Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle-the Real Story

I'm heading to San Francisco this week and it's had me thinking about the infamous Fatty Arbuckle and all the stories I've heard through the years. I realized I don't know much of the real story, or what's left of it after nearly 75 years, and I thought I'd do some reading. I didn't realize how much he influenced Hollywood in those early years. Maybe you didn't either. So, here's some of the real facts.

Mack Sennett recalled meeeting him: "A tremendous man skipped up the steps as lightly as Fred Astaire. He was tremendous, obese --- just plain fat. 'Name's Arbuckle,' he said, 'Roscoe Arbuckle. Call me Fatty! I'm with a stock company. I'm a funnyman and an acrobat. But I could do good in pictures. Watcha think?' With no warning he went into a featherlight step, clapped his hands, and did a backward somersault as graceful as a girl tumbler."

By 1921 Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle was one of the highest paid actor/directors in the motion picture business. But on September 5 of that year, during a weekend party he was throwing at the Saint Francis Hotel in San Francisco, everything changed. Virginia Rappe (Rap-pay), a girl attending the party, ran screaming from a bedroom, took sick and died four days later.

On September 17 Roscoe Arbuckle was arraigned in San Francisco charged with the rape and murder of Virginia Rappe. The legendary producer, Adolph Zukor (who footed the legal bill) tried to bring in the great trial lawyer, Earl Rogers, father of Adela, but Rogers was in ill health and couldn't take the case.

Adela remembered her father speaking to her about Fatty's plight, "They will make it very tough on him, because of his weight. A man of that enormous fatness being charged with the rape of a young girl will prejudice them, even just the thought of it."
The ambitious Mr. Brady had a very helpful ally in William Randolph Hearst --- the undisputed champion of yellow journalism.

Hearst crucified Arbuckle for another reason --- circulation ... Hearst was gratified by the Arbuckle scandal; he said later that it had "sold more newspapers than any event since the sinking of the Lusitania."

The ugliest twist, one many people are unaware of, is that Arbuckle was completely innocent. He was set up by a venal woman named Maude Delmont, known as "Madame Black." Delmont would provide girls for parties and then have the girl claim she was raped by a prominent director or producer. Concerned about his career, the victim would submit to Delmont's request for money to keep the story out of the press. When Rappe died a few days after the party, from a condition unrelated to the events at the St. Francis Hotel, Delmont gave Fatty Arbuckle's name to the police.

After two trials resulted in hung juries, Fatty was acquitted at the third, with a written apology from the jury --- an apology unprecedented in American justice.

"Acquittal is not enough for Roscoe Arbuckle [they wrote]. We feel that a great injustice has been done him ... there was not the slightest proof adduced to connect him in any way with the commission of a crime. He was manly throughout the case and told a straightforward story which we all believe. We wish him success and hope that the American people will take the judgement of fourteen men and women that Roscoe Arbuckle is entirely innocent and free from all blame."

It was, of course, too little too late. Will Hays, the ex-Postmaster General, had been installed as a kind of overlord-Pope charged with cleaning up the movies for America. Roscoe Arbuckle's career was decimated. The funnyman who'd done handsprings down the steps to introduce himself to Mack Sennet; the fat man who'd two years earlier signed a contract with Adolph Zukor for the astronomical sum of one million dollars a year; the director who'd acted as mentor to his friend Buster Keaton, would never rise again. A scandal fueled entirely by innuendo had been hideously successful. Fatty's time was past.

Arbuckle worked as a director, under another name, on several films after the trials. Keaton suggested he use the name Will B. Good, he did ... almost. Louise Brooks told Kevin Brownilow about working with Arbuckle at that time.

He was working under the name William Goodrich. He made no attempt to direct this picture. He sat in his chair like a dead man. He had been very nice and sweetly dead since that scandal had ruined his career. It was such an amazing thing for me to come in to make this picture and to find my director was the great Roscoe Arbuckle. Oh, I thought he was magnificent in films. He was a wonderful dancer --- a wonderful ballroom dancer, in his heyday. It was like floating in the arms of a huge doughnut --- really delightful.

Though Arbuckle had begun a come-back and had signed with Warner Brothers in 1933 to act in some comedy shorts, he was never to see his popularity regained. After a small one-year anniversary party with his new wife on June 29, 1933, Arbuckle went to bed and suffered a fatal heart attack in his sleep. He was 46.

In the short history of the motion picture, Fatty Arbuckle is of central importance. His coat and hat were borrowed by a young Charlie Chaplin to create a character that became an American icon. He was a very close friend of Buster Keaton's and is credited with singlehandedly sheparding Keaton's early film career. That Arbuckle is usually conceived as a minor figure stands as testament to the power of the vendetta directed at him.


Thanks is due Kevin Brownilow, author of "Hollywood: The Pioneers" and "The Parade's Gone By."