My Wife's Relations



""Papa! Shut your eyes and see what I married!""

- Kate, introducing her husband

A series of misunderstandings involving a taffy pull, a postman, a broken window, and a monolingual Polish judge leaves Buster Keaton married to Kate, a large, irate Irishwoman whose family thinks he's rich.

My Wife's Relations can be seen in its entirety at Google Video, or downloaded from the Internet Archive.


 * Accidental Marriage
 * Amusing Injuries
 * Art Imitates Art: Buster's father-in-law reinforces his proletariat cred by looking at a small-scale reproduction of the Venus de Milo and asking, "Who broke the arms off that monument?"
 * Boisterous Bruiser: All of Kate's brothers.
 * Chase Scene
 * Crash Into Hello: Subverted, in that it does not result in love, though it does lead to marriage.
 * Disaster Dominoes
 * Double Take
 * Dragged by the Collar
 * Dynamic Entry
 * Finagle's Law
 * Forgotten Trope: Buster boards a train for Reno, signaling his intention to get a divorce.
 * Fun with Foreign Languages: Buster and Kate think they're in court because of a broken window. The judge thinks he's conducting a wedding.
 * Improvised Weapon
 * Literal Ass-Kicking
 * Lottery Ticket: Actually, a letter announcing an inheritance.
 * Meal Ticket: What Kate and her family think she's married.
 * Mistaken Identity: Buster's wife and in-laws believe that he has inherited $100,000 on the basis of a misdirected letter.
 * Murphy's Bed: Various, including a Bear Trap Bed.
 * Nouveau Riche
 * Oireland: Ancestral land of the wife's family.
 * Pepper Sneeze
 * Punched Across the Room: The photographer is shoved across one room, then sent across a second and out the door with a kick in the ass.
 * The Roaring Twenties: Kate's family makes home brew, though it's unclear if they do so because of Prohibition or because they're Oirish.
 * Slapstick
 * Sweet Tooth
 * Take That: Possibly directed at Keaton's real-life in-laws, the Talmadges.
 * Tap on the Head
 * Team Shot: Subverted. The family poses for a group portrait, but Buster keeps getting pushed out of frame.
 * Wake Up Fighting
 * Working Class People Are Morons