Keystone Hotel (film)


Keystone Hotel is a two-reel comedy short subject, directed by Ralph Staub and released by the Vitaphone Corporation through Warner Bros. Pictures. Inspired by the silent comedies produced by Mack Sennett, the film reunites many of Sennett's former stars.

Plot

The story follows the cross-eyed Count Drewa Blanc, who arrives at the busy Keystone Hotel to judge a fashion show.
In the hotel lobby, the chief of police, the mayor, and a gangster try to sway the Count's decision. Upstairs, the house detective investigates some marital shenanigans, some involving a vibrating exercise machine.
The fashion show is held in a banquet hall, where the hotel manager introduces the contestants. The winner is chosen, but the myopic Count awards the trophy to the wrong woman. The winner protests, "How dare you give it to her when I should get it!" She does—an airborne pie misses its target and hits her. This prompts a huge pie fight, and the hotel detective sends for the Keystone Kops. The Kops spring into action and encounter several detours and difficulties before crashing into the hotel.
Keystone Hotel was staged so effectively that later silent-comedy tribute films have included footage from Keystone Hotel without the soundtrack as an "authentic" Keystone comedy. The film was so successful that Warner Bros. wanted to make a series with the same principals, but the actors' agents demanded too much money so the idea was abandoned. Keystone Hotel was reissued to theaters in 1947 and to the home-movie market in 1967.

Cast