In this extended comedy short, popular silent film star Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle plays a general store employee who falls for the owner’s daughter Almondine (Alice Lake). When she is sent away to boarding school, Fatty disguises himself as a teenage girl to follow her there.

“Fatty” Arbuckle’s reputation has not endured like his contemporaries, chiefly because in 1921 and 1922 he was tried three times for the rape and murder of actress Virginia Rappe. The first two resulted in mistrials; the third saw him acquitted, along with an apology from the jury for the damage to his reputation the legal actions had caused. His films were subsequently banned, and he was effectively scapegoated for what was seen as immoral excess in Hollywood at the time.

Jump back to the 1910s, however, and one finds him one of early Hollywood’s most beloved and commercial players. At his height he was earning a million dollars a year. In 1917 he signed a contract with the Comique Film Corporation, and “The Butcher Boy” – which he also wrote and directed – was the first film of the new deal.

Viewed more than a century after the fact, and he is superb comic talent. His timing – all-important in silent comedy – is exceptional. His physicality is surprisingly agile, making the most of slapstick hits and tumbles. Impressively, despite his large frame – he had the nickname for a reason – none of the humour really derives from his weight. Instead he presents as a slightly foolish, somewhat befuddled idiot. The comedy reaches its height in a frantic chase back and forth between rooms in the girl’s boarding school, featuring multiple characters and a dog.

This is the delightful part of physical comedy. Unlike verbal comedy, which relies on changing language and shifting fashions, a physical gag simply refuses to date. Somebody slipping in a comical fashion was funny in Shakespeare’s time. It was probably funny before Greek and Roman theatre. It was funny when Arbuckle did it, and those same pratfalls – preserved for more than a century – still hold up today. You can see the slightly slovenly comic performances of Fatty Arbuckle reflected through the history of Hollywood. You see him echoed in the work of John Belushi, and John Candy, and Chris Farley. Everybody warms to the big men of comedy, and Arbuckle represents the original iteration. American screen comedy owes him a great deal.

Arbuckle tended to work with a repertory group of actors, and they appear here: his nephew Al St John plays romantic rival Alum, while Alice Lake appears as love interest Almondine. Most significantly in historical terms, the film marks the debut of vaudeville performer Buster Keaton. Arbuckle hired him for this and several subsequent comedy shorts before Keaton expanded to leading man status in his own right, and revolutionised physical comedy for all time. It’s a modest appearance here. At the time, trade journal The Moving Picture World noted ‘Buster Keaton does some excellent comedy falls’. He certainly does, with much more to come.