Roscoe Arbuckle

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Roscoe Conkling "Fatty" Arbuckle, reading a newspaper
Born March 24, 1887
Smith Center, Kansas, USA
Died June 29, 1933
New York, New York, USA

Roscoe Conkling Arbuckle aka Fatty Arbuckle (March 24, 1887 – June 29, 1933) was an American silent film comedian. 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 halted his screen 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.

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[edit] 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 Kops comedies.

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.

[edit] Screen comedian

Despite his size Arbuckle was physically adept and agile. 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 cliché that has come to signify silent film comedy in general. 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. While Normand is said to have thrown the first pie onscreen, 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.[citation needed]

Arbuckle disliked his screen nickname, which he had been given because of his substantial girth. However, the name Fatty identifies the character Arbuckle portrayed onscreen (usually a naive hayseed), not Arbuckle himself. When Arbuckle portrayed a biological 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" offscreen.

[edit] 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.

[edit] Scandal

Roscoe Conkling Arbuckle (1887-1933)
Roscoe Conkling Arbuckle (1887-1933)

At the height of his career, Arbuckle was under contract to Paramount Studios for $1 million a year, the first such documented salary 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, movie directors Lowell Sherman and 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 30-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 Arbuckle had pierced Rappe's bladder while raping her. Arbuckle was confident he had nothing to be ashamed of and denied any wrongdoing. Delmont later made a statement to the police in an attempt to get money from Arbuckle's attorneys, and 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 to make Arbuckle appear guilty. The resulting scandal destroyed his career and his personal life. Morality groups called for Arbuckle to be sentenced to death and studio executives ordered Arbuckle's industry friends not to 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.

After two trials resulted in hung juries the third ended in an acquittal and a written apology from the jury.

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) 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 to calls for reform of the "indecency" being "promoted" by motion pictures and resulted in the Production Code, which set standards for behavior depicted in Hollywood films.

The Hays Office banned all of Arbuckle's films, although Will H. Hays later acknowledged that Arbuckle could be allowed to work in Hollywood. Ironically one of the few Arbuckle feature-length films known to survive is Leap Year, one of two finished films Paramount held from release during the scandal. It was eventually released in Europe but was never theatrically released in the United States or Britain.

[edit] 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 the ban on his pictures lingered after his acquittal and 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 featuring lesser-known comics of the day. He is said to have helped Bob Hope early in his career with an important 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 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.

[edit] William Goodrich pseudonym

According to author David Yallop, 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".

[edit] 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 long-awaited Roscoe Arbuckle feature film, THE LIFE OF THE PARTY, as reported by the website Dark Horizons. The biopic will be produced by Doug Peterson and Victor Bardack, and shooting is scheduled for Fall 2007.

The 1975 James Ivory film The Wild Party has been repeatedly but incorrectly cited as a film dramatization of the Arbuckle/Rappe scandal. 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.

[edit] Cultural references

  • The jazz combo Keystone, lead by Dave Douglas and named in honor of the famous films of Mack Sennett, screens silent films (Arbuckle's in particular) accompanied by live performances of new music. In April 2006 they appeared at Carnegie Hall.

[edit] Media

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

[edit] Further reading

  • David A. Yallop: "The Day the Laughter Stopped" ISBN 0-340-16901-X
  • Andy Edmonds: "Frame-Up!", William Morrow and Company, Inc., New York, NY, 1991
  • James L. Neibaur: Arbuckle and Keaton: Their 14 Film Collaborations. McFarland and Co. Jefferson, NC, 2006

[edit] 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.
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