The Saphead *** (1920, Buster Keaton, Beulah Booker, William H Crane, Edward Connelly, Edward Jobson) – Classic Movie Review 11,484

Buster Keaton stars as Bertie ‘The Lamb’ Van Alstyne in a remake of Douglas Fairbanks Sr’s 1915 The Lamb, in which he plays an upper-class twit who cannot follow a guide on how to woo the modern girl.

Bertie wants to impress the girl of his dreams, his adopted sister Agnes Gates (Beulah Booker), but it helps him get disowned by his father, Nicholas Van Alstyne (William H Crane), the richest man in New York.

Indeed he can’t do a thing right but hits the jackpot on the stock exchange by mistake.

Directors Herbert Blaché and Winchell Smith’s 1920 film The Saphead is mild but still essential silent movie comedy stuff from Keaton, with several comic highlight moments, based on Winchell Smith and Victor Mapes’s 1913 play The New Henrietta.

Keaton was cast on the recommendation of Douglas Fairbanks Sr, who had played the role of Bertie in the original stage production but was unavailable, and it is Keaton’s first starring role in a full-length feature and the film that launched him as a star.

It was restored in 1995 with a new score by Robert Israel.

The cast are Buster Keaton as Bertie ‘The Lamb’ Van Alstyne, Beulah Booker as Agnes Gates, Edward Connelly as Musgrave, Edward Jobson as the Rev Murray Hilton, Edward Alexander as Watson Flint, Odette Taylor as Mrs Cornelia Opdyke, Carol Holloway as Rose Turner, Irving Cummings as Mark Turner, Jack Livingston as Dr George Wainright, William H. Crane as Nicholas Van Alstyne, Katherine Albert as Hattie, Henry Clauss as Valet, Alfred Hollingsworth as Hathaway, Helen Holte as Henrietta Reynolds, and Jeffrey Williams as Hutchins.

© Derek Winnert 2021 Classic Movie Review 11,484

Link to Derek Winnert’s home page for more reviews: http://derekwinnert.com/