Roscoe Arbuckle and the Scandal of the Century
It's about time Mr. Roscoe Arbuckle got an entry, well, here we are! Roscoe is one of my favorite comedians. I hate it when people label him as "the broken-hearted comedian" or something tragic. Yes, what happened to him was abhorrent and awful and there are lots of Hollywood stars who had very unfortunate lives or ends, but the least we can do is not lower his memory down to just tragedy because he was a misunderstood man who deserved better.
Roscoe Conkling Arbuckle was born on March 24, 1887, in Smith Center, Kansas to Mary Gordan and William Goodrich Arbuckle as the youngest of their six children. He reportedly weighed 13-16 pounds at birth but because both his parents were very slim, his father believed he was illegitimate and named him after a senator he hated. The birth was traumatic for Mary and caused her to have many health problems for the rest of her life, ultimately it contributed to her death eleven years later. For most of his childhood, his father was absent. With most of his siblings away at work and one dead, Roscoe entered the workplace at age five, running errands for storekeepers. Some of his schoolmates even remembered him wheeling around in a little red wagon, delivering to families the clothes his mother washed.
As a child, he was teased a lot for his weight. He claimed to have never felt loved as a child and the lifelong nickname that others bestowed upon him, "Fatty," haunted him everywhere and he hated it. It wasn't too long ago when I found out he didn't like his nickname and I feel terrible for using it several times in the past. I thought it was somehow related to his comic character, but all of his Hollywood peers addressed him as Roscoe. Sometimes I will refer to him as Fatty when it comes to the characters he played since that was what he was billed as, but from now on he is strictly Roscoe. His response to people calling him Fatty was, "I've got a name you know!"
"My stage career was thrust upon me in the twinkling of an eye."
Roscoe discovered his deep love and fascination for the theatre after being captivated by a performance he saw when he was a little boy. In 1895, he debuted in the musical revue Turned Up at the Grand Opera House. Frank Bacon saw his performance and offered him fifty cents a week for three weeks of shows. Roscoe gladly accepted and informed his mother that he earned his money by sweeping floors. His mother eventually discovered his secret but luckily, didn't stop him from performing. For the time being, he took on singing, acting, juggling, and acrobatics.
He was only 11 years old when his mom died. As a result, he was sent to live with his father and stepmother Mollie. When Roscoe arrived in Watsonville (the town his father lived in), his father left him alone and waiting at a train station for hours. That's not even the worst. Not only would other boys ridicule, punch, and kick him, but his father would as well. He once choked him and beat his head against a tree, according to one of his biographies. (Can’t remember the name of it but I remember reading that!) To top it all off, his stepmother was absolutely rude to him. She even said, "His father used to beat him--and often he deserved it." What an awful woman… The poor boy longed to escape from all the abuse and carried that lack of maternal love in his adult years.
In 1904, seventeen-year-old Roscoe escaped from his father's reach and headed to San Francisco where he got to sing at Sid Grauman's Unique Theatre. He then joined the Pantages Theatre Group touring the West Coast in a vaudeville troupe. Around 18, he began to develop skills as a comedian by practicing gags with Leon Errol and Pete Gerald.
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| Buster on top of Roscoe with Alice Lake on the left and Viola Dana on the right. |
He didn't get into films until around 1909. Like Ford Sterling, Hank Man, and Ben Turpin, Roscoe began as a Keystone Cop. (If you're not familiar with that, it was basically just a ton of slapstick comedians dressed as cops that appeared in Mack Sennet's early films. The Bathing Beauties were basically the female version of the Keystone Kops, except they were a bevy of women in bathing suits.)
Arbuckle was a natural at slapstick comedy. He didn't make fun of his size to get laughs like getting stuck in a doorway or breaking a chair. He would rather somersault around and throw pies in faces. By 1914, Roscoe was making short films with Charlie Chaplin and Mabel Normand, and by 1918, he was making a million dollars a movie. My favorite of his pairings is with Buster Keaton and Al St. John. Those three formed the perfect trio and how they all helped each other with their careers and remained good friends, I find very heartwarming. They all have a special place in my heart.
And so the legendary tale of how he met Buster Keaton goes...
One day Buster was walking down the streets of Times Square, hard on his luck until he ran into an old friend who was with Roscoe. The two were introduced and Roscoe had asked him "Have you ever been in a motion picture?" and Buster replied, "No, I've never been in a studio." Then Roscoe says, "Well, come on down, try a bit with me, and see how you like it." And the rest is history...
