Roscoe Arbuckle

At 46 years old, Roscoe Arbuckle physical status not available right now. We will update Roscoe Arbuckle's height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, and measurements.

Roscoe Conkling "Fatty" Arbuckle (March 24, 1887 – June 29, 1933) was an American silent film actor, comedian, producer, and screenwriter.

He began at Selig Polyscope Company before moving to Keystone Studios, where he worked with Mabel Normand and Harold Lloyd.

Charlie Chaplin was mentored by him and Bob Hope discovered Buster Keaton and Bob Hope.

He was one of the twentieth century's most well-known silent actors and one of Hollywood's highest paid actors, starting with Paramount Pictures in 1920 for $14,000 (roughly equivalent to around 175,000 in 2018 dollars). In three widely distributed trials between November 1921 and April 1922 for actress Virginia Rappe's suspected rape and manslaughter.

Rappe had been sick at a party held by Arbuckle at the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco in September 1921, and she died four days later.

Arbuckle was accused of raping and mistakenly killing a friend of Rappe.

The first two trials resulted in hung juries, but Buster Keaton defended him in the third trial, which found him not guilty, and the jury gave him a formal written apology. Despite Arbuckle's dismissal, the scandal has largely dominated his career as a pioneering comedian.

After the trial, Will Hays, a motion picture industry censor, was barred from filming, and he was publicly mocked.

Hays lifted the ban within a year, but Arbuckle continued to serve sparingly into the 1920s.

Keaton decided to give him 35 percent of his earnings from Buster Keaton Comedies Co.

Under the pseudonym William Goodrich, he later worked as a film producer.

He was finally able to return to acting after completing a two-reel comedies in 1932–33, according to reports that he died in his sleep from a heart attack in 1933, on the day he signed a Warner Brothers deal to produce a feature film.

Early life

Roscoe Arbuckle was born in Smith Center, Kansas, on March 24, 1887, one of nine children of Mary E. Gordon (d. February 19, 1898) and William Goodrich Arbuckle. He weighed in excess of 13 pounds (5.9 kilograms) at birth and his father thought he was illegitimate, considering that both parents had slim builds. He recalled him after Senator Roscoe Conkling of New York, a notorious philanderer who he despised. Mary's pregnancy was difficult and culminated in persistent health problems that contributed to her death eleven years later.

When his family first moved to Santa Ana, California, Arbuckle was almost two years old. At age 8, he appeared on stage with Frank Bacon's company first in Santa Ana. When he was 11 years old, Arbuckle loved performing and continued to his father's death in 1898. Arbuckle's father had always abused him and now refused to help him, so he did odd jobs in a hotel. He was singing while working, and a professional singer heard him and invited him to perform in an amateur talent competition. Bad acts were thrown off the stage by a shepherd's crook, with the audience judging acts by clapping or jeering. Arbuckle performed, danced, and did some clowning about, but not impressed the audience. In obvious agony, the crook emerged from the wings and somersaulted into the orchestra pit. The audience was raving, and he won the competition and started a career in vaudeville.

Source

Career

Sid Grauman invited Arbuckle to perform in his new Unique Theater in San Francisco in 1904, extending the two's long friendship. He spent time in the West Coast with the Pantages Theatre Company, and in 1906, he appeared in the Orpheum Theater in Portland, Oregon, as part of a Leon Errol-led vaudeville troupe. Arbuckle became the main act on tour, and the group continued to tour.

Arbuckle married Minta Durfee (1889–1975), the niece of Charles Warren Durfee and Flora Adkins' daughter, on August 6, 1908. Durfee appeared in numerous early comedy films, most with Arbuckle. Minta was short and thin, while Arbuckle tipped the scales at 300 pounds. Arbuckle joined the Morosco Burbank Stock vaudeville company and went on a tour of China and Japan, returning in early 1909.

When Arbuckle appeared in Ben's Kid in July 1909, he began his film career with the Selig Polyscope Company in July 1909. He appeared in Selig one-reelers until 1913, moved to Universal Pictures for a brief period, and became a prominent actor in producer Mack Sennett's Keystone Cops comedies. Despite the fact that his large size was unquestionably a feature of his comedic fame, Arbuckle was extremely concerned about his weight and refused to use it to produce "cheap" laughs, like being trapped in a doorway or chair.

Arbuckle was a natural performer. Enrico Caruso, the operatic tenor, was urged by the comedian to "give up this nonsense you do for a living," he said, "with training you may become the country's second best singer."

Source