by Jerry Stahl
"Here's Zukor's idea," Schenck continued, tossing his fat cigar into the sea. Insanely, I remember thinking, What if it lands on a clam? "You can create your own film company, call it Comique. All you gotta do is make—you should pardon the expression—Fatty pictures. Adolph says Paramount will keep its mitts off. Famous Players-Lasky distributes. Lou here runs your studios. Deal runs for 10 years, with annual sit-downs to figure out bonuses."
By now the stars were whirling in the sky. I had to sit down myself before I introduced the clams I'd had for dinner to Joe's suit. But that wasn't the only thing bothering me. I knew there was something, I just couldn't find it in my juice haze . . . Then it came to me, and I did feel sick. "What about Max Hart? I just signed with him."
Schenck and Anger exchanged looks, then Schenck nodded and Lou signaled to somebody I couldn't see. Next thing I knew, this Rolls-Royce the size of Canarsie comes rolling right up the boardwalk. "I like Max," Schenck said, "but could he give you anything like this?"
By then I was too drunk to drive. In my looming stupor, I just gazed at that beautiful machine and hoped I didn't pass out in it.
The morning after my boardwalk kibbitz with Schenck and Anger, my head felt like I'd used it to crack walnuts. But I managed to have breakfast with Hart and lay things out. I figured he'd be upset. Maybe throw his eggs at me. Max wasn't mad, though. He was sad. "You're making a mistake," he said, so quiet it gave me the willies to think about it later, when I realized he was right—and it was too late to matter.
Max just smiled sadly and put his hand on my cheek, the way you'd touch a child. "God help you, Roscoe. These guys are gonna chew you up and spit you out."
With that my agent for five minutes picked himself up, shook my hand somberly, and told me to give my regards to Minta.
Minta! In all the excitement about the Rolls and the millions, I forgot to ask Joe and Lou about putting her in the contract. I called Lou and he acted put out. We made a deal and that wasn't part of it. When I wouldn't let it go, he said he'd see what he could do and hung up. His tone was a lot chillier than it had been the night before.
When I told all this to Minta, over Waldorf salad at the Waldorf, she threw down her napkin, as mad as I've ever seen her. "First you walk over Max Hart, then you walk over your own wife. After all the years I've looked after you . . ."
Maybe it was the hangover. Maybe it was some part of me, deep down, that didn't want to admit she was right, but I pounded my fist on the table so hard the plates rattled. "Nobody ever took care of me but me," I yelled at her, in front of the entire restaurant. "I've been doing it since I learned to waddle."
I regretted this as soon as I said it. But Minta, who never failed to surprise me, just took my hand in both of hers and started to cry. "Oh, Roscoe," she kept repeating, over and over. It was as if I'd tugged her heart out, jammed a nail in it, and put it back. "Oh, Roscoe, you don't even know what you've done . . ."
PART 4
Everything I Want I Get
Celebrated comedian to begin work on production of two-reelers in March. "Fatty" Arbuckle, the funniest man on the screen, who has long abandoned his first name of Roscoe, has entered into a contract with Paramount Pictures Corporation . . .
The secret of Arbuckle's great popularity is the fact that he makes his audience laugh at him as well as with him, never fearing to be made the victim of a joke.
—Moving Picture World, 1915
THERE ' S ONE for the tombstone, huh? He never feared being the victim.
I look at these scrapbooks now and I still don't get it. The Russkies were running Czar Nicholas II out on his can. The Anti-Saloon League was passing dry laws in 24 states. The Marines were landing in Santo Domingo and clouds of mustard gas were burning boys' lungs to bloody mush over there at Verdun and the Somme. But for some reason the international newshounds could not get enough Arbuckle-alia.
Predictably, Sennett cursed me up and down. Like Ford Sterling, like Chaplin, like his own Mabel before me, I was an ingrate abandoning the saint who'd turned him from vaudeville hack to movie star. Oddly, Mack's words echoed Max Hart's. And there could not have been two less similar characters. "Fat boy," Sennett spat at me, "you sign on with those bastards, they'll work you like a packhorse, then sell you for glue. Zukor would stab himself in the back if he could make a shekel out of it." Then Mack did something I'd never seen him do before. He actually choked up. "Keystone may be a nest of freaks, but we look after our own. That's how it is in the sideshow, sonny. You walk in the center ring, your life ain't even gonna be yours anymore."
