The most beautiful blue eyes, mystifying, mesmerizing. The sparkle, however, dimmed greatly when this child, born into poverty, came to know the first pangs of a life filled with regrettable sadness. Always blue, always a victim at the hands of others whose animosities toward their own unhappiness ignited wrath.
Roscoe Conkling Arbuckle, of Scottish/English decent, was born on March 24, 1887, the youngest of nine children, to Mary Gordon Arbuckle and William Goodrich Arbuckle, at home in Smith Center, Kansas. William, a staunch Democrat, named his son after a Republican congressman with a bad-reputation: Roscoe Conkling. He did this because at birth, his son weighed near to sixteen pounds and since the entire family was slender, the chubby infant caused a row between his parents as William alledged his wife had had an affair and that the baby was definitely not his.
The Arbuckles lived in a sod hut on a farm in the small farming community of Smith Center, much off the map back then, and still hardly memorable other than being the town where Fatty Arbuckle was born. Roscoe once said of his hometown that "Two big things blew Smith Center, Kansas off the map, my birth and a cyclone. No one heard of the place since".
When Roscoe was a year old, his father, who was frequently absent from the family, had grown tired of farming the land, and tired of the quiet, laid-back life of the mid-west and moved the family further west, ending in Santa Ana, California, where they resided in a small hotel located at 826 - 828 North Birch Street. William and his oldest son, Arthur, ran the hotel.1
William Goodrich Arbuckle was a drinker, a drunk with a vengeful temper which he seemed to direct at Roscoe. He beat the boy relentlessly and at times would bang his head against a tree. His despising the boy caused much pain to Roscoe's mother who had been ailing since his birth. The burly infant had been too much for her small frame to bear, and Roscoe's father continually blamed young Roscoe for his mother's decline. Roscoe was devoted to his mother who, for years, had encouraged him to sing, for he possessed a beautiful tenor voice with an angelic tinge, a voice that would later prompt the great opera star, Enrico Caruso, to comment to Roscoe that if he would "give up his silly antics he could become the second greatest tenor in the world." Remembrances of early Christmases, when the family would sing Christmas hymns together, remained within Roscoe. His mother had been a devout Baptist and would do what she could to keep the Christmas spirit despite that the family was poor.
Roscoe first appeared on stage at age eight, with the encouragment of his mother, where his first role was as a young singer with the Webster-Brown stock company. His first real professional engagement was in 1904 where he sang for Sid Grauman at the Unique Theater in San Jose, California for $17.50 a week. In between there were odd jobs in Vaudeville and Burlesque, and having reunited at some point later on with his family, he would work as a waiter with his brothers in a restaurant his father had purchased in Santa Clara.
Mary Arbuckle would die when Roscoe was twelve which only worsened the rift between him and his father. After Mary's death William Arbuckle wanted very little to do with his son who had to travel and find work enough to support himself. According to author, Stuart Oderman, Roscoe "traveled to the hotel where his father and older brother worked, only to find them gone. The hotel was under new management, and the Arbuckles had left a week earlier. The hotel staff took pity on Roscoe, feeding him and letting him stay in a tiny closet that had been converted into an ersatz bedroom. After a few days, Roscoe accepted the fact that his father was not coming back to get him. He began doing odd jobs around the hotel in exchange for his room and board, and he never forgot or forgave his father for what he saw as nothing less than a betrayal."
Roscoe knew lonliness all too well. While working at the hotel, doing odd jobs in exchange for his room and board, Roscoe would sing which caught the attention of the hotel musician named Pansy Jones. "Pansy soon allowed the young Arbuckle to sing for tips on quiet nights," as told by Oderman.
"According to the Vintage News, this soon led Arbuckle to enter a local talent show for amateurs. The performers were all informally judged by the amount of cheering — or heckling — they received. If a performer didn't meet the crowd's approval, the classic shepherd's crook emerged from the side of the stage and pulled them off, much to the delight of the audience. Arbuckle apparently performed a loosely organized bit where he clowned about and sang, but the audience was unimpressed, and began to boo and heckle him. When Arbuckle saw the hook coming for him, he apparently panicked. A surprisingly athletic and graceful man considering his considerable girth, Arbuckle raced away from the hook and did a perfect somersault directly into the orchestra pit. The mood of the audience shifted in that instant, and Arbuckle was a hit. Not long afterwards, he lost his job at the hotel, so he returned to the theater and lucked into an opening slot at that night's performance."
When Frank Bacon brought his stock company to Santa Ana, he had to replace a young black actor before opening the show. He saw Roscoe performing and immediately felt that the young boy could handle the job so he covered Roscoe's face in black and the rest is history.
