Hollywood icon died penniless and ‘a broken man’ after | UK News

Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle was once Hollywood royalty — a million-dollar-a-year star who rivalled Charlie Chaplin. But the silent-film giant died at the age of 46, penniless and, as pals put it, “a broken man,” after a scandal that shattered his profession. Arbuckle’s fall from grace started on Labour Day weekend 1921 at San Francisco’s St Francis Hotel, where model-turned-actress Virginia Rappe fell fatally ailing after a booze-soaked get together. The comic was arrested for homicide, then tried thrice amid a media frenzy that painted him as a monster before any evidence was heard.

He was in the end cleared, with the third jury issuing a uncommon assertion that said: “Acquittal is not enough for Roscoe Arbuckle… there was not the slightest proof adduced to connect him in any way with the commission of a crime.” By then, the injury was executed.

Studio bosses yanked his movies, theatres banned his title from their marquees, and, under strain from moralists, industry “czar” Will H. Hays barred him from the screen. Even his estranged spouse, actress Minta Durfee, was scathing, once describing Hays as “a rat dressed up in men’s clothing.”

The scandal ended a meteoric rise that started in Kansas in 1887. A natural performer with a highly effective singing voice. Arbuckle labored his approach from vaudeville to Mack Sennett’s Keystone, then to Paramount on a document $1million contract — the equal of more than £12million today.

He was adored by audiences yet cautious of low cost gags about his measurement. As he said in 1917: “I refuse to try to make people laugh at my bulk.” Rappe’s death, in the end recorded as a ruptured bladder with peritonitis, unleashed America’s first fashionable “cancel culture” pile-on.

While quite a few witness tales conflicted with each other, headlines screamed of a booze-fuelled “orgy” involving the younger actress who later died, branding Arbuckle a beast before the trial had even begun. Arbuckle told reporters of the toll: “I have suffered: All I ask… is that the world which once loved me now withhold its judgment.”

Acquitted in April 1922, he anticipated a comeback. Instead, bans unfold and contracts vanished. Legal charges left him deep in debt; pals recalled a man “hopeless” and ingesting an excessive amount of. Buster Keaton quietly cut him into his own income, and Roscoe slipped behind the digicam, directing under the pseudonym William Goodrich.

But there have been glints of redemption. In 1932, Warner Bros employed him for a run of two-reel talkies. Crowds laughed again, and the studio opened the door to more. He was even said to be on the brink of a characteristic return when he died in his sleep at New York’s Park Central Hotel in June 1933, aged 46.

Just hours earlier, after signing the new deal and celebrating his first marriage ceremony anniversary with his third spouse, Addie, he reportedly told pals: “This is the best day of my life.” One century on, biographer Greg Merritt’s Room 1219 argues the case against Arbuckle was constructed on gossip, contradictions, and dangerous reporting.

He claimed that the industry’s response birthed the Hays Code period of censorship, when Hollywood movies have been censored for intercourse, swearing, and something deemed “immoral.” For Roscoe, the verdict got here too late.

Cleared in court but convicted by public opinion, Hollywood’s unique box-office titan slipped away with his fortune gone and his popularity in ruins — a giant of comedy crushed by scandal.