A Reckless Romeo

A Reckless Romeo is a 1917 American short silent comedy film directed by and starring Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle.

Plot

A philandering husband's public flirtation with a beautiful girl—and the resulting brawl with the woman's boyfriend—are captured by a newsreel cameraman. When the husband takes his wife and her mother out to the movies, the footage is shown on-screen. The husband tries to flee the theater, only to be spotted and leaped upon by the woman's boyfriend, treating viewers to two simultaneous fights between the same two men, both on-screen and in the aisle.

Cast

Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle as Husband
Al St. John as Rival
Corinne Parquet as Wife
Agnes Neilson as Mother-in-Law
Alice Lake as Girl in Park
Jimmy Bryant
Joe Bordeaux as Newsreel director (uncredited)

Production

The film was released by the Comique Film Corporation when it and many other early film studios in America's first motion picture industry were based in Fort Lee, New Jersey, at the beginning of the 20th century. Some shots were done at Palisades Amusement Park.

The film was originally produced in New Jersey as one of Arbuckle's last Keystone pictures. Filmed between July and September 1916 and later sold to Paramount, it was released as a Comique film on May 21, 1917, after The Butcher Boy and before The Rough House.

Preservation status

Thought to have been lost, a print was discovered in 1998 in the Norwegian Film Archive in an unmarked canister with another lost Arbuckle short, The Cook (1918). The film archive at George Eastman House has a 35 mm positive print.