Directed by: Charles Avery

Produced by: Mack Sennett

Starring: Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle, Minta Durfee, Edgar Kennedy, Charlie Chaplin, Frank Opperman, Al St. John, Hank Mann, Mack Swain

STORY

Before Charlie Chaplin ever stepped into the boxing ring in The Champion or created one of the most famous fight sequences in movie history in City Lights, he entered another ring in 1914 — this time as possibly the most dangerously enthusiastic referee boxing had ever seen.

But The Knockout begins as Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle’s movie.

Arbuckle plays Pug, a good-natured young man who finds himself challenged by a neighborhood rival while trying to impress his sweetheart. Pug may not look like anyone’s idea of a prizefighter, but when the confrontation turns physical, he proves that he can handle himself remarkably well.

Unfortunately, demonstrating his fighting ability attracts exactly the wrong kind of attention.

A group of boxing promoters realizes that Pug might be useful in the ring and persuades him to take on professional fighter Cyclone Flynn, played by Edgar Kennedy. Pug eagerly accepts, setting the stage for a boxing match in which almost every rule of respectable competition is about to disappear.

And then Charlie arrives.

Chaplin doesn't play the boxer. He plays the referee.

That should make him the safest man in the ring.

It doesn't.

Once Pug and Cyclone begin fighting, Charlie's referee becomes increasingly entangled in the action. He tries to separate the fighters, control the match and enforce something resembling order while simultaneously avoiding becoming collateral damage.

He fails spectacularly.

Soon Charlie is ducking punches, absorbing blows and physically inserting himself between two men who seem perfectly happy to hit him instead of each other. The referee becomes part of the fight, and Chaplin turns what should be an authority figure into another wonderfully vulnerable victim of the chaos surrounding him.

But a boxing match isn't nearly enough mayhem for a Keystone comedy.

The action erupts beyond the ring and develops into the kind of wild chase for which the studio became famous. Guns appear, police become involved, characters race through streets and onto rooftops, and Pug finds himself pursued by an increasingly ridiculous collection of lawmen.

By the time The Knockout reaches its conclusion, an ordinary neighborhood romance has somehow transformed into a prizefight, a gunfight and a full-scale Keystone chase.

Made in 1914, The Knockout gives us something particularly fascinating today: two giants of early screen comedy before either man's greatest films had been made.

Roscoe Arbuckle is the star.

Charlie Chaplin is the supporting player.

And for a few glorious minutes inside that boxing ring, we can watch the young Chaplin discovering comic ideas that he would continue developing for decades.

AIN BACKSTAGE SECRETS & AINTOIDS
THIS IS ACTUALLY AN ARBUCKLE FILM

Despite Charlie Chaplin's prominence in many later presentations of The Knockout, this was fundamentally a Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle vehicle.

Chaplin doesn't even appear until the film's second reel, when he enters as the boxing referee.

That makes The Knockout especially interesting within a Chaplin collection. Audiences accustomed to Charlie dominating the screen get to see him functioning as a supporting comedian inside another star's movie.

CHARLIE STEALS HIS CORNER OF THE RING

Chaplin may have a relatively small role, but once he enters the boxing ring he becomes impossible to ignore.

His referee tries to control the fighters while constantly getting caught between them. Punches intended for someone else find Charlie, and his attempts to maintain authority only create more opportunities for physical disaster.

It is an early glimpse of Chaplin's extraordinary ability to take a supporting situation and build an entire comic performance around it.

BEFORE THE CHAMPION AND CITY LIGHTS

Boxing would return in two enormously important Chaplin films.

In 1915's The Champion, Charlie himself becomes an unlikely prizefighter.

Then, sixteen years later, Chaplin created the unforgettable boxing sequence in City Lights (1931), in which the Tramp desperately tries to survive a bout by using the referee as a moving shield between himself and his opponent.

Watching The Knockout makes that later masterpiece even more fascinating. The young Chaplin was already discovering how much comedy could be created by putting three moving bodies — two fighters and one unfortunate referee — inside a boxing ring.

AINTOID: CHAPLIN REALLY LOVED BOXING

Chaplin's interest in boxing wasn't confined to movies.