Moving on to 1908, when Roscoe was twenty-one, he found a new job at the Byde-A-While, a theatre at the Virginia Hotel in Long Beach.2 There, he met and fell in love with a young actress named Araminta Estella Durfee, called "Minta." She would soon fall for him, too, and they married there at the Byde-A-While on 6 August 1908, with a reception at the Virginia Hotel. The couple had better ideas for their livelihood in mind and relocated to Los Angeles in June of 1909 where Roscoe moved in with Minta's family at 1419 Coronado Street.3 There, Roscoe signed a contract with Selig Polyscope Studios, making five movies for them.
Roscoe and Minta never had children, and divorced first in 1921, then remarried and divorced again in 1925. She continued to live out her years at this address. When first married, Roscoe and Minta went through many changes in terms of careers which would ultimately lead to the success of both, together and apart. In 1913 Roscoe worked in the Morosco Burbank stock company and traveled through China and Japan with Ferris Hartman. He last appeared on stage in the Mikado while with Hartman in Yokahama, Japan.
Back in Hollywood, Roscoe went to work at Mack Sennett's Keystone film studio for $40 a week. For the next 3-1/2 years he appeared in hundreds of one-reel comedies playing mostly policemen with the famed Keystone Kops. He learned the process of making movies from Henry Lehrman who directed all but two of Roscoe's pictures. Roscoe, being the gentle sould he was off screen somehow believed that Sennett never thought him funny. By 1914 Roscoe was directing some of his own one-reelers. The next year he was making two-reelers and that meant he would need to sustain his comedic roles to keep the success ongoing. Among his films with Keystone were: Fatty Again (1914), Mabel, Fatty and the Law (1915), Mabel and Fatty's Wash Day (1915), Mabel and Fatty Viewing the World's Fair at San Francisco (1915), Fatty's Reckless Fling (1915) among others.
In 1917 the Arbuckles moved temporarily to The Cumberland at 112 East 57th Street4 where they stayed in a suite of rooms while Roscoe was forming a partnership with Producer Joseph M. Schenck, the husband of Norma Talmadge. The name of their new company, Comique, became very successful. Roscoe's films were released through Famous Players on a percentage basis and his salary moved up to over $1,000 per week. With his own company in tow Roscoe now had complete creative control over his productions. It was at this time that he met, and hired, a young performer named "Buster" Keaton who had been part of a Vaudeville team with his parents. Buster would later marry Norma Talmadge's sister, Natalie. Roscoe and Buster became inseparable, with a friendship more like kinship, and they would go on to make 14 pictures together. Buster's first film with Roscoe was in 1917's "The Butcher Boy," it it was this film that brought Keaton quickly to the attention of movie-goers.
Roscoe Arbuckle wrote the stories, directed and starred in his own films. While he despised the nickname "Fatty," given to him by his former schoolmates, he found that the name helped garner his success, although, off screen, he felt offended if someone referred to him as "Fatty" instead of Roscoe, to which he would always reply: "I've got a name you know."Roscoe's success was so overwhelming that he became the highest paid entertainer of silent films with a worth of over $1,000,000.00 per annum, a huge sum for the time. His fame was extraordinary, however, following the 1921 scandal, his stardom was eventually superceded by Charlie Chaplin, whom Roscoe had mentored.
For only a brief time, Roscoe Arbuckle was on top of the world, lonely no more, impoverished no more, and living the life quite often enjoyed by Hollywood stars. His father had since remarried a woman whose name was the same as Roscoe's mother: Mary Gordon and they had other children including Clyde Arbuckle who became famous in his own right as an author and historian. Roscoe remained very close to his older sister, Nora Nell St. John, the mother of Roscoe's nephew, Al St. John, who appeared in most all of Roscoe's shorts. Nora and Al stood by Roscoe during his trials, appearing in court along with Minta and her mother, the latter had become a second mother to Roscoe over the years.
Before the fiasco of 1921, Comique studios in the Bronx had become a major success, and in 1919 Paramount now asked Roscoe to move on to full-length features, his first being The Round-up (1920), which proved a box-office success. Other features followed including Brewster's Millions (1921) and Gasoline Gus (1921), with many more already in the works. Then came the scandal that rocked Hollywood and destroyed Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle forever. It would never be forgotten, and to this day, new generations continue to either blame or defend the Hollywood legend. Though Roscoe was acquitted, his career in films ended, with Hollywood producers blacklisting him and attempting to destroy his films. The Hays Office, established to provide a code of ethics in Hollywood movies, stepped in to prevent Roscoe's films from ever being shown again in the public domain. It seemed that the beloved comedian, and the most gentle of souls, could not escape a new life filled with torment and despair.
