After a crash, a group of passengers are stranded in the desert. They attempt to cope with their new conditions as the most privileged of them all, an overpaid lawyer, declares himself a dictator of the nearby oasis and names it after him.

Highlighting the Golden Age of screen comedy as it has never been presented before, "Slapstick Encyclopedia" collects more than fifty silent short comedies with new musical soundtracks.Laurel and Hardy, Fatty Arbuckle, Buster Keaton, Mack Sennett, Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd, Harry Langdon, Will Rogers, Ben Turpin and more--from the early innovators, who redesigned the routines of vaudeville with narrative form, to the celebrated masters whose inspired improvisations helped establish the world dominance of American film, "Slapstick Encyclopedia" is your laugh-filled tour of this eternally appealing art. Includes: In the Beginning: Film Comedy Pioneers; Keystone Tonight!: Mack Sennett Comedies; Sennett in the Twenties; Funny Girls: Genders and Their Benders; Keaton, Arbuckle and St. John; Hal Roach's All-Star Comedians; Hal Roach: The Lot of Fun; Chaplin and the Music Hall Tradition; The Race Is On; Tons of Fun: The Anarchic Fringe.—Anonymous