Comedy Legends Codexery

Roscoe Arbuckle

Silent comedy star whose career was overshadowed by scandal.

Last updated

Roscoe Arbuckle came into the world on March 24, 1887, in Smith Center, Kansas, as one of nine children.[1]

Key facts and history

When Arbuckle was eight years old, he made his stage debut with Frank Bacon's troupe during their engagement in Santa Ana, California.[2] Arbuckle wed Minta Durfee on August 6, 1908; she later appeared alongside him in numerous early comedy films.[3] By 1916, Arbuckle faced significant health issues, including a severe leg infection so serious that doctors contemplated amputation.[4] In 1917, Arbuckle joined forces with Joseph Schenck to establish his own production company, Comique.[5]

He gave up his majority stake in Comique to Buster Keaton in 1918 and agreed to a $3 million contract with Paramount.[6] On September 5, 1921, Arbuckle traveled to San Francisco with two companions and registered at the St. Francis Hotel.[7] At the gathering, aspiring actress Virginia Rappe fell ill and passed away four days later from peritonitis resulting from a ruptured bladder.[7][8] Following three trials, a jury cleared Arbuckle on April 12, 1922, and offered a formal apology stating he was "entirely innocent."[9]

Even after his acquittal, Will Hays, at the urging of Adolph Zukor, prohibited Arbuckle from appearing on screen.[10][11]

What the cited sources add

The Crime Library account states that Arbuckle felt "positively embarrassed" about his initial film role and kept it a secret from everyone he knew.[5] According to the same source, Arbuckle was the first film actor to receive a pie in the face, which occurred during the making of "A Noise from the Deep."[5] The BBC News article mentions that in 1927, while working under an alias, Arbuckle discovered Bob Hope in Cleveland, Ohio.[12] The same article points out that two women later confessed they had been coached in their testimonies.[13]

References

  1. Wikipedia, "Roscoe Arbuckle" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "Year: 1900; Census Place: Santa Clara, Santa Clara, California; Roll: 111; Page: 7A; Enumeration District: 0077; FHL microfilm: 1240111", Ancestry.com; "Roscoe Arbuckle American actor and director Britannica", www.britannica.com (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  2. Wikipedia, "Roscoe Arbuckle" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Lowrey, "The First One Hundred Noted Men and Women of the Screen", Moffat, Yard & Co., 1920, p. 6; Lowrey, "The First One Hundred Noted Men and Women of the Screen", Moffat, Yard & Co., 1920, p. 6 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  3. Wikipedia, "Roscoe Arbuckle" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "Minta Durfee, actress, 85, Dies; Former Wife of Fatty Arbuckle", The New York Times, September 12, 1975; Del Olmo, "Fatty Arbuckle's First Wife Dies", Los Angeles Times, September 12, 1975; Ellis, "The Mammoth Book of Celebrity Murder: Murder played out in the spotlight of maximum publicity", Constable & Robertson, 2005; Long, "Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle", Taylorology, April 1995 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
  4. Wikipedia, "Roscoe Arbuckle" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Chamings, "The death of an actress in San Francisco. What happened in room 1219?", SFGATE, 2020-05-30; "Arbuckle case first true scandal in Hollywood", The Spokesman-Review, April 17, 2005 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
  5. Noe, "Fatty Arbuckle and the Death of Virginia Rappe", Crime Library at truTV. facts only, no text reused. web.archive.org
  6. Wikipedia, "Roscoe Arbuckle" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Ellis, "The Mammoth Book of Celebrity Murder: Murder played out in the spotlight of maximum publicity", Constable & Robertson, 2005 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
  7. Wikipedia, "Roscoe Arbuckle" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Noe, "Fatty Arbuckle and the Death of Virginia Rappe", Crime Library at truTV (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
  8. Wikipedia, "Roscoe Arbuckle" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Noe, "Fatty Arbuckle and the Death of Virginia Rappe", Crime Library at truTV; "Testify Regarding Early Life of Virginia Rappe", The Lewiston Daily Sun, October 31, 1921 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
  9. King, "Fatty The Skinny on the Fatty Arbuckle Trial", smithsonianmag.com. facts only, no text reused. smithsonianmag.com
  10. Wikipedia, "Roscoe Arbuckle" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: King, "Fatty The Skinny on the Fatty Arbuckle Trial", smithsonianmag.com (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
  11. Wikipedia, "Roscoe Arbuckle" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Mann, "Tinseltown", HarperCollins Publishers, 2014, p. 278–281 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  12. Sheerin, "'Fatty' Arbuckle and Hollywood's first scandal", BBC News, September 4, 2011. facts only, no text reused. bbc.co.uk
  13. "Arbuckle case first true scandal in Hollywood", The Spokesman-Review, April 17, 2005. facts only, no text reused. spokesman.com

Each numbered sentence above was checked against the source it cites before publication. Sentences citing Wikipedia adapt text from the English Wikipedia article Roscoe Arbuckle (contributors), used under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is available under the same licence. Other sources were used for facts only; no text or images are copied from them.

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Sources

Compiled from Wikipedia and the sources listed below. Text from Wikipedia is available under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is adapted from it.

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