Arbuckle, Roscoe "Fatty"

Arbuckle, Roscoe "Fatty" (1887-1933), American film comedian and director, one of the most unlikely successes of the early period of cinema and one of its first tragic figures. Born Roscoe Conkling Arbuckle in Smith Center, Kansas, he made his way to Hollywood where he was hired by the pioneer producer Mack Sennett for his Keystone studio in 1913, and began directing his own short comedies in 1914, appearing in dozens of titles such as A Robust Romeo, A Rural Demon, Fatty and the Heiress, A Brand New Hero, Fatty’s Magic Pants (all 1914), and many others. In 1917 he formed his own Comique Film Company, in New York, with the producer Joseph Schenck, recruiting the young Buster Keaton. The company moved to California, where Arbuckle’s first feature film, The Round Up, was shot in 1920.

Arbuckle’s obese but amazingly agile and inventive clown was for a time second only to Charlie Chaplin in popularity, but a sex scandal in 1921 ended his career. Arbuckle was accused of the rape and manslaughter of an actress, Virginia Rappe, at a wild San Francisco party. After two trials ending in a hung jury, he was acquitted in a third, but the sensational news coverage sealed his fate. The Arbuckle case was the trigger for Hollywood’s detractors to set up the rigid censorship codes that were to affect the cinema for decades. Arbuckle’s films were banned from distribution, but his friends, including Buster Keaton, helped him return to directing under the assumed name of William Goodrich. As Goodrich he directed a Marion Davies feature, The Red Mill (1927). He continued to direct comedy shorts and educational films under his assumed name until 1932, but died, a broken man, the following year.