The first iteration of the work-in-progress is seeing drastic cuts. I hate to lose some of this material, especially where it foreshadows what happened on Labor Day, September 5, 1921. The following passage was intended to document Roscoe Arbuckle’s career in parallel with that of Virginia Rappe’s.
While Virginia Rappe’s career lay dormant in the first months of 1918, Roscoe Arbuckle directed such comedies as Out West, The Bell Boy, and Moonshine despite the wartime fuel shortage that forced the closing of two Los Angeles studios. With his manager Lou Anger overseeing the budget, Arbuckle’s company, Comique Film Corporation, took advantage of the financial straits of the Balboa Studio and leased its lot in Long Beach, much to the delight of the city’s politicians and Chamber of Commerce, which wanted no interruption in the benefits of such a large business venture. And here Arbuckle, Al St. John, Alice Lake, Buster Keaton, and others did some of their best work. Such visitors as Charlie Chaplin came to see their work, for he wanted his own plant as well and hoped to exert the kind of artistic control Arbuckle had.
Its members were suitably impressed and took as gospel that Comique would probably develop into one of the largest units of the industry in the country. Nevertheless, to Arbuckle’s surprise, he inherited the remnants of Balboa’s bad reputation, for its employees left many unpaid bills among Long Beach merchants such that Arbuckle’s people were refused credit. Things got so bad that Arbuckle published disclaimers in the local newspapers to inform readers Comique pumped $300,000 into the local economy. But he didn’t wait for Long Beach to show its appreciation. Anger always looked for better, cheaper facilities and after Arbuckle completed Good Night, Nurse! and The Cook, Comique moved to the Diando Studio in Glendale.
Roscoe Arbuckle as a Vernon Tiger (Calisphere)
No matter where Arbuckle lived and worked, he loomed across Los Angeles and its environs. Their hotels, restaurants, nightclubs, stadiums, racetracks, the infamous Vernon Country Club—and the traffic courts—were venues graced by his largeness and largesse. Together with his growing entourage, he had become known as “the Fat One” and something of a force of nature in Hollywood. So much did Arbuckle’s reputation as well as value soar in 1918 that it was necessary to issue a warning to anyone trying to capitalize on having worked with him, that he was the sole author and director of his comedies and responsible for all stories, intertitles, gags, stunts, and so on.
Unlike other directors, Arbuckle didn’t make a propaganda film in 1918. He did, however, do much charity work for morale, such as donating heavily to the United War Work Fund and the Tobacco Fund, which supplied doughboys with cartons of cigarettes. Arbuckle, too, made personal appearances at Liberty and Salvation Army events, and so on. He even “adopted” Company “C” of the 159th Infantry Regiment at Camp Kearny—and the regiment, in kind, made him its “godfather.”
Not long afterward, Arbuckle visited the Marines training on Mare Island, just north of San Francisco on San Pablo Bay. There he proved to dubious leathernecks that despite his belly, he was no less athletic than recruits. He held his own in a round of “pushball.” Arbuckle also played baseball and exerted himself in other ways, including leading a marching band around the parade grounds. He attributed his ability for such physical exertions to the locale and promised reporters “that this visit to San Francisco is to be one in a regular series,” which included a wink at Los Angeles banning liquor sales one year before Prohibition became the law of the land:
The climate of the southland is declared to be too trying on him and following the completion of each picture he makes he plans to come here to renew his “pep.” Other film artists are making the same declaration, which may not be surprising when it is realized that within another month the city of the angels is to become as dry as the proverbial bone.[1]
[1] “Arbuckle Renews Pep among Marines,” Moving Picture World, 30 March 1918, 1805.
Spite Work: The Trials of Virginia Rappe and Fatty Arbuckle 