(Al, on the other hand, was a nephew of Roscoe and had already been in the business.)
Along with Luke, Roscoe's dog, the trio made many memorable short films in the late 1910s. Eventually, they all split ways with their careers. While Buster's flourished, Al's sank, and Roscoe's was destroyed...
In 1921, Roscoe’s salary was now 3 million so he bought a nice car and decided to throw a little celebration party. On the night of September 5, 1921, Roscoe and some of his friends checked into the St. Francis Hotel. They were on the twelfth floor in a suite that contained rooms 1219, 1220, and 1221. As I've read, Roscoe spotted a struggling actress named Virginia Rappe in the hotel lobby, and since his troupe knew who she was, they sent word inviting her over for hotel drinks.
At some point during the party, she went to use the bathroom in room 1221 but someone was already in there so she crossed into Arbuckle's room, 1219. When the other guests went into room 1219, they found Virginia tearing her clothes off and screaming in agony, complaining that there was serious pain in her abdomen. Now here's the thing, Virginia portrayed herself as this innocent young girl, but deep down she was very wild. By the way, that was not the first time she shredded off her clothes. She was into the habit of doing so whenever she drank and that's pretty much what happened here. Not only did she drink heavily, but had several abortions. It is rumored that while fooling around at the party, her stomach began feeling intense pain due to a botched abortion she had earlier. Makes sense.
Someone had put her in a cold bath to try and calm her down and then moved her to another room down the hall, where a doctor examined her. His reasoning was that she simply had too much to drink, but she claimed that Arbuckle crushed her with his size and raped her? We'll never really know what happened that night, but I definitely don't believe what she said. Rappe allegedly suffered a trauma and died four days after the incident.
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| Virginia Rappe |
The incident resulted in one of Hollywood's first scandals, and headlines broke out that Roscoe was a monster who had raped innocent little Virginia. As a result, he started to receive immediate backlash, and groups of women protested to have his films banned. It was a whole misunderstanding. Maude Delmont, a friend of Virginia's, was the real monster. She had a record of setting up famous people to blackmail them for money, yet, the court didn't realize it then.
According to Delmont's testimony, Arbuckle headed Virginia Rappe into his bedroom and said, "I've waited for this a long time." Within a few minutes, party-goers could hear screaming coming from his bedroom. Delmont claimed to have tried to open the door but couldn't. Then Arbuckle opened the door and Virginia was supposedly lying on the bed naked and bleeding.
Arbuckle testified that when he retired to his room to change clothes, he found Rappe vomiting in his bathroom. He tried to help clean her up and use ice as a remedy for pain. He laid her on a bed to rest thinking she was just overly intoxicated, then left the room to go back and join the party. When he returned to the room a few minutes later, Rappe was on the floor. After putting her back on the bed, he left the room to get help.
I believe the reason Rappe claimed that he raped her was because he was the only man in the room while she was passed out drunk. Or perhaps when she woke up in his room unclothed she assumed he did something to her. Oh well, we’ll never know.
Either way, the papers went wild with the story and the public's reaction to Arbuckle was fierce. He was convicted of manslaughter and became a symbol of immortality -- this later resulted in actors having morality clauses in their contracts. No matter what his peers like Buster Keaton or Viola Dana said to defend him, he was a ruined man and struggled to find work.
“I have suffered,” he told reporters. “All I ask in repayment of the wrong done me is that the world which once loved me now withhold its judgment and give me a chance to prove before another jury that I am innocent.”
"He was very bitter over what he believed was an injustice, which financially and professionally ruined him." Said one reporter. "I had never seen a more hopeless man." He drank and was in debt. He went back to the vaudeville circuit, though his appearances sometimes drew protests. His good friend Buster Keaton brought him on as a co-director for his film Sherlock Jr. but he was so irritable that Keaton fired him for three weeks. Over time, he built a steady career directing under his father's name, William Goodrich. Buster even joked that his pseudonym should be Will B. Good. Although, Roscoe only wanted to do what he loved -- to go back to the screen.
On June 29, 1933, he died from a heart attack in his sleep. He was 46 years old. His wife Addie MacPhail requested for his body to be cremated, as was his wish.
"I don't believe there is any finer mission on Earth than just to make people laugh."