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Research dossier · Arts & Letters

The Water Dog

1914 film by Roscoe Arbuckle

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMar 22, 2026
Entity authorityQ7773696 ↗
Source-derived summary

The Water Dog is a 1914 American short comedy film directed by and starring Fatty Arbuckle. The film primarily follows the attempts to rescue a young girl who has been stranded on a rock in the ocean as the tide comes in, necessitating the involvement of local police and bystanders. The conflict is resolved when the girl is rescued by her pet dog, hence the title of the film.

Editorial summary

“The Water Dog” enters the record as 1914 film by Roscoe Arbuckle. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Water, film and Roscoe can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewBest approached as a cultural-object dossier: authorship and date matter, but circulation and reception often explain the wider significance. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1914—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1914-01-01. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Water, film and Roscoe.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“The Water Dog” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Water, film and Roscoe provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7773696. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1914.

Critical limits

Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “The Water Dog”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow The Water Dog primary sources, The Water Dog archive and Water research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “The Water Dog”?
  2. How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
  3. Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
Subject index

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “The Water Dog” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.