For the milestone tenth year, Lea at Silent-ology is hosting the Buster Keaton Blogathon. You can click the image above to go to the full list of participants. This year, my topic is the magical 1924 film Sherlock, Jr. No matter how many times I see it, it always evokes such a surrealistic mood and pulls me right into this world blurring the lines between reality and fantasy.
Sherlock, Jr., originally called The Misfit, released 21 April 1924. Buster wanted his leading lady to be Marion Harlan, whom he’d previously worked with on Three Ages, but she took sick and was replaced by Kathryn McGuire, a WAMPAS Baby Star of 1923.
Another change was the co-director. Buster brought on his best friend Roscoe Arbuckle, who was still blacklisted by most of Hollywood and the American public after the scandal of 1921–22. Even after he was acquitted at the third trial and given an unprecedented personal apology from the jury, many people still refused to believe his innocence or support his career. Roscoe had to work under the pseudonym William B. Goodrich and move behind the camera.
Buster was one of the few people who stood by Roscoe through thick and thin. Not only did he remain friends, he also gave Roscoe the chance to work again. Roscoe was deep in debt from his long legal battle, and had lost his home and cars. Many film scholars believe the premise of Sherlock, Jr. is a tribute to Oscar Heinrich, the forensic scientist who helped to clear Roscoe’s good name.
Sadly, after a great beginning, Buster and Roscoe got into a big fight triggered by Buster correcting a mistake, and Buster had to direct the entire film himself. After all the trauma poor Roscoe went through, could he really be blamed for behaving irrationally in its wake? Trauma responses by definition aren’t rational, and anger is one of the most common ones.
Because of the surrealistic storyline and its complicated special effects, Sherlock, Jr. was Buster’s most challenging film to create. It took four months to film and edit, from January to April 1924, twice Buster’s normal production length. Buster later told film historian Kevin Brownlow, “Every cameraman in the business went to see that picture more than once trying to figure out how the hell we did some of that.”
Buster famously did all his own stunts, and often got injured because he refused to use doubles or dummies. During the filming of Sherlock, Jr., he unknowingly broke his neck when he grabbed a water spout while walking on top of a moving train. The back of his neck was bashed against a steel rail on the ground, and Buster blacked out. Filming wrapped early that day, and he had blinding headaches for weeks. Only in 1935 did he discover he’d broken his neck.
A relatively less serious accident happened when Buster’s motorcycle skidded straight-on into two cameras, which knocked over gag man Eddie Cline and tossed Buster onto a car.
The preview in Long Beach didn’t go very well, so Buster re-edited the film to try to make it funnier. The second preview was even worse, so Buster cut the film down to a mere five reels. He refused producer Joseph Schenck’s suggestion to add another thousand feet of film (about eleven minutes).
Sherlock, Jr. earned $448,337 ($8,086,242.84 in 2024), making it Buster’s first real failure in his long, successful career. The New York Times and Photoplay loved it, but other reviews were very negative. A century later, this film is much more highly-regarded by both critics and audiences. In 1991, it was chosen for preservation in the U.S. National Film Registry by the Library of Congress.
A film projectionist in a small town spends his free time studying how to be a detective. While sweeping up the trash in the theatre, he finds a whole dollar (which went a lot further in 1924!) and feels compelled to return it to the pretty young lady who lost it. He also gives one of his own dollars to an older woman sifting through the pile. When a gruff-looking guy comes up, the Projectionist hands over another dollar without a fight, but the guy gives it back and looks through the pile to find a whole wad of cash.
With his last dollar, he buys a box of chocolates at a nearby shop and phonies up the price to look like $4 to impress his rich love interest. He also gives her a ring when he goes to her house. While they’re very demurely, shyly sitting together in the parlour, the local Sheik (Ward Crane) steals a watch from her father’s coat and pawns it. With the money, he buys the $3 box of chocolates the Projectionist hoped to buy earlier.
The father (Joe Keaton, Buster’s real-life dad) notices his watch missing, and Buster says it’s a good idea to search everyone. The Sheik slips the pawnshop ticket into the Projectionist’s pocket, and when it’s found on his person, the Girl’s father kicks him out of the house in perpetuity. (In a lot of old films, the person who makes an accusation is always believed, and the person accused is judged automatically guilty and not allowed to plead his or her case.)
The Projectionist’s detective book includes the suggestion to shadow his man, which he does. However, he’s quickly waylaid by the abovementioned incident with the water pipe, so he returns to his day job.
The Girl goes to the pawnshop to ask who got the ticket, and the pawnbroker describes the Sheik, who presently passes by. Meanwhile, the Projectionist falls asleep while projecting Hearts and Pearls, a film about the theft of a pearl necklace, which very closely mirrors the real-life situation. His dream self wanders down the aisle, climbs over the organ supplying live music, and tries to jump into the screen.
The first attempt is unsuccessful, but the second attempt succeeds. And here begins a movie within a movie.
He shifts back and forth between a bunch of different scenes before moving into the story of Hearts and Pearls as Sherlock, Jr., the world’s greatest detective. The actors transmogrify into the people involved in the real situation.
The Sheik and his accomplice (Erwin Connelly, the butler) rig one murderous trap after another for Sherlock, Jr., but he outwits them all—an exploding billiard, a chair with long-handled axes above it, poison. The next day, Sherlock, Jr. tracks them and more bad guys down to a shack and is captured.
The Sheik says the man struggling in a wicker cage in the next room is a detective, and that he’ll put Sherlock, Jr. in there next. He also says the Girl is at another shack. Sherlock, Jr. escapes and ends up in a wild chase on a cop’s motorcycle handlebars.
For almost the entire chase, which goes through one wacky situation and close scrape after another, he has no idea the cop fell off and he’s only moving through momentum.
The bike eventually crashes through the shed where the Girl is being held hostage, and she and Sherlock, Jr. have another close escape and wacky car chase.
The Projectionist wakes up to the Girl announcing they discovered the real guilty party and that her father is very sorry for the mistake. He proceeds to copy the actions of the hero in the romantic closing scene of the film he’s still projecting, but the final image of married life with twins might be a bridge too far.