Keystone Cops

Biography

A dozen frantic men in ballooning uniforms first tore across the screen in 1912’s *Hoffmeyer’s Legacy*, sprinting, tripping, and ricocheting through the streets of Edendale, California. Their badge said “Keystone,” but the world soon nicknamed them the Kops. Two years later they were back, even more explosively incompetent, in *In the Clutches of the Gang* (1914), and they rounded off their riotous heyday helping *Fatty and the Broadway Stars* (1915) turn every city sidewalk into a slapstick crime scene.