Silent Cinema Sunday: Cops (1922)
Buster Keaton starts an LAPD riot while trying to woo my great-grandma
To further my continued efforts at sanity in our insane world, I’ve decided to start a little movie project. I’ll be sharing silent films highlighting the often forgotten work of an early Roaring Twenties actress—Virginia Fox, my great-grandmother.
She was in a number of early silent pictures but I’ve only seen a few, and perhaps you’d like to join me in exploring a some classic film and family history.
Without further ado:
Before she became Mrs. Darryl Zanuck of Hollywood’s Golden Age, Mony (as she was known in the family) made a name for herself socializing and working with key people in early film comedy circles. As a natural social butterfly, with high standards and an eye for the spotlight, it’s not hard to imagine her thriving during this time in her youth.
In many ways, her films help me place what was happening in history into a more familiar context. Being in your twenties during the 1920s in Los Angeles is wild to think about, while massive history is happening all around the globe.
Mony is most known among classic film fans for leading lady roles opposite Buster Keaton, and they do have good comedic timing chemistry.
Cops is one of my favorite films they did because it’s a comedy love story surrounded by barriers of status and power struggles. And since it’s a Keaton film, all of that is expressed in overtly physical comedy, but equally with subtle measure if you watch the movie more than once, which is how they were made to be consumed. Silent films are full of what we now call Easter eggs, hidden details that only emerge through attentive focus on the action and story.
It’s also one of my favorites because of the opening subtitle. Mony plays the daughter of the Los Angeles mayor, and Buster plays his common role of love-lorn, man of little means. She walks away from Buster’s attempt to court her, turning to say, “I won’t marry you until you become a big business man.” Which is hilarious, because in real life kismet, Mony would marry my great-grandfather just two years after this film, and a decade after that, he was one of the most powerful men in Hollywood. The lady knew what she wanted, and it was a trait she was very much known for.
After Buster gets rejected, he sets off to become a big business man and win his lady.
He takes the old adage that you have to “spend money, to make money” to the extreme. As he continues in his efforts to fail up, his aloof behavior sets off chaos for everyone he encounters. And one horse.
Followed by an unfortunate need for a cigarette at a police parade, he finds himself the target of a massive manhunt.
Will Buster escape the LAPD, bag his money, and his leading lady?
Why Watch It?
This film is legitimately funny, especially the chaos and riot at the police parade. It’s worth noting that scene was absolutely inspiration for the finale of John Landis’ classic comedy Animal House (1978).
The ending of Cops, to me, is a great take on the inherent absurdism of power structures and “breaking into” a higher class status (he was a skater boy, she was the Mayor’s daughter.)
Something I really admire about Buster Keaton’s work, besides his acting and stunt talent, is his layered storytelling, which is loaded with subtle social commentary. A film is driven by the story it tells and how many people that story connects with, and Keaton was an incredible creative.
I think people often forget that storytelling in film began merely as mute, moving pictures. Not long after, talkies (movies with talking dialogue) emerged and sound engineering became an industry, but the artform of movies was born out of communicating deeply using only visuals of action and words.
Cops wasn’t truly a silent film—during this time of movie theaters, there was a recorded soundtrack or a live orchestra playing for big productions and not long after, all productions. Theaters used sound to illicite emotions, and there were subtitles/captions for scene setting, and written dialogue as story guides.
What got me to appreciate silent film over the past few years, both as a genre and a historical record of filmmaking, is a desire to learn more about my great-grandmother’s history on screen.
Behind the scenes, Virginia Fox Zanuck was a powerhouse throughout her life, as a family matriarch and a businesswoman who shaped the industry in more ways than most people realize. Her history is overshadowed by her husband and my grandfather, and I’d like to give Mony some overdue flowers for her contributions to the art of cinema.
Watch Cops in full on Youtube
Time to consume: 18 minutes