This article was
written in 1916. It is a preview of the Roscoe Arbuckle film The Waiter's Ball, which at that time had
not yet been released.
ROSCOE ARBUCKLE has a scream in his play,
The Waiters' Ball. With his usual generosity, he gives his company a chance for a little glory, and the comedy as elucidated by Al St. John, a coming young comedian, Corinne Parquet, Arbuckle's new leading lady, and our own old favorite, Kate Price, gets many a laugh
over the screen.
The cast in full is a good one. There is Roscoe Arbuckle as the cook, Al St. John as the waiter, Corinne Parquet as the cashier, Joe Bordeaux as her bad brother, Robert Maximillian as the proprietor, Kate Price as the dishwasher, and Alice Lake as the fair customer.
A pretty cashier in a small, cheap restaurant has two ardent suitors in the cook and the waiter. This love affair causes considerable friction between the wheels of the dining-room and the kitchen, and the innocent bystanders, in the shape of the proprietor and the customers, get the heavy end of the deal.
All the employees are anxiously anticipating the Waiters' Ball, a strictly full-dress affair. The waiter yearns to escort the pretty cashier to the ball, but does not possess the necessary dress suit. Fatty, the cook, has a dress suit, which he complacently sends to the cleaners to be ready for the ball. The waiter makes the most of an elegant chance to annex the dress suit, and he and the cashier attend the ball. The suit is a trifle over, but not enough to make the happy waiter unhappy.
Fatty is resourceful. He attends the ball in disguise, as a beautiful lady, attired in the stolen evening gown of the lady dishwasher. He discovers his own suit draped on the happy person of the waiter, and trouble begins right there. The dishwasher helps it along by discovering her lost evening gown on what seems to be the belle of the ball.