Back Stage (1919)

Back Stage is a 1919 American comedy film, one of the last films where Buster Keaton appears with Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle before Keaton set up his own studio and Arbuckle started making feature-length films.

In this film, Keaton, Arbuckle, and others work back stage as stagehands in a playhouse trying to help out and, in some cases, stay away from the eccentric performers. When the performers rebel and refuse to do the show, the stagehands, along with Arbuckle's love interest (the assistant of one of the rebelling performers) perform in their stead—including Keaton doing butterflies and no-handed cartwheels in drag.

Several Arbuckle shorts use sight gags that other comedians elaborated on in other films. In Back Stage, Arbuckle uses the falling wall sequence, where a piece of set falls on him but a window in the set piece allows him to escape being crushed. Keaton used this gag in his first short One Week and, most famously, in Steamboat Bill Jr.

Starring:
Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle
Buster Keaton
Al St. John
Charles A. Post
Molly Malone
Jack Coogan Sr.