Leap Year (1921)

Directors:

Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle
James Cruze

Writers:

Sarah Y. Mason (story)
Walter Woods (writer)

Release Date:

27 April 1924 (Finland)

Genre:

Comedy

Plot:

A young man, heir to his misogynistic and millionaire uncle, and in love with a nurse, gets in trouble...

Plot Keywords:

Heir | Uncle | Nurse | Proposal | Swimming

Cast

  (Credited cast)

Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle	...	Stanley Piper
Mary Thurman	...	Nurse Phyllis Brown
Lucien Littlefield	...	Jeremiah Piper
Clarence Geldart	...	Scott Travis
Harriet Hammond	...	Loris Keene
Allen Durnell	...	Tommy Blaine
Gertrude Short	...	Molly Morris
John McKinnon	...	Mumford, the valet
Maude Wayne	...	Irene Rutherford
Winifred Greenwood	...	Mrs. Travis

Also Known As:

Skirt Shy

Runtime:

60 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.33 : 1

Sound Mix:

Silent

Company:

Paramount Pictures

Trivia:

Until February 21, 2008, this film had never been shown theatrically to anyone in the American public because of Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle's murder trial, except for special screenings such as the ones in Los Angeles CA at the Fairfax Theatre 10 April 1981 and at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley CA on 22 August 1993.

Quotes:

Nurse Phyllis Brown: [bottle reads take 1 pill every 2 days] How many pills did you take?
Stanley Piper: 3 boxes.

Leap Year is a Poor Performance

I watched Leap Year last night on TCM, expecting to see evidence of lost brilliance, since Arbuckle has been touted as a comic genius of the silent years. I was very disappointed. Notwithstanding his status in 1920, his performance in Leap Year simply does not age well. While much has been written about the impact the scandal had on Arbuckle's film career, it may be that his career probably would have died anyway. Let's be honest, jumping up and down and grimacing in front of the camera is about all he did in Leap Year (though he did have some nice acrobatics). Arbuckle is not a peer of Chaplin or Keaton. The scene where he "swims to Japan" is forgettable - there is nothing special there. In fact, the long shots suggest that perhaps he did not do his own diving. For a long time I wondered what was lost when Paramount destroyed "Gasoline Gus" and some of the other features they had in the "can" when the Arbuckle scandal broke. If Leap Year is any indication, I don't think that silent film fans are missing anything.