His good friends were there to help Roscoe, who was now in deep financial debt, with funds to help procure his legal fees and other costs. Buster Keaton offered Roscoe directorial positions under a pseudonym which he chose "William Goodrich" after his father. Keaton, jesting, asked Roscoe to shorten it to "Will B. Good." Among other films he directed, Roscoe directed Eddie Cantor in Cantor's first picture, "Special Delivery" in 1927, and, ironically, directed Marion Davies in "The Red Mill," she having been the concubine of newspaper mogul, William Randolph Hearst, Arbuckle's archest enemy. It was Roscoe Arbuckle who mentored Charlie Chaplin, who discovered Buster Keaton and Bob Hope. It was Roscoe Arbuckle who was the first silent era slapstick comedian to achieve widely-acclaimed fame. His antics were the first in slapstick comedy, to be followed by many a comedian through the decades. Despite all the "firsts" achieved by Roscoe Arbuckle, he never received an Academy Award for his work, as actor or director. He did, however, eventually, receive a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame.
Roscoe was married two more times after Minta; to actress Doris Deane on 25 May 1928, and lastly to Addie McPhail, actress and dancer, on 21 June 1932 by a Justice of the Peace in Erie, Pennsylvania while on a vaudeville road tour, the latter remaining with him until his death. He and Minta remained close friends, their relationship ever deep despite two divorces. Roscoe had become difficult to live with due to his bouts of drinking and solemnity, and it was alluded to that he could not produce children, which may be another reason why two of his wives chose to move on. For awhile he was addicted to morphine, prescribed to him originally by a doctor for a severe leg infection which nearly cost him his leg. The pain was extreme, but, the rumor of addiction seems highly improbable as a few close to him claimed he had stopped taking the drug.
The image above left was part of a post card sent to Miss Edith Raymond at College of the Pacific, San Jose, Calif. It was likely taken at Camp Kearny near San Diego, Calif., home to the U.S. Army's 40th Division which is currently the Marine Corps Air Station Miramar. "Fatty Arbuckle adopted Company C of the 159th Division in March 1918; Arbuckle's friend Buster Keaton was subsequently drafted into Company C. The photo may have been taken in August, 1918 when Arbuckle and fellow Hollywood friends Al St. John and Lou Anger visited the camp after learning that the 159th had received orders to ship out to France. Keaton may be in photograph, but is unidentified."7
Roscoe was a benefactor to this unit of the 159th Infantry Division. Unfit for the draft, Roscoe was a true patriot and did his share for the war effort, specifically for the Liberty Bond drives. The photo above right shows Roscoe pasting up billboards displaying messages for the Bond Drives. He also wrote and starred in a wartime short, "Strips of Paper" an aid in bringing Canada into the war to partner with the United States and Britain.
In 1932, Hollywood was ready to forgive Roscoe Arbuckle. He received his first welcome back into the industry when producer Samuel Sax signed him to appear in a series of sound comedic short films for Warner Brothers. The first of these was "Hey, Pop!" Roscoe filmed six shorts with the magical endurance of his younger days and the shorts were a huge success. This prompted Warner Brothers to sign Roscoe to a feature film contract. However, renewed success for Roscoe was not meant to be. God had other plans for him. On 28 June 1933, Roscoe signed the contract, and later that evening he and wife, Addie, went out with friends to celebrate their first wedding anniversary and the new lease on life which Roscoe termed "the happiest day of my life." He was his old jovial self, humorous and laughing again. In the wee hours of the morning the couple returned to the Park Central Hotel in Manhattan at 55th Street and Seventh Avenue5 where they had been staying. At 2:30 am, the 29th of June, Roscoe still enjoying a good laugh, retired to bed. Addie called to him. He never woke up. At age 46, Roscoe Arbuckle was gone, having died of a heart attack as he fell asleep, and after his life was all set to turn around. Many were shocked to hear the news. Many friends and family members never got past the sudden death of one so dear to them.
The following Friday, a funeral service was held for Roscoe at the Frank E. Campbell Funeral Home (to the stars) at 1pm in the Gold Room.6 It is said that thousands of fans lined the street waiting to file past the coffin to say goodbye. The following day, a funeral service was held at the local Elk Lodge in New York City.
For over 60 years, Addie Arbuckle never let on where Roscoe was buried until, someone wrote to her and questioned her some time before her death. In keeping with his wishes, Roscoe was cremated at the Fresh Pond Crematory in New York City and his ashes returned to California, to be scattered off of Catalina Island into the Pacific. Roscoe had always loved the ocean, living by it and being in it as much as he could, and, so, desired it to become his final resting place. Addie, too, would follow suit upon her death.
Unrealized at the time, the world lost a special human being, most often misunderstood and unfairly targeted and destroyed by pure evil. He never held malice toward anyone, nor those who "killed" him. He even approached William Randolph Hearst on friendly terms to ask why the news guru had torn his life assunder.
Roscoe Arbuckle's films, today, seemingly discovered from hidden sources, are being discovered by newer generations who are, unfortunately, discovering, too, the scandal that destroyed the king who lost his crown. The record is being set straight here with the hopes that new fans will learn the truth of what really happened to Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle. Perhaps when God called him home so suddenly, and on the verge of renewed success, He had better things in store for Roscoe. Pray for his soul; that he has finally found permanent peace. God Bless you, Roscoe, may you be at peace with the Lord, dear soul.
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