He was a genuine boxing enthusiast and continued attending prizefights in Los Angeles for years. His familiarity with the sport gave him plenty of material to parody — the fighters, the rituals, the referees and the wonderful physical possibilities of two men attempting to hit one another while a third tries to maintain order.

ROSCOE ARBUCKLE — A SILENT COMEDY GIANT

Modern audiences sometimes encounter Roscoe Arbuckle primarily through his association with Chaplin or Buster Keaton, but Arbuckle was himself one of the biggest comedy stars of the silent era.

His remarkable physical agility was an essential part of his comedy. Despite his size, Arbuckle could move with extraordinary speed and grace, and The Knockout gives him an ideal setting in which to combine his physical abilities with Keystone's taste for escalating chaos.

HUSBAND AND WIFE ON SCREEN

Minta Durfee, who plays Pug's sweetheart, was Roscoe Arbuckle's wife at the time.

Durfee was herself an experienced performer and appeared in numerous Keystone comedies during the 1910s, including several pictures with her husband.

EDGAR KENNEDY COULD REALLY BOX

Edgar Kennedy, who plays Cyclone Flynn, wasn't simply pretending to understand a boxing ring.

Before establishing himself as one of Hollywood's most recognizable character comedians, Kennedy had experience as a boxer.

That background makes him a particularly appropriate opponent for Arbuckle — and an especially dangerous-looking man for Chaplin's referee to find himself standing between.

FROM FRED KARNO TO KEYSTONE

Chaplin brought years of stage experience with Fred Karno's famous comedy company to Hollywood.

Elements of the boxing material in The Knockout have been connected to routines Chaplin knew from his Karno years, including Mumming Birds and The Yap Yaps.

Chaplin was still new to filmmaking, but he already possessed a deep library of physical-comedy techniques developed before he ever stood in front of a movie camera.

AINTOID: WHO ACTUALLY DIRECTED IT?

Here is one of those wonderful complications that comes with researching films more than a century old.

Modern sources do not completely agree on the directing credit for The Knockout. Charles Avery is widely credited as director, while the official Charlie Chaplin archive credits producer and Keystone chief Mack Sennett as director.

What everyone agrees upon is the larger home of the film: this was pure Keystone — produced under Mack Sennett during Chaplin's extraordinary first year in motion pictures.

THE KEYSTONE KOPS JOIN THE MADNESS

What would a Keystone comedy be without a chase?

After the boxing sequence, The Knockout expands into increasingly outrageous action involving police, gunfire and pursuit.

The climactic chase includes one of those images that could only come from Keystone: Arbuckle fleeing while an entire string of policemen is dragged along behind him.

Logic has left the building.

Keystone comedy has completely taken over.

AINTOID: A SET WITH ANOTHER CHAPLIN CONNECTION

The interior mansion set seen in The Knockout would appear again later in 1914 in Tillie's Punctured Romance.

That film has an important place in Chaplin history as well. Starring Marie Dressler with Chaplin and Mabel Normand, Tillie's Punctured Romance became the first feature-length comedy in which Chaplin appeared.

1914 — THE YEAR EVERYTHING CHANGED

It is almost impossible to overstate what 1914 meant to Charlie Chaplin.

At the beginning of the year, movie audiences didn't know him.

By year's end, they certainly did.

Chaplin made dozens of films for Keystone during this extraordinary period, rapidly learning how filmmaking worked while developing the costume, movement, attitude and comic vocabulary associated with his emerging screen character.

The Knockout captures him right in the middle of that transformation.

AINTOID: CHAPLIN'S 17TH KEYSTONE FILM

The Knockout is generally identified as Chaplin's seventeenth released film for Keystone.

Think about what that means when you're watching him.

This isn't the established master looking backward at decades of experience. This is a 25-year-old performer only months into his motion-picture career, experimenting in front of the camera and discovering what the new medium could do.

The masterpieces were still ahead.

The Tramp. The Kid. The Gold Rush. City Lights. Modern Times. The Great Dictator.

But the building blocks were already appearing.

And in The Knockout, one of those building blocks happened to be a boxing ring.

META TAGS

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