Fatty Arbuckle

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Roscoe Arbuckle
Arbuckle.jpg
Background information
Born as: Roscoe Conkling Arbuckle
Other names: Fatty Arbuckle
Born Mar 24, 1887
Smith Center, Kansas
Died Jun 29, 1933 - age  45
New York City, NY
 
Buried: Pacific Ocean
Spouse(s): Araminta Estelle Durfee
(1889 - 1975)
Occupation: Actor
Years active: 1909-1933

Roscoe Conkling Arbuckle, also known as Fatty Arbuckle (March 24 1887 - †June 29 1933), was an American silent film comedian, director, and screenwriter. Arbuckle is noted as one of the most popular actors of his era, but he is best remembered for a heavily publicized criminal prosecution that ended his career. Although he was acquitted by a jury with a written apology, the trial's scandal ruined the actor, who would not appear on screen again for another 10 years.

Early life and career

Born in Smith Center, Kansas, to Mollie and William Goodrich Arbuckle, he had several years of Vaudeville experience, including work at Idora Park in Oakland, California. One of his earliest mentors was comedian Leon Errol. He began his film career with the Selig Polyscope Company in July 1909. Arbuckle appeared sporadically in Selig one-reelers until 1913, moved briefly to Universal Pictures and became a star in producer-director Mack Sennett's Keystone Cops comedies.

Arbuckle was also a talented singer. After Enrico Caruso heard him sing he urged the comedian to "give up this nonsense you do for a living, with training you could become the second greatest singer in the world".

On August 6, 1908 he married Araminta Estelle Durfee (1889-1975), the daughter of Charles Warren Durfee and Flora Adkins. Durfee starred in many early comedy films under the name Minta Durfee, often with Arbuckle.

Screen comedian

Despite his massive physical size, Arbuckle was remarkably agile and acrobatic. Mack Sennett, when recounting his first meeting with Arbuckle, noted that he "skipped up the stairs as lightly as Fred Astaire"; and, "without warning went into a feather light step, clapped his hands and did a backward somersault as graceful as a girl tumbler". His comedies are noted as rollicking and fast-paced, have many chase scenes, and feature sight gags. Arbuckle was fond of the famous "pie in the face," a comedy clichAc that has come to symbolize silent-film-era comedy itself. The earliest known use of this gag was in the June 1913 Keystone one-reeler A Noise from the Deep, starring Arbuckle and frequent screen partner Mabel Normand. (Note, the first known "pie in the face" on-screen is in Ben Turpin's Mr. Flip in 1909. However, the oldest known thrown "pie in the face" is Normand's).

While Normand is said to have thrown the first pie on-screen, a Hollywood legend of uncertain provenance recounts that Arbuckle created this gag after encountering Pancho Villa's army on the Rio Grande during a Vaudeville appearance in El Paso. While the Arbuckles were picnicking on the river, they and Villa's men playfully threw fruit at each other across the river. Roscoe is said to have knocked one of the men off his horse with a bunch of bananas, to Pancho's extreme amusement.

In 1914 Paramount Pictures made the then-unheard of offer of $1,000 a day/25% of all profits/complete artistic control to make movies with them. The movies were so lucrative and popular that in 1918 they offered Arbuckle a 3-year/$3 million contract.

Arbuckle disliked his screen nickname, which he had been given because of his substantial girth. However, the name Fatty (big buster) identifies the character that Arbuckle portrayed on-screen (usually, a naive hayseed) -- not Arbuckle himself. When Arbuckle portrayed a female, the character was named "Miss Fatty" (as in the film Miss Fatty's Seaside Lovers). Hence, Arbuckle discouraged anyone from addressing him as "Fatty" off-screen.

Buster Keaton

Arbuckle gave Buster Keaton his first film-making work in his 1917 short, The Butcher Boy. They soon became screen partners, with deadpan Buster soberly assisting wacky Roscoe in his crazy adventures. When Arbuckle was promoted to feature films, Keaton inherited the short-subject series, which launched his own career as a comedy star. Arbuckle and Keaton's close friendship never wavered, even when Arbuckle was beset by tragedy at the zenith of his career, and through the depression and downfall that followed. In his autobiography Keaton described Arbuckle's playful nature and his love of practical jokes, including several elaborately constructed schemes the two successfully pulled off at the expense of various Hollywood studio heads and stars.

Charlie Chaplin

Charlie Chaplin


After English actor Charlie Chaplin joined Keystone Studios in 1914, Arbuckle mentored him. Chaplin's most famous character, "the Tramp", was created after Chaplin "borrowed" Arbuckle's trademark balloon pants, boots and tiny hat.

The Scandal

At the height of his career, Arbuckle was under contract to Paramount Studios for $1 million a year -- the first multi-year/multi-million dollar deal paid by a Hollywood studio. He worked hard for the money, filming three feature films simultaneously. On September 3, 1921 Arbuckle took a break from his hectic film schedule and drove to San Francisco with two friends, Lowell Sherman (an actor/director) and cameraman Fred Fischbach. The three checked into the St. Francis Hotel, decided to have a party, and invited several women to their suite. During the carousing, a 26-year-old aspiring actress named Virginia Rappe became seriously ill and was examined by the hotel doctor, who concluded her symptoms were mostly caused by intoxication.

Rappe died three days later of peritonitis caused by a ruptured bladder. Rappe's companion at the party, Maude Delmont, claimed before a grand jury that Arbuckle had somehow pierced Rappe's bladder while raping her. Rappe's manager Al Semnacker (at a later press conference) accused Arbuckle of using a piece of ice to simulate sex with her, which led to the injuries. By the time the story was reported in newspapers, the object had 'evolved' into being a Coca-Cola or Champagne bottle, instead of a piece of ice. In fact, witnesses testified that Arbuckle rubbed the ice on Rappe's stomache to ease her abdominal pain. Arbuckle was confident that he had nothing to be ashamed of, and denied any wrongdoing. Delmont later made a statement (incriminating Arbuckle) to the police, in an attempt to extort money from Arbuckle's attorneys; but, the matter soon spun out of her control.

Roscoe Arbuckle's career is cited by many film historians as one of the great tragedies of Hollywood. His trial was a major media event and stories in William Randolph Hearst's nationwide newspaper chain were written with the intent of making Arbuckle appear guilty. The resulting scandal destroyed both his career and his personal life. Morality groups called for Arbuckle to be sentenced to death, and studio executives ordered Arbuckle's industry friends (whose careers they controlled) to not publicly speak up for him. Charlie Chaplin was in England at the time. Buster Keaton did make a public statement in support of Arbuckle, calling Roscoe one of the kindest souls he had known. Film actor William S. Hart, who never worked with Arbuckle, made public statements which presumed that Arbuckle was guilty.

The prosecutor was San Francisco District Attorney Mathew Brady, who was determined to get a conviction as he was planning to use the case in his scampaign to run for governor. To this end, Brady made public pronouncements of Arbuckle's guilt, and pressured witnesses to make false statements. During the hearing and despite the judge threatening a motion to dismiss the case, Brady refused to allow the only witness accusing Arbuckle, Maude Delmont, to take the stand and testify. Delmont had a long criminal record with convictions for racketeering, bigamy, fraud and extortion. The defense had also gotten hold of a letter from Delmont admitting to a plan to extort Arbuckle. Along with Delmont's constantly changing story, for her to testify would have ended any chance of going for trial. In his summation, the judge demolished every bit of the prosecution's evidence, and harangued Brady for producing such a flimsy case. The judge found no evidence of rape, but decided that Arbuckle could be tried for manslaughter.

The first trial: What evidence the prosecution presented was often greeted with laughter from the courtroom; the spectators stood and cheered for Arbuckle after he testified. The jury returned deadlocked with a 10 - 2 not guilty verdict, and a mistrial was declared.

The second trial: The same evidence was presented, but this time one of the witnesses, Zey Prevon, testified that the district attorney had forced her to lie. Another witness who claimed Arbuckle had bribed him turned out to be an escaped prisoner charged with assaulting an 8 year old girl; plus, fingerprint experts testified that the case's fingerprint evidence was faked. The defence was so convinced of an acquittal that Arbuckle was not called to testify. However, the jury interpreted the refusal to let Arbuckle testify as a sign of guilt. It returned deadlocked with a 10 - 2 guilty verdict -- another mistrial was declared.

The third trial: By this time Arbuckle's films had been banned, and newspapers had been filled for seven months with alleged stories of Hollywood orgies, murder, sexual perversity and lies about Arbuckle's case. Maude Delmont was touring the country giving one-woman shows as "The woman who signed the murder charge against Arbuckle", and lecturing on the evils of Hollywood.

This time, it took the jury a mere 6 minutes to return a unanimous not guilty verdict; five of those were taken to write a statement of apology. Unfortunately, public opinion had long-since been turned strongly against Arbuckle; six days after the verdict, the censorship board banned Roscoe Arbuckle from ever working in U.S. movies again.

