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From O.J. to Robert Blake and Martha Stewart to Michael Jackson, celebrity trials have become commonplace. We have come to expect the massive media coverage and speculation, the outraged fans, the sense that Hollywood is a pool of immorality, and the lingering suspicion that celebrity brings a sense of privilege that distorts justice. However celebrity trials aren't a modern creation, they are almost as old as Hollywood itself.
I, Fatty by Jerry Stahl is a fictionalized telling of the true life and infamous trial of Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle one of the biggest stars of the silent film era.
As expected from a screenwriter, Jerry Stahl's novel follows a linear path through Fatty's life from his childhood through the years after his trial. The beginning of the novel discusses his childhood abuse both physical and verbal at the hands of his father who resented Fatty's obesity. After his mother's death, Fatty was abandoned by his father and joined vaudeville as a singer and comedian. In vaudeville he finally found a home where the adulation and laughter of audiences replaced the cruel laughter and mocking he experienced as a child.
Like most actors in the early years of Hollywood, Fatty was reluctant to go into movies. Movie actors of the time were like porn actors today, it was seen as shameful and something you had to be desperate for money to pursue. For a formerly successful vaudeville actor who had sung with Caruso and packed houses across the country with his comedy act it was even more shameful.
However, movies provided a steady paycheck and allowed an actor to take the bus to work every morning and eat dinner at home every night just like average Americans.
Fatty Arbuckle soon became one of the most popular and wealthiest actors in Hollywood. He was the first actor to be paid more than a million dollars a year and ran his own production company with complete creative control. But for all his apparent success, Fatty suffered almost as much personal turmoil. Even though considered a fat man, he had to be quite athletic to handle take after take of slapstick comedy. At 295 lbs. and with the ability to do somersaults, high falls, and sprints he might be closer to a professional wrestler today. With a grueling schedule and many injuries he eventually became a prescription morphine addict. Like his father before him, Fatty was also an alcoholic.
Even with his personal flaws Fatty was able to stay out of trouble, until one fateful night in San Francisco. Fatty Arbuckle was accused of raping and murdering Virginia Rappe as part of an orgy of sex and alcohol. The death of Virginia Rappe created a rallying cry for those in the U.S. who believed that Hollywood, movies, and American society were becoming increasingly wanton and immoral. Soon William Randolph Hearst's media empire got to work spreading slander, innuendo, false outrage, and whatever else it could print that would boost newspaper sales. Fatty Arbuckle endured three separate trials for manslaughter and was found innocent three times. However the damage had been done to both Hollywood and Fatty and his career was never the same.
Fatty Arbuckle went from superstar to pariah after his trials. Although his films had been some of the most wholesome made during that period, he was banned by the newly formed Motion Pictures Producers and Distributors Association of America from appearing on film. The role of the MPAA and it's head Will Hays was to act like the recently formed commissioner's office in baseball and make Hollywood appear respectable and moral to American moviegoers.
Arbuckle's trials bankrupted him and his drinking and morphine addiction worsened. Although Europeans continued to adore him and certain old friends like Buster Keaton continued to support him his career was never the same. He eventually got work as a director of low budget films. He even worked as a director for William Randolph Hearst's movie company. Though Hearst vilified him in his papers, he all but admitted to Fatty that he had just wanted to sell papers. Fatty Arbuckle eventually died of a morphine overdoes never having regained his stature as the king of comedy.
How much of I, Fatty is fact and how much is fiction? Was Fatty Arbuckle a victim of circumstance and a scapegoat for Hollywood or was he a rapist who used his money, fame, and influence to avoid going to jail? Stahl never tells us what to believe. The novel is written in from Fatty's point of view, and as such could be his delusion of innocence or it could be an attempt to explain the truth. Jerry Stahl includes a bibliography of sources but aside from reading those sources that may shed light on whether Fatty Arbuckle was unjustly robbed of his rightful place along side Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton as comedy legends of the silent age.
