Arbuckle, Chaplin & Co. in “The Knockout”

Poster from a later re-issue with a different title

Today is the anniversary of the release date of the all-star Keystone comedy The Knockout (1914), directed by Mack Sennett. 

The Knockout is one of the very first boxing comedies, perhaps even the founding example of that subgenre. Today it is usually marketed as a Chaplin film, although it really stars Fatty Arbuckle. Chaplin has a small (but funny) turn as a referee. Fatty is drawn into the boxing world by a bunch of street toughs led by Al St. John who try to humiliate him in front of his girl (Minta Durfee). They haven’t counted on the fact that bricks bounce off of Fatty’s bean, or that he can lift 500 lb weights. He dispatches the punks in short order at the neighborhood gym. (Minta dons male drag so she can enter the gym to watch). Then gangster Mack Swain books Fatty to fight the champ (Edgar Kennedy, who’d actually been a boxer in real life) leading to our main comic set piece. The bout spurs Fatty into a violent rampage. The Keystone Kops are called, leading to a rooftop chase and a fall through a skylight onto a fancy party in the loft below. The Kops throw a rope around Fatty as though he were an elephant they were trying to bring down. He drags them all down to the pier and chucks them in the drink.

Learn about dozens of other boxing comedies here. 

For more on silent and slapstick comedy films like “The Knockout” don’t miss my book: Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube.