thumb|upright|Fatty Arbuckle ad from [[The Film Daily, 1932]]
Roscoe Conkling "Fatty" Arbuckle (; March 24, 1887 – June 29, 1933) was an American silent film actor, director, and screenwriter. He started at the Selig Polyscope Company and eventually moved to Keystone Studios, where he worked with Mabel Normand and Harold Lloyd as well as with his nephew, Al St. John. He also mentored Charlie Chaplin, Monty Banks and Bob Hope, and brought vaudeville star Buster Keaton into the movie business. Arbuckle was one of the most popular silent stars of the 1910s and one of the highest-paid actors in Hollywood, signing a contract in 1920 with Paramount Pictures for $1 million a year (equivalent to $ million in ).
Arbuckle was the defendant in three widely publicized trials between November 1921 and April 1922 for the rape and manslaughter of Virginia Rappe. Rappe had fallen ill at a party hosted by Arbuckle at San Francisco's St. Francis Hotel in September 1921, and died four days later. A friend of Rappe accused Arbuckle of raping and accidentally killing her. The first two trials resulted in hung juries, but the third trial acquitted Arbuckle. The third jury took the unusual step of giving Arbuckle a written statement of apology for his treatment by the justice system.
Despite Arbuckle's acquittal, the scandal has mostly overshadowed his legacy as a pioneering comedian. At the behest of Adolph Zukor, president of Famous Players–Lasky, his films were banned by motion picture industry censor Will H. Hays after the trial, and he was publicly ostracized. Zukor was faced with the moral outrage of various groups such as the Lord's Day Alliance, the powerful Federation of Women's Clubs and even the Federal Trade Commission to curb what they perceived as Hollywood debauchery run amok and its effect on the morals of the general public. While Arbuckle saw a resurgence in his popularity immediately after his acquittal, Zukor decided he had to be sacrificed to keep the movie industry out of the clutches of censors and moralists. Hays lifted the ban within a year, but Arbuckle only worked sparingly through the 1920s. In their deal, Keaton promised to give him 35% of the Buster Keaton Comedies Co. profits. He later worked as a film director under the pseudonym William Goodrich. He was finally able to return to acting, making short two-reel comedies in 1932–33 for Warner Bros.
Arbuckle died in his sleep of a heart attack in 1933 at age 46, reportedly on the day that he signed a contract with Warner Bros. to make a feature film.
Early life
thumb|upright|Arbuckle with his and [[Minta Durfee's dog Luke, ]]
thumb|upright|Hand-tinted photograph of Arbuckle,
Roscoe Arbuckle was born on March 24, 1887, in Smith Center, Kansas, one of nine children of Mary E. Gordon and William Goodrich Arbuckle. He weighed in excess of at birth and his father believed that he was illegitimate, as both parents had slim builds. Consequently, he named him after Senator Roscoe Conkling of New York, a notorious philanderer whom he despised. The birth was traumatic for Mary and resulted in chronic health problems that contributed to her death eleven years later.
Arbuckle was nearly two when his family moved to Santa Ana, California. He first performed on stage with Frank Bacon's company at age 8 during their performance in Santa Ana. and now refused to support him, so he got work doing odd jobs in a hotel. He was in the habit of singing while he worked, and a professional singer heard him and invited him to perform in an amateur talent show. The show consisted of the audience judging acts by clapping or jeering, with bad acts pulled off the stage by a shepherd's crook. Arbuckle sang, danced, and did some clowning around, but he did not impress the audience. He saw the crook emerging from the wings and somersaulted into the orchestra pit in obvious panic. The audience went wild, and he won the competition and began a career in vaudeville. He then joined the Pantages Theatre Group touring the West Coast and in 1906 played the Orpheum Theater in Portland, Oregon, in a vaudeville troupe organized by Leon Errol. Arbuckle became the main act and the group took their show on tour.
On August 6, 1908, Arbuckle married Minta Durfee (1889–1975), the daughter of Charles Warren Durfee and Flora Adkins. Durfee starred in many early comedy films, often with Arbuckle. As a couple, they appeared mismatched, as Minta was short and petite while Arbuckle weighed approximately 300 lbs (136 kg).
Arbuckle began his film career with the Selig Polyscope Company in July 1909 when he appeared in Ben's Kid. He 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. Although his large size was undoubtedly part of his comedic appeal, Arbuckle was self-conscious about his weight and refused to use it to get "cheap" laughs like getting stuck in a doorway or chair.
Arbuckle was a talented singer. After famed operatic tenor 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."
Screen comedian
thumb|Arbuckle's nephew [[Al St. John (right) with Buster Keaton and Arbuckle in Out West (1918)]]
thumb|upright|Ad for [[The Hayseed (1919) with Arbuckle holding his dog Luke]]
Despite his 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 that he "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 "pie in the face", a comedy cliché that has come to symbolize silent-film-era comedy itself. The earliest known pie thrown in film was in the June 1913 Keystone one-reeler A Noise from the Deep, starring Arbuckle and frequent screen partner Mabel Normand.
In 1914, Paramount Pictures made the then unheard-of offer of US$1,000 a day plus twenty-five percent of all profits and complete artistic control to make movies with Arbuckle and Normand. The movies were so lucrative and popular that in 1918 they offered Arbuckle a three-year, $3 million contract (equivalent to $ million in ).
By 1916, Arbuckle was experiencing serious health problems. An infection that developed on his leg became a carbuncle so severe that doctors considered amputation. Although Arbuckle was able to keep his leg, he was prescribed morphine against the pain; he would later be accused of being addicted to it. Following his recovery, Arbuckle started his own film company, Comique, in partnership with Joseph Schenck. Although Comique produced some of the best short pictures of the silent era, Arbuckle transferred his controlling interest in the company to Buster Keaton in 1918 and accepted Paramount's $3 million offer to make up to 18 feature films over three years.
Scandal
On Monday, September 5, 1921 (Labor Day), Arbuckle took a break from his hectic film schedule and, despite suffering second-degree burns to both buttocks from an on-set accident, drove to San Francisco with two friends, Lowell Sherman and Fred Fishback. The three checked into three rooms at the St. Francis Hotel: 1219 for Arbuckle and Fishback to share, 1221 for Sherman, and 1220 designated as a party room. Several women were invited to the suite. During the carousing, a 30-year-old aspiring actress named Virginia Rappe was found seriously ill in room 1219 and was examined by the hotel doctor, who concluded that her symptoms were mostly caused by intoxication and administered morphine to calm her. Rappe was not hospitalized until two days after the incident. Rappe suffered from chronic urinary tract infections, a condition that liquor can irritate dramatically.
The day after Rappe's death, Arbuckle was arrested and arraigned on charges of murder and held without bail. A grand jury also indicted him on manslaughter of the first degree on September 13, 1921.
Delmont told police that Arbuckle had raped Rappe. The police concluded that the impact of Arbuckle's overweight body on top of Rappe caused her bladder to rupture. By the time that the story was reported in newspapers, the object had evolved into a Coca-Cola or champagne bottle rather than a piece of ice. In fact, witnesses testified that Arbuckle rubbed the ice on Rappe's stomach to ease her abdominal pain. Arbuckle denied any wrongdoing. Delmont later admitted to plotting to extort money from him.
thumb|Fatty's Chance Acquaintance (1915), with [[intertitles in Dutch. Runtime 00:14:39.]]
thumb|[[Winifred Westover with Fatty Arbuckle in 1919 film poster for Love]]
Arbuckle was regarded by those who knew him closely as a good-natured man who was shy around women, and he had been described as "the most chaste man in pictures." Buster Keaton issued a public statement in support of Arbuckle that resulted in a mild reprimand from Keaton's studio. Actor William S. Hart, who had never met or worked with Arbuckle, issued a number of damaging public statements presuming Arbuckle's guilt. Arbuckle later wrote a premise for a film parodying Hart as a thief, bully and wifebeater. Keaton purchased the premise, and the resulting film, The Frozen North, was released in 1922, almost a year after the scandal first emerged. Keaton cowrote, directed and starred in the film, and Hart refused to speak to Keaton for many years afterward.
The prosecutor, San Francisco district attorney Matthew Brady, an intensely ambitious man who planned to run for governor, made public pronouncements of Arbuckle's guilt and pressured witnesses to make false statements. Brady at first featured Delmont as his star witness during the indictment hearing. about $ in today's dollars.
Trials
Arbuckle's trial was a major media event. The story was fueled by yellow journalism, with many newspapers portraying Arbuckle as a gross lecher who used his weight to overpower innocent girls. William Randolph Hearst's nationwide newspaper chain exploited the situation with exaggerated and sensationalized stories. Hearst was gratified by the profits that he accrued during the Arbuckle scandal, and he allegedly said that it had "sold more newspapers [...] than when the Lusitania went down." Morality groups called for Arbuckle to be sentenced to death.
First trial
thumb|Arbuckle and his defense lawyers at the first trial, November 1921
The trial began on November 14, 1921 in the San Francisco city courthouse. At the beginning of the trial, Arbuckle told his estranged wife Minta Durfee that he had not harmed Rappe. Durfee believed him and appeared regularly in the courtroom to support him. Public feeling was so negative that shots were fired at Durfee as she entered the courthouse. and he expressed surprise that she was not challenged during the voir dire process. Some of the jurors revealed that they believed Arbuckle to be guilty, but not beyond a reasonable doubt. During the deliberations, some jurors joined Hubbard in voting to convict, but all but one eventually changed their vote. Researcher Joan Myers suggests that Arbuckle's defense team targeted Hubbard as a villain because there had been a great deal of media attention on women serving in juries, a practice that had been legalized only four years earlier. Myers also records Hubbard's account of the jury foreman's attempts to pressure her to change her vote. While Hubbard offered explanations on her vote whenever challenged, Thomas Kilkenny, the other juror who voted guilty, remained silent and quickly faded from the media spotlight after the trial ended.
Second trial
The second trial began on January 11, 1922 with a new jury but with the same legal defense, prosecution and presiding judge as those of the previous trial. The same evidence was presented, but this time, witness Zey Prevon testified that Brady had forced her to lie. Another witness who testified during the first trial, a former studio security guard named Jesse Norgard, testified that Arbuckle had once offered him a cash bribe in exchange for the key to Rappe's dressing room but that Norgard refused. Norgard claimed that Arbuckle stated that he wanted the key to play a joke on Rappe. During cross-examination, Norgard's testimony was impugned when he was revealed to be an ex-convict under indictment for sexually assaulting an eight-year-old girl, and was seeking a sentence reduction from Brady in exchange for his testimony. In contrast to the first trial, Rappe's history of promiscuity and heavy drinking was detailed. The second trial also discredited some major evidence such as the identification of Arbuckle's fingerprints on the hotel bedroom door. Heinrich disowned his testimony from the first trial and stated that the fingerprint evidence was likely faked. The defense was so confident that Arbuckle would be acquitted that they did not call him to testify, and McNab did not deliver a closing argument to the jury. However, some jurors interpreted the refusal to permit Arbuckle to testify as a sign of guilt. After five days and more than 40 hours of deliberation, the jury returned on February 3, deadlocked with a 10–2 majority in favor of conviction, resulting in another mistrial.
Rappe's film colleagues said that her doctor forbade her to drink alcohol after multiple abortions left her scarred and weak. Because alcohol was consumed at the party, Arbuckle pleaded guilty to one count of violating the Volstead Act and was ordered to pay a $500 fine (). At the time of his acquittal, he owed more than $700,000 (equivalent to $ million in ) in legal fees to his attorneys for the three criminal trials, and he was forced to sell his house and all of his cars to pay some of the debt. far away from the scandalmongers in America, and recouped at least part of their production costs. In March 1922, with Arbuckle's films banned, Buster Keaton signed an agreement to award Arbuckle 35% of all future profits from his production company Buster Keaton Comedies, hoping to ease Arbuckle's financial situation. The divorce was granted the following January. They had been amicably separated since 1921. After a brief reconciliation, Durfee again filed for divorce in December 1924. Arbuckle married Doris Deane on May 16, 1925.
Arbuckle tried returning to filmmaking, but industry resistance to distributing his films continued to linger 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". Keaton attempted to help Arbuckle by employing him for his films. Arbuckle wrote the story for a Keaton short titled Day Dreams (1922) and allegedly directed scenes in Keaton's Sherlock Jr. (1924), but it is unclear how much of Arbuckle's footage remained in the film's final cut. In 1925, Carter DeHaven's short Character Studies, filmed before the scandal, was released, featuring Arbuckle along with Keaton, Harold Lloyd, Rudolph Valentino, Douglas Fairbanks and Jackie Coogan. The same year in Photoplays August issue, James R. Quirk wrote: "I would like to see Roscoe Arbuckle make a comeback to the screen. ... The American nation prides itself upon its spirit of fair play. We like the whole world to look upon America as the place where every man gets a square deal. Are you sure Roscoe Arbuckle is getting one today? I'm not."
Pseudonym
Eventually, Arbuckle worked as a director under the pseudonym of William Goodrich, his father's first and middle name. Keaton, a frequent punster, later claimed that the name was derived from the satirical alias "Will B. Good".
Between 1924 and 1932, Arbuckle directed a number of comedy shorts under the pseudonym for Educational Pictures that featured lesser-known comics of the day. Louise Brooks, who played the ingenue in Windy Riley Goes Hollywood (1931), told of her experiences working with Arbuckle: