s Magic Pants was chosen—it is irresistible—but its rerelease title, Fatty’s Suitless Day, is probably more accurate to the wild disappearing clothing in the film. (Though the ad for the dance clearly states that it takes place at night. Oh well, we can’t have everything.)
On a cultural context note, the comedy takes place at a tango whirl, offering a then-current pop culture reference because the tango was the biggest dance in the United States at the time. For context, here is a 1913 capsule piece entitled Tango Craze by J.G. Slottow in the Hamilton Club (read: posh) magazine:
It seems that we’re now addicted to the tango craze, for we do the tango dance with the tango prance; the tango glide with the tango slide; do the tango whirl with a tango girl; and our heads with everything “tango” is ablaze. We do the tango walk, have the tango talk, wear tango shoes, and drink tango booze, and dream of tango when we snooze. Each girl seems to have a tango face and the tango grace. Tango, in fact, seems to have set the entire world ablaze with its novel craze; for there are tango books on tango looks; there are tango glares with tango stares; tango preachers and tango teachers, who, with their whims and caprices, will cut you all to pieces if you won’t join the merry whirl, and become a tango boy or a tango girl.
However, the party doesn’t really involve much tango, though Arbuckle entertains with some rather impressive bell kicks. There is chaos on the dancefloor, though, as Arbuckle attempts to escape the vengeance of Chase and the convenient pistol always at the ready in any household drawer when a slapstick comedy is brewing.
When Chase isn’t dashing around with a pistol, we see some glimpses of his subtlety and charisma here but he seems to have been under the same general direction as the other male newcomers at Keystone: do the Ford Sterling! Prior to Chaplin, Sterling had been Keystone’s top draw and his distinct style of mugging became the default for antagonists under the Sennett banner.
Naturally, this doesn’t really work for Chase, whose stock in trade would later be sunshiny comedies under the Hal Roach banner that kept mugging to a minimum and cheerful chaos at the forefront. That said, Chase does come off as more subtle than his Sennett co-workers and we get a small sample of things to come. (Chase tackled pants humor in Bromo and Juliet, in which he plays a would-be Shakespearean who pads out his costume tights with sponges but quickly regrets his decision when he walks through a sprinkler. A classic!)
Arbuckle likewise is rougher than he would be in his later collaborations with Mabel Normand and essentially plays the default Sennett protagonist of the period: a dope who tries to play rough in order to defeat his rival in love and ends up eating dust. It’s not a bad setup by any means but knowing what the cast was later capable of delivering does dampen its impact somewhat.
The dividing line between classic silent slapstick and cartoons has always been thin, as witnessed by Chase’s pistol-wielding antics through a crowded dance floor. People interested in the topic will enjoy the fact that Arbuckle is obliged to wear a barrel in order to cover his abbreviated attire, an animation staple.
Fatty’s Magic Pants is pretty typical fare of the Sennett brand of 1914 and doesn’t really showcase the versatility that both Chase and Arbuckle would find later in their careers. This is a case of your mileage may vary as fans of the escalating prank war comedy genre will find much to enjoy.
Where can I see it?
It has been buzzing around the home video gray market for years and is widely available on internet streaming sites.
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