Back Stage

Back Stage is a 1919 American two-reel silent comedy film directed by and starring Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle and featuring Buster Keaton and Al St. John.

In this film, Keaton, Arbuckle, Al St. John, 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 (1920) and, most famously, in his 1928 film Steamboat Bill, Jr.