Sunday, January 31, 2010

Reality Check

It turns out that everything I thought I knew about the Fatty Arbuckle scandal was wrong. Names, ages, circumstances, all of it via pop culture and in every particular except the man's stage name, incorrect. And he was none too fond of the name, either.

3 comments:

Turk Turon said...

After the scandal, he continued to work as a director, under the pseudonym "Will B. Goode".

og said...

I remember reading some speculation that old Joe Kennedy was responsible for ruining Roscoe's life. Wouldn't surprise me, afte the Pantages thing

http://www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/NewArts/AlexanderPantages.html

Will Brown said...

And, if you peruse the "talk" link at the wiki page on Arbuckle, it appears that not only do we still not know the extent of the story (see also Og's link), we're not likely to either.

It seems likely that Arbuckle experienced opportunistic attack from both within and without the social and legal ediface that comprised America of 90-odd years ago. That a jury ultimately seems to have arrived at an honest judgement exonorating, even apoligising to the man, almost seems an ironic embellishment to his place in history.

Examination of the Arbuckle Wikipedia page also offers a useful study of the wiki process, too.