The Early Years of Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle (1971) 🇺🇸
Almost 35 years have passed since Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle died quietly in his sleep, ending one of the most controversial careers in the history of show business. Except for a small cult of dedicated fans, the comedian is mainly remembered for a tragedy that occurred in a San Francisco hotel room over the 1921 Labor Day weekend.
by Frank Taylor
A young actress died, and charges were brought against Arbuckle that resulted in three sensational trials, an acquittal and a boycott of Arbuckle movies throughout America. Yet, there is another side to the life and times of Roscoe Arbuckle — one that time has dimmed.
Arbuckle was a man of amazing physical prowess, a natural athlete whose coordination and agility was not dampened by his immense size of 265-pounds, a weight he maintained most of his adult life. “Roscoe weighed 15-pounds,” his widow, Minta Durfee Arbuckle remembers, “when he was born.”
His old pie tossing mentor in Keystone films. Mack Sennett, described Arbuckle as ambidextrous, positively deadly accurate with either hand when it came to tossing custard pies. Looking back on Arbuckle, one is amazed to discover he had been on the stage more than 13 years when he was signed for his first film screen role in 1913 by Sennett.
The Comedian’s Early Years
Except for Chaplin, no other silent movie comic achieved his degree of popularity as a comedian. A generous man, Arbuckle insisted on sharing his success with others, often going to bat for hopeful actors who wanted to break into films. Buster Keaton was introduced to Mack Sennett by Arbuckle and much later, while doing the night club circuit in Cleveland, Ohio, he encouraged a stand-up comedian named Bob Hope to see his agent in Hollywood and gave the young man letters of recommendation as well.
Almost any hard luck story was good for $10, and frequently more. If an old friend was hard up, Arbuckle would hand him a bank roll big enough to choke a horse as a matter of course. Money seemed to be easy for him to earn, and it slipped through his fingers like water.
He probably would have enjoyed a fairly comfortable retirement, if his trial hadn’t been so costly, but it has been estimated more than $700,000 was spent, mostly by Paramount, to help the star-crossed actor. For the next decade, Arbuckle took whatever work was offered from night clubs to film direction, and managed to pay off his enormous debts.
Friends like Buster Keaton would have gladly supported him during these trying years, but Arbuckle shunned a handout. The man who had given them so freely, couldn’t accept charity — no matter how well intentioned.
When it became obvious he would never regain his status as a film comedian, Arbuckle was given a job on a Keaton film as a director under the name William Goodrich, his mother’s maiden name. Before completion of the picture, (“Sherlock Jr,”) Keaton arranged for Arbuckle to accept a job as director on the Marion Davies picture, “The Red Mill.”
This assignment was a direct slap in the face of William Randolph Hearst, whose San Francisco Examiner had crucified Arbuckle during his scandal trials. Arbuckle’s friend and backer, Joseph Schenck [Joseph M. Schenck], laughed when he heard Hearst was paying Arbuckle to direct a Hearst-owned movie.
Arbuckle also helped the career of Charlie Chaplin along, while both men were members of the Keystone troupe. Chaplin was hired as a last ditch replacement for Ford Sterling, the Keystone companies’ biggest star. In his films however, the actor was miscast in silents, and the czar of Keystone, Mack Sennett was unable to find out what was wrong.
As Chester Conklin, another mainstay of the studio remembers, it was a rainy day that launched the little comedian into immortality as a screen comic. The cast and crew including Arbuckle and Chaplin were working on Mabel’s Strange Predicament, when the clouds opened, drenching everyone.
Going to Roscoe Arbuckle’s dressing room, Sterling, Arbuckle and Conklin started a game of pinochle. Chaplin also shared the dressing room, and while the game was in progress, he came in. Things at Keystone had been going badly for Chaplin, and the comedian knew it. The overcast day only added to his gloom.
To cheer himself up, Chaplin put a pair of Arbuckle’s pants on and started to clown around. The pants were like a circus tent on the thin Englishman, and even the hardened clowns had to laugh. Fumbling around in the trousers, Chaplin spread his legs to hold the pants up, and turned his feet out. The effect was electric.
Taking a crepe hairpiece, Chaplin trimmed it, and placed it under his nose. Picking up a slim cane, he continued the search for laughs. Conklin never forgot the scene and the others sensed that something good was transforming an ineffectual comedian into a professional screen star. No one guessed how big a star, Chaplin was to become — eclipsing everyone at Keystone within five years.
Chaplin came close to film obscurity that day, as Keystone was about to terminate his contract, feeling he couldn’t excite audiences to laughter, at least in their slapstick format. The next picture Chaplin made, “Kid Auto Races in Venice” had the tramp costume that was to become a world-wide legend.
