Both Sides of the Camera: Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle's Evolution at Keystone

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size

For invaluable assistance with this essay, I would like to thank Rob King, Steve Massa at the Billy Rose Theatre Division of the New York Public Library of the Performing Arts, and Ron Magliozzi and Charles Silver at the Museum of Modern Art, who set up screenings of Arbuckle films not available elsewhere.

Joanna E. Rapf is a Full Professor of English and Film & Video Studies at the University of Oklahoma. The diverse subjects of her books include Buster Keaton, Sidney Lumet, and On the Waterfront. Recent essays have appeared in Film Quarterly (on Harry Langdon), The Cinema Journal (on the Hollywood blacklist), Quarterly Review of Film & Video (on Marie Dressler), and The New Review of Film & Television Studies (on Buster Keaton and Jimmy Durante).

Notes

1. David Yallop's The Day the Laughter Stopped (1976), as the title indicates, deals mostly with Arbuckle in the context of his trial. However, the filmography in that volume by Samuel A. Gill is still invaluable. Stuart Oderman's biography (1994) is just that, a biography and not a critical study, while Robert Young's Bio-Bibliography of the same year is primarily useful as a research tool, although it contains fascinating new material based on personal interviews with Arbuckle's first wife, Minta Durfee. In some ways, the most interesting study of Arbuckle to date is Jerry Stahl's novel, I, Fatty (2004).

2. See Donald Crafton who elaborates on this subject in, “Pie and Chase: Gag, Spectacle, and Narrative in Slapstick Comedy.”

3. Arbuckle clipping file at the Billy Rose Theatre Division of the New York Public Library of the Performing Arts. Hereafter cited as “Clippings” in the text itself. In this same story he also comments that The Gangsters is among his “worst” films. Mace returned briefly to Keystone in July of 1915, as reported in Reel Life (July 17): “Fred Mace one of the four original players in Keystone comedies has returned to the Edendale studios” [Mace clipping file at Lincoln Center]. He appeared in only seven Triangle/Keystone comedies, before announcing once again his intention to start his own company. He was found dead in a New York hotel in December of 1917.

4. A commentary on IMDB wrongly identifies the gang leader as Nick Cogley.

5. Massa's comment about The Knockout is in an e-mail to the author on February 13, 2008.

6. Arbuckle will use the same hole and a similar gag in Fatty's Plucky Pup (June 1915).

7. From Clippings, The Philadelphia Ledger (March 20, 1921).