The Arbuckle case was one of four major Paramount-related scandals of the period. In 1920 Olive Thomas died after drinking a large quantity of medication meant for her husband (matinee idol Jack Pickford, younger brother of Mary Pickford) which she had mistaken for water. In 1922 the murder of director William Desmond Taylor effectively ended the careers of actresses Mary Miles Minter and former Arbuckle screen partner Mabel Normand and in 1923 actor/director Wallace Reid's drug addiction resulted in his death. The scandals caused by these tragedies rocked Hollywood, leading major studios to include morality clauses in contracts.

Owing to the scandal, most exhibitors declined to show Arbuckle's latest films. Ironically, one of the few feature-length films known to survive is Leap Year, one of two finished films Paramount withheld the release of, amid the scandal. It was eventually released in Europe, but was never theatrically released in the United States or Britain.

Also see the page [ Arbuckle-01 ] for Arbuckles account of what happened


Aftermath

On January 27, 1925 he divorced Araminta Estelle Durfee in Paris. She had charged desertion. Arbuckle married Doris Deane on May 16, 1925.

Arbuckle tried returning to moviemaking, but industry resistance to distributing his pictures lingered after his acquittal; he retreated into alcoholism. In the words of his first wife, "Roscoe only seemed to find solace and comfort in a bottle."

Buster Keaton attempted to help Arbuckle by giving him work on Keaton's films. Arbuckle wrote the story for a Keaton short called "Daydreams." Arbuckle allegedly co-directed scenes in Keaton's Sherlock, Jr., but it is unclear how much of this footage remained in the film's final cut. Arbuckle also directed a number of comedy shorts under the pseudonym William Goodrich for Educational Pictures, which featured lesser-known comics of the day. He is said to have helped Bob Hope early in his career with a crucial job referral.

In 1929 Doris Deane sued for divorce in Los Angeles, charging desertion and cruelty. On June 21, 1931 Roscoe married Addie Oakley Dukes McPhail (later Addie Oakley Sheldon, 1906-2003) in Erie, Pennsylvania. Shortly before this marriage, Arbuckle signed a contract with Jack Warner to star in six two-reel Vitaphone short comedies under his own name.

The six Vitaphone shorts, filmed in Brooklyn, constitute the only recordings of his voice. Silent-film comedian Al St. John (Arbuckle's nephew) and actors Lionel Stander and Shemp Howard (one of the "Three Stooges") appeared with Arbuckle. The films were very successful in America, although when Warner Brothers attempted to release the first one ("Hey, Pop!") in the UK, the British film board cited the 10-year-old scandal and refused to grant an exhibition certificate.

Roscoe Arbuckle had finished filming the last of the two-reelers on June 28, 1933; the next day he was signed by Warner Brothers to make a feature-length film. At last, Arbuckle's professional reputation was restored, and he was welcomed back into the world he loved. He reportedly said, "This is the best day of my life." The exhilaration may have been too much for him: he died that night of congestive heart failure. He was 46. He was cremated and his ashes scattered in the Pacific Ocean.

William Goodrich pseudonym

According to author David Yallop in The Day the Laughter Stopped (a biography of Arbuckle with special attention to the scandal and its aftermath), Arbuckle's father's full name was William Goodrich Arbuckle. A persistent but unsupported legend credited Keaton, an inveterate punster, with suggesting that Arbuckle become a director under the alias "Will B. Good." The pun being too obvious, Arbuckle adopted the more formal pseudonym "William Goodrich".

Yallop's book also states that Roscoe Arbuckle was extremely large and heavy even at birth and that William Goodrich Arbuckle did not believe the child was his own offspring; this disbelief led him to name the child after a politician whom he despised: Roscoe Conkling - A Republican Senator from New York.

Legacy

Many of Arbuckle's films, including the feature Life of the Party, survive only as worn prints with foreign-language inter-titles. Little or no effort was made to preserve original negatives and prints during Hollywood's first two decades. By the early 21st century some of Arbuckle's short subjects (particularly those co-starring Chaplin or Keaton) had been restored, released on DVD and even screened theatrically. Arbuckle's early influence on American slapstick comedy is widely cited.

Director Kevin Connor will helm the Roscoe Arbuckle feature film, The Life of the Party, as reported by the website Dark Horizons. Preston Lacy will portray Arbuckle and Chris Kattan will play Buster Keaton.

