Silents are Golden: A Closer Look At: Sherlock Jr. (1924)

A Closer Look At: Sherlock Jr. (1924)

2024 marks the 100th anniversary of one of
Buster Keaton’s most beloved films: his third feature, Sherlock Jr. (1924). Still every bit as funny and fresh as it was
in the early 20th century, its sophisticated special effects have also aged
remarkably well–even to today’s CGI-accustomed audiences.

Compared to the two Keaton features that it
was sandwiched between, the period piece Our
Hospitality (1923) and the lost-at-sea adventure The Navigator (1924), Sherlock
Jr. was a much smaller-scale film. Keaton had originally envisioned
adapting the popular 1922 play Merton of
the Movies, about a young man from a small town who dreams of becoming a
Hollywood star. However, Famous Players-Lasky had snapped up the rights and
were planning on making a version starring Glenn Hunter. Keaton decided to use
a similar story revolving around a small town theater projectionist, who in
this case dreams of becoming a famous detective.

Keaton would later credit his cameraman, Elgin
Lessley, for coming up with the idea of having much of the film take place in a
dream. Lessley insisted that many of the surreal movie-themed gags Keaton had
in mind wouldn’t work in a “legitimate” story, and that audiences were more
likely to accept the topsy-turvy logic of the dream world. This turned out to
be an excellent idea, freeing them to create the memorable scenes of Keaton
jumping in and out of a movie screen that are still admired today.

The studio started filming in November of 1923
under the working title of The Misfit. The
leading lady was initially played by Marion Harlan, who apparently had to drop
out after falling ill. She was replaced by Kathryn McGuire, a petite former
Mack Sennett comedienne who paired well with the 5’6” Keaton. Ward Crane was
cast as the intimidating rival for McGuire’s hand, and Keaton’s father Joe
would also make an appearance as the girl’s father.

Another major addition to the film’s
production–at least temporarily–was Keaton’s old pal Roscoe Arbuckle, who was
brought on as a co-director. Arbuckle’s life had been upended in 1921 after
actress Virginia Rappe fell ill at a party he hosted in San Francisco, later
passing away. After several sensational trials for manslaughter he was
acquitted of all charges, but he had been relegated to working quietly behind
the camera ever since. It only took a few days for Keaton to realize that the
patient, genial comedian he had worked with in the past now had a hair-trigger
temper, his nerves still shattered from undergoing those trials. He gently
thanked Arbuckle for his help and told him he now felt comfortable directing
himself.

By now the story had evolved into Keaton
playing a humble projectionist moonlighting as a detective while also
contending with a rival for his girl’s hand. The rival steals a pocketwatch
belonging to the girl’s father and blames Buster for it. Disgraced, a dejected
Buster dreams that he is the famous, dashing detective Sherlock Jr., who
retrieves a stolen necklace of pearls. Apparently a 1922 John Barrymore film, Sherlock Holmes, inspired the change in
title.

Keaton performed numerous stunts for the film,
from riding alone on the handlebars of a fast-moving motorcycle to performing a
vaudeville trick where he appeared to disappear into a small case being held by
an assistant. The most dangerous stunt showed him running along the top of a
moving train as it rumbled past a water tower. He grabbed a rope hanging from
the tower’s spout and the resulting torrent of water pushed him down onto the
tracks below. He hit one of the rails directly on his neck. The film shows him
springing up and running off unscathed, but after the cameras stopped rolling
he had a lingering headache that he “cured” with a couple of stiff drinks.
Decades later, an x-ray taken during a routine checkup revealed he’d gotten a
neck fracture–in such a precise spot that it healed without him being aware of
it.

Other feats performed by Keaton included doing
all the billiard ball tricks during the pool room sequence, which took several
months of lessons from an expert pool player, and of course the wonderful “film
within a film” sequence. Buster, having fallen asleep, is dreaming that he’s
watching the film Hearts and Pearls and
he jumps into the movie screen. While he’s onscreen the scenes suddenly change
around him, depositing him into city streets, jungles of wildcats, snowy
landscapes, and so on. The effect was done by having Lessley measure the
precise distance from Keaton to the camera and to the edges of the
frame–precise down to the fraction of an inch–so he could get in the exact
right place for each shot.

Once Sherlock
finished production in February of 1924 Keaton had it previewed in Long
Beach, Glendale, and finally Los Angeles, tweaking the film after each audience
reaction. The finished product ran under five reels, or about 45 minutes,
making it shorter than the average comedy feature.

Sherlock
Jr. was generally well-received and did well at the
box office, although it didn’t perform as well as Our Hospitality and would be somewhat overshadowed by the
phenomenal success of Keaton’s next picture, The Navigator (1924). Yet its reputation has steadily grown over
time, and many fans consider it one of the great comedian’s best. Today, a full
100 years later, its centenary has been celebrated with public screenings at
several film festivals, and of course, plenty of love from fans online.

…

–Lea Stans for Classic Movie Hub

You can read all of Lea’s Silents are Golden articles here.

Lea Stans is a born-and-raised Minnesotan with a degree in English and an obsessive interest in the silent film era (which she largely blames on Buster Keaton). In addition to blogging about her passion at her site Silent-ology, she is a columnist for the Silent Film Quarterly and has also written for The Keaton Chronicle.

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