This film should not exist. For 80 years, The Cook (1918), a two-reel comedy starring Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle and Buster Keaton, was considered lost. Films then were printed on nitrate stock, which easily deteriorated in all but the most optimal conditions. All archivists would agree that most movies undiscovered after 80 years have long ago turned into dust.
Then suddenly two prints of this long-lost comedy showed up. The first copy was found in a pile of unmarked old film cans at the Norsk Filminstitutt in Norway in 1997. The print was incomplete, running about two-thirds the length of the original short, but silent comedy buffs were overjoyed to see it at all. Then towards the end of 2000, the Nederlands Filmmuseum in Amsterdam received another copy from the archive of a recently deceased private collector. This was a fragment even shorter than the Norwegian print, but it contained many scenes not in the longer copy.
Now Milestone Film & Video has painstakingly assembled the two prints and restored them on a new video and DVD called The Cook And Other Treasures. The short is now nearly complete (both prints were missing the ending) but a title card provides the final action. Why purchase a video of an incomplete 80-year old short? The best reason is that this is one of the best comedy films ever made. The first half of the short takes place in an oceanfront cafe with "Fatty" Arbuckle as the cook and Buster Keaton as the waiter. The invention never flags and always surprises with a bevy of high-speed gags. Plates fly through the air, miraculously landing with contents intact on Keaton's hand. Many a remote will be worn out as viewers stop and back up the action trying to figure out how they did it.
In addition, Milestone has included two other rarities. A Reckless Romeo (1917) stars Arbuckle without Keaton and was also considered lost until it was discovered in the same pile of film cans in Norway as The Cook. Arbuckle plays a drunk controlled by a wealthy but nagging wife and mother-in-law. At one point his dreams of freedom are relayed by simply dissolving to the Statue Of Liberty! Finishing out the set is a very rare Harold Lloyd short, Number, Please (1920). Lloyd fights for the affection of a girl at an amusement park leading to a hilarious scene where he must fight a crowd for access to a phone booth.
An odd connection between these three shorts is that all were filmed in part at amusement parks. The Cook was shot at Pike Amusement Park in Long Beach, California, Reckless Romeo at Palisades Amusement Park near Fort Lee, New Jersey and Number, Please at Ocean Park near Venice Beach, California. Not only are these shorts a preservation of priceless comedy, they are also an invaluable look at how America entertained itself so long ago.
For those who would like to know more about the background of these films and the world they present, Milestone has supplied an Adobe Acrobat document on the DVD accessible on a computer with DVD-ROM drive. It contains the rediscovered original press kit for CookThe Cook, exactly as they were discovered in the two archives, are presented as bonus material.
For more information about The Cook and Other Treasures, visit Milestone Films. To purchase a copy of The Cook and Other Treasures, visit TCM's Online Store.
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by Brian Cady