The 1975 James Ivory film The Wild Party has been repeatedly but incorrectly cited as a film dramatization of the Arbuckle/Rappe scandal. In fact it is loosely based on the 1920s poem by Joseph Moncure March. In this film, James Coco portrays a heavy-set silent-film comedian named Jolly Grimm whose career is on the skids, but who is desperately planning a comeback. Raquel Welch portrays his mistress, who ultimately goads him into shooting her. This film may have been inspired by misconceptions surrounding the Arbuckle scandal, yet it bears almost no resemblance to the documented facts of the case.

In April and May of 2006, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City exhibited most of the surviving Arbuckle films.

Filmography

  • The Gangsters. 1913. Approx. 10 min.
  • Fatty's New Role. 1915. Approx. 10 min.
  • The Waiter's Ball. 1916. With Al St. John. Approx. 20 min.
  • A Noise from the Deep. 1913. With Mabel Normand. Approx. 10 min.
  • Mabel's New Hero. 1913. With Mabel Normand. Approx. 10 min.
  • His Sister's Kids. 1913. With Minta Durfee. Approx. 10 min.
  • A Flirt's Mistake. 1914. With Edgar Kennedy. Approx.10 min.
  • A Bath House Beauty. 1914. With Minta Durfee. Approx. 10 min.
  • Those Country Kids. 1914. With Mabel Normand. Approx. 10 min.
  • The Rounders. 1914. With Charles Chaplin. Approx. 10 min.
  • Lover's Luck. 1914. With Minta Durfee. Approx. 10 min.
  • Fatty's Jonah Day. 1914. With Norma Nichols. Approx. 10 min.
  • Mabel and Fatty's Simple Life (Fatty and Mabel's Simple Life). 1915. With Mabel Normand. Approx. 20 min.
  • Wished on Mabel. 1915. With Mabel Normand. Approx. 10 min.
  • Mabel and Fatty's Married Life (Fatty and Mabel's Married Life). 1915. With Mabel Normand. Approx. 10 min.
  • Miss Fatty's Seaside Lovers. 1915. With Harold Lloyd. Approx. 10 min.
  • Fatty's Tintype Tangle. 1915. With Louise Fazenda, Edgar Kennedy. Approx. 20 min.
  • Fatty's Reckless Fling. 1915. Approx. 10 min.
  • Fatty's Faithful Fido. 1915. With Luke the dog. Approx. 10 min.
  • That Little Band of Gold. 1915. With Mabel Normand, Ford Sterling. Approx. 20 min.
  • He Did and He Didn't. 1916. With Mabel Normand. Approx. 20 min.
  • Fatty and Mabel Adrift. 1916. With Mabel Normand. Approx. 30 min.
  • His Wife's Mistake. 1916. With Minta Durfee. Approx. 20 min.
  • A Reckless Romeo. 1917. With Al St. John. Approx. 20 min
  • The Butcher Boy. 1917. With Buster Keaton, Al St. John. (Keaton's first film) Approx. 20 min.
  • The Rough House. 1917. With Buster Keaton. Approx. 20 min.
  • His Wedding Night. 1917. With Al St. John. Approx. 20 min.
  • Coney Island. 1917. With Buster Keaton, Al St. John. Approx. 20 min.
  • Out West. 1918. With Buster Keaton, Al St. John. Approx. 20 min.
  • Moonshine. 1918. With Buster Keaton, Al St. John. Approx. 20 min.
  • Scraps of Paper. 1918. With Al St. John. Approx. 5 min.
  • Good Night, Nurse. 1918. With Buster Keaton, Al St. John. Approx. 20 min.
  • The Cook. 1918. With Buster Keaton, Al St. John. Approx. 20 min.
  • The Hayseed. 1919. With Buster Keaton, Jack Coogan, Sr. Approx. 20 min.
  • The Round-Up. 1920. With Tom Forman, Jean Acker, Wallace Beery. Approx. 70 min.
  • Camping Out. 1919. With Al St. John. Approx. 20 min.
  • Love. 1919. With Al St. John. Approx. 20 min.
  • The Life of the Party. 1920. With Viora Daniel, Roscoe Karns. Approx. 50 min.
DIRECTED BY ROSCOE ARBUCKLE AS "WILLIAM GOODRICH"
  • Special Delivery. 1922. With St. John, Vernon Dent. Approx. 20 min.
  • No Loafing. 1923. With Poodles Hanneford, Joe Roberts. (a surviving fragment of a two-reel short) Approx. 8 min.
  • Stupid But Brave. 1924. With Al St. John, George Davis. Approx. 20 min.
  • The Movies. 1925. With Lloyd Hamilton. Approx. 20 min.
  • Curses. 1925. With Al St. John, Bartine Burkett. Approx. 20 min.
  • The Iron Mule. 1925. With Al St. John. Approx. 20 min.
  • Dynamite Doggie. 1925. With Al St. John, Pete the pup. Approx. 20 min.
  • His Private Life. 1926. With Lupino Lane, George Davis. Approx. 20 min.
  • Home Cured. 1926. With Johnny Arthur, Virginia Vance. Approx. 20 min.
  • Fool's Luck. 1926. With Lupino Lane, George Davis. Approx. 20 min.
  • My Stars. 1926. With Johnny Arthur, Virginia Vance. Approx. 20 min.
  • Special Delivery. 1927. With Eddie Cantor, Jobyna Ralston, William Powell. Approx. 60 min.
  • Bridge Wives. 1932. With Al St. John, Fern Emmett. Approx. 10 min.
THE VITAPHONE SHORTS, STARRING ROSCOE ARBUCKLE
  • Hey, Pop! 1932. With Billy Hayes. Approx. 20 min.
  • Close Relations. 1933. With Charles Judels, Harry Shannon, Shemp Howard. Approx. 20 min.
  • Buzzin' Around. 1933. With Al St. John, Pete the Pup. Approx. 20 min.
  • How've You Bean? 1933. With Fritz Hubert. Approx. 20 min.
  • In the Dough. 1933. With Lionel Stander, Shemp Howard. Approx. 20 min.
  • Tomalio. 1933. With Charles Judels. Approx. 20 min.