Arbuckle and Chaplin were in several films together, as was Chester Conklin. The last picture Ford Sterling did for Keystone was “Tango Tangles,” and it had an all star cast. Chaplin, Conklin, Arbuckle, and Sterling, directed by Pathé Lehrman [Henry Lehrman], and supervised by Sennett himself. It was the end of an era.
Before 1913 and Arbuckle’s advent into motion pictures, (that was also the year Sennett thinks the custard pie was invented as a gag), the genial fat man had been on a tour of the Orient as a musical comedy star with a Gilbert and Sullivan troupe. Both he and Minta Durfee were featured performers, and had the distinction of appearing before the Royal Family in Peking, and the last Queen of Hawaii.
Arbuckle had also toured the Southwest with a group called Reed and Arbuckle, stopping in El Paso. The Mexican Revolution, led by Pancho Villa was in full force just across the border, and during a brief holiday, Arbuckle was introduced to the famed Revolutionary by some of their El Paso friends who were sympathetic to the Mexican’s cause.
Arbuckle wooed and won his wife, Minta Durfee in Long Beach, California where they were appearing in separate theatre productions. In the best theatrical traditions, the pair were married on the stage on an Ocean Front theatre.
During the next four years, the Arbuckle’s toured with many different stock companies ending with the previously mentioned grand tour of the Orient. Minta jointed Keystone shortly after her husband was hired, and replaced Mabel Normand in Chaplin’s first five films. Miss Normand had decided not to appear in the British comedians’ movies — since she thought his screen acting ability was too poor.
After winning the defaulted lead, Minta Durfee made friends with Chaplin and during the 60-plus years since then, the pair have seen each other often. Remembering her husband affectionately, Minta Durfee said recently, “He lived to make people laugh. On the stage or in the movies, it didn’t matter to him, Roscoe worked for the sound of audience applause. It was part of his being.”
Commenting on his “troubles” as she terms the 1921 scandal, Minta Durfee says simply: “My husband lived for 12 years after the San Francisco trial, but he died in that court room. He died of a broken heart, he was denied an audience by bigoted people who thought three trials to prove your innocence wasn’t enough.”
Few men of the silent era, either before the cameras or behind it gave the world so much fun — or endured so much unhappiness as Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle. The comedian who made millions laugh heard the cheers turn to catcalls and saw his professional career collapse overnight.
The world lost more than a great screen comedian, it lost a grownup boy who loved to clown and paid the price for it with obscurity and humiliation. There will never be another Roscoe. He was an American original.
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Handsome actor — Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle was handsome and charming — as this autographed photo reveals. It was taken in Long Beach about 1910.
Comedians’ career begins in Long Beach
Happy clown — Arbuckle clowns on a motorcycle on the Long Beach Strand about 1910 where he was appearing in black face at the Bentley Grand Theatre.
In New York — While visiting New York, Arbuckle and Minta pose with friends at the old Biograph Studios. From the left, first row, Minta, Mrs. Durfee, Roscoe, Marie Durfee, and the couples’ dog, “Luke.”
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Old Mexico — Roscoe and his friend, Walter Reed on the hotel steps, Cananea, Sonora, Mexico during a tour South of the Border.
Comic woman — Garbed in the attire of an Irish washer woman, a favorite skit of the times, Roscoe made his audiences roar with laughter — his heavy frame made him perfect for the part.
Tragic star — Befriended by the Arbuckle’s, Mabel Normand became one of the darlings of silent movies. She is shown here with a poster from one of her most popular films.
Minta Durfee Arbuckle — Still working in motion pictures, the silent movie stars widow looks over her scrapbooks of memories that date back to her first meeting of her husband in 1908. — Frank Taylor Photo
“Their Ups and Downs” — A Keystone Comedy feature of 1914 starring Roscoe and an unknown actress, left the comedian sitting on a pair of telephone wires — no simple feat.
Black day — Trying to strike a comic pose, Arbuckle is arrested in 1921 for the death of Virginia Rappe, in a party at a San Francisco hotel. The car is a Pierce-Arrow and cost the star $25,000. It is now part of the automobile collection of Movieworld Cars of the Stars, Buena Park.
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Florence Vidor, a classically beautiful star of the silents, made only a token appearance in husband King Vidor’s “Jack Knife Man” (1920), the mighty director’s earliest existing feature length film, recently revived for a retrospective showing at the L. A. County Museum of Art. Mrs. Vidor subsequently divorced Vidor and, after a romantic and stormy courtship, married violinist Jascha Heifetz. That marriage, too ended in divorce.
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Collection: Hollywood Studio Magazine, June 1971