Coney Island Trivia Quiz

Answer: He climbs a lamp post.

Buster's pleased by the sight, and gives us one of the supposedly non-existent Keaton smiles. However, not content just to smile, he claps his hands as well, falling from the lamp post and knocking Alice over. Disgusted with him, she picks him up and shoves him along.

Answer: He buries himself in the sand.

Seeing Luke, the Comique dog, digging in the sand gives Fatty the idea. He buries himself then uses a bit of pipe as a periscope to watch his wife wander off in search of him.

Agnes Neilson, who plays Fatty's wife, played in several other Comique films, usually as a woman who was thwarting Fatty.

Answer: He hides in a trash barrel.

Clearly Buster Keaton's "Great Stone Face" persona wasn't etched in stone yet. He cries grotesquely, in a marked contrast to his later, famous stoic responses to setbacks. His response to the sight of the trash barrels is more classic Keaton -- he gets a predatory look in his eyes and goes after his prey.

It was Fatty's wife who smacks the man at the turnstile over the head to get into the park.

Answer: She gets seasick.

Alice looks pretty convincingly ill. They collide with Buster and Al goes flying out of the cart. The two men scuffle briefly -- with Al quickly gaining the upper hand and tossing Buster aside. He then helps Alice to a bench and goes off to buy some ice cream to settle her stomach.

Buster, having lost Alice yet again, cries. When he's finally distracted with the Ring the Bell, Al comes up behind him and kicks him in the bottom as he's preparing to swing the mallet. Buster tries to take revenge by smacking Al, but ends up flipping himself and losing the mallet.

Answer: He kicks a cop but makes it seem like Al did it.

Fatty kicks the cop in the backside, then picks Al up and switches places with him. The cop makes Al do the Wedgie Walk.

Al St. John was Roscoe Arbuckle's nephew. When Arbuckle started doing feature films, Al did a few bit parts in some of Buster Keaton's two-reelers, then finally found a niche playing sidekicks in Westerns.

Answer: He accidentally smacks Fatty with a mallet.

Buster is still manfully striving with the Ring the Bell when Fatty saunters by with Alice -- right behind the unsuspecting Buster, who smacks him in the face.

Contrary to rumors -- which Keaton himself fueled -- that Buster never smiled on camera, he actually smiled and laughed quite a bit in the early Comique shorts he did with Roscoe Arbuckle. Evidently this was a directorial call, since the moment he took over the studio himself, Buster shelved his smile, and never used it professionally again.

Answer: No

Still gallant, Buster tries to help Fatty out of the water, only to have his rival yank him into the drink and make off with Alice yet again. For the third time in this two-reeler, Buster cries grotesquely.

Answer: Because the concession doesn't have a big enough suit for him to rent one.

The rude man at the suit rental concession tells Fatty to "hire a tent". The large woman drapes her suit over a railing while attending some business. Fatty measures her posterior and his own with her umbrella, judges that the suit should fit, and makes off with her entire beach ensemble.

Though the idea of renting a swimming suit is pretty disgusting to modern sensibilities, it was evidently common enough practice at the time, since it shows up in other silent movies as well, including Buster Keaton's "The Cameraman" (1928), in which he and a huge man end up wearing each other's rented suits.

Answer: Fatty's wife bails him out.

Mrs. Fatty, still seeking her wayward husband, arrives at the police station and spots Al, who is an old friend. When she shows him a picture of her husband, Al exclaims, "That's the guy that stole my girl!" Now the two of them are on Fatty's trail.

Answer: No discernible reason.

He's strutting a bit, so perhaps it's a macho thing, though nobody's watching but the camera -- and Buster's not playing to the camera.

When he was a child, Buster's father had arranged for him to take tumbling training with a group of acrobats. He soon learned that they used rough physical discipline to correct mistakes, and evidently Joe Keaton didn't think anybody but him should hit his kid, so the lessons were stopped. Still, Buster learned to do butterflies and backflips and impressive dives and vaults.

Answer: He flirts with him.

Fatty gets quite flirtatious in return, beckoning Al over and freely patting and rubbing his leg.

Mrs. Fatty, on the other hand, looks at the picture of her husband in the locket, and at the large woman flirting with Al, and ponders the situation.

Answer: Buster

Mrs. Fatty asks lifeguard Buster, "Who's that fat lady?" We see another Keaton laugh as Buster tells her, "He ain't a lady -- she's a man!" And he hooks Fatty's hat and wig off with a fishing pole.

Al, in the meantime, caresses Fatty's face and notices chin stubble. He seems to have second thoughts about the flirtation.

Answer: She calls the cops.

We get a Keystone Kops moment at the station house, with four klutzy, mustachioed cops falling over each other. Then back to the beach, where Roscoe Arbuckle swims, amazingly, like a dolphin, with Al St. John in hot pursuit.

Answer: They lure the cops into the cell and knock them out.

The cop Fatty dumps out of his trousers (the only cop not to end up unconscious in the cell) is none other than an uncredited Buster Keaton. If you don't recognize the face behind the huge mustache, or the body in the oversized police uniform, watch frame-by-frame for the missing right index fingertip -- a dead giveaway no matter how Buster is disguised. You'll see it as Buster holds up his hands before entering the cell area.

Answer: No

Al takes off after the girl, who seems glad of his company. But Fatty lets him go his own way, and isn't left to pine alone for long. Another woman walks by in the opposite direction, and Fatty -- his wife locked up with the unconscious cops -- takes off after her. The end.