Cultural references

  • In April and May of 2006, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City mounted a 56-film, month-long retrospective of Arbuckle's surviving work, running the entire series twice. Highlights included The Rounders (1914) with Charles Chaplin and Fatty and Mabel's Simple Life (1915) with Mabel Normand.
  • In the novel Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson, after his attorney kidnaps a girl and asserts that he "was only trying to help her," Raoul Duke responds, "That's what Fatty Arbuckle said, and look what they did to him."
  • In 'Death to Smoochy' the Robin Williams character says "Welcome to Fatty Arbuckle land" as he's trying to create a scandalous situation.
  • In an episode of the animated series Family Guy, the character Peter Griffin receives the news that a suspected breast tumor is benign: "Peter, good news! You don't have cancer. It was just a fatty corpuscle." "Now, wait a minute! How can a dead comedian from the silent movie era be lodged in my left bosom?"
  • In an episode of the animated series The Simpsons, the character Krusty The Clown notices an ad for stamps in the post office featuring Fatty and says "What's Fatty Arbuckle done that I haven't?"
  • A bar in Shreveport, Louisiana is named Fatty Arbuckle in his honor.
  • In an Episode of Robot Chicken, the name Fatty Arbuckle was mentioned in a skit on the show where the TV host was talking about Arbuckle's death. He then follows up with a cursing fit towards Arbuckle.
  • Fatty Arbuckle is the subject of a fiction novel entitled I, Fatty by author Jerry Stahl

See also

  • I, Fatty, a fictional account of the actor's life and career written by Jerry Stahl

Further reading

  • Edmonds, Andy (January 1991). Frame-Up!: The Untold Story of Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle. New York, NY: William Morrow & Company. < ISBN:0688091296 >.
  • Yallop, David (August 1991). The Day the Laughter Stopped. London: Transworld Publishers. < ISBN:055213452X >.
  • Oderman, Stuart (July 2005). Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle: A Biography Of The Silent Film Comedian, 1887-1933. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company. < ISBN:0786422777 >
  • Neibaur, James L. (December 2006). Arbuckle and Keaton: Their 14 Film Collaborations. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company. < ISBN:0786428317 >.

Selected coverage in The New York Times

  • New York Times; September 12, 1921; pg. 1. "San Francisco, California; September 11, 1921. "Roscoe ("Fatty") Arbuckle was arrested late last night on a charge of murder as a result of the death of Virginia Rappe, film actress, after a party in Arbuckle's rooms at the Hotel St. Francis. Arbuckle is still in jail tonight despite efforts by his lawyers to find some way to obtain his liberty."
  • New York Times; September 13, 1921; pg. 1. "San Francisco, California; September 12, 1921. "The Grand Jury met tonight at 7:30 o'clock to hear the testimony of witnesses rounded up by Matthew Brady (District Attorney of San Francisco) to support his demand for the indictment of Roscoe ("Fatty") Arbuckle for the murder of Miss Virginia Rappe."

References

External links

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