Then he gave me a stinky hug, and I went home to shower.
Très Comique
A few months later, Keystone was history, and I was being sent scripts by my new studio. Only they weren't movie scripts. Months before I even set foot in front of a camera, Anger, Schenck, and Zukor had me doing more interviews than Woodrow Wilson. But they weren't really interviews, either. They were performances. For Photoplay, for Movie World, for—who cares? Listen: "My pictures are turned out with clean hands and a clear conscience, which, like virtue, is its own reward. Nothing would grieve me more than to have mothers say, 'Let's not go to the movies today, Arbuckle is playing and he isn't fit for the children to see . . . '"
No need going into how that came back to bite me on the bowser. I never liked slinging this kind of guff in the first place. But that was Paramount. They had me saying a lot of things, things I didn't know I'd said until I picked up a movie mag. I may have thought I'd signed on to make silent pictures, but the brass had a whole wing devoted to making an ass out of me. " 'Let me handle the Huns,' boasts jokester Arbuckle. Til find the Kaiser and sit on his family!' "
Anger was always there to make sure I mouthed my lines for the press. If I didn't like what I was mouthing—like I never liked fat jokes—he'd smile, snip the tip of a cigar, and say what a shame it would be if the public found another fat man to love.
Talk about your command performance! "Whatever success I've had, I credit to my mother's love and my father's guidance." That's from "Fatty Talks to Young People," a phony article Paramount planted in the papers. Even stranger than stumbling on these bromides in print was having to deliver them, in person, at whatever women's club or boys' home or studio-staged affair they made me attend. Half the time I was smashed to my dewlaps on heroin when urging an earnest crowd to "join me in thanking Mr. Zukor for making Paramount a studio for the whole family." Though I didn't mention that to any bug-eyed reporters.
Oh, wait—I'm sorry . . . Did I forget to tell you about the fairy dust? Boy, is my face red!
Bayer, the Heroin That's Good for You
What happened is, at the end of August, anticipating my Paramount millions, I snapped up Theda Bara's old house on West Adams. Theda didn't say why she was selling it, but my first night, I got a hint. No sooner had I unpacked my easy chair and collapsed in it than I felt a sharp pinch on my left knee. I yelped, then forgot about it. When you're born on a dirt floor in Kansas, you grow up thinking insects are pets. Not to mention, I may have had a sip or two of liqueur at lunch and been incapable of feeling the pain in real time. But Minta, who'd decided to stay though our marriage had a toe-tag on it, swears she saw a spider hop behind the couch. I told her spiders don't hop. "Except," Minta said, "when they bite something as big as you!"
Whether it hopped or took a cab home, the eight-legger must have hated me, because a few days later my knee blew up to the size of a medicine ball. The whole leg was so inflamed I screamed every time my pants touched the skin. My luck, though, it was Labor Day, when the whole town was off work and off duty. Minta wanted to drive me to the hospital, but the last thing I wanted was publicity. Even if you're there for a hangnail, the papers get a hold of it and pretty soon nobody can laugh at you anymore cause they think you're sick. Who'd laugh at a sick comedian? Of course, sick was five flights up from where I was headed. Sick would have been good news—but don't rush me.
Finally we tracked down a saw
bones who looked no older than a paperboy. Dr. Cub Scout took one look at my limb, announced that I had a poison boil, and explained that if he didn't drain it that minute the toxins might seep into my bloodstream, leak into my heart, and leave me stricken.
I wasn't sure what "stricken" meant, but it sounded bleak. So bleak that, right there in the living room, I let the baby-faced M.D. take my pants off. I lay on the Persian rug with my leg up on the ottoman while he fished in his black bag. He swabbed the unsightly growth with alcohol and asked Minta to bring a washrag. This he rolled up and stuck in my mouth, telling me to bite down when it hurt. "When what hurts?" My words came out muffled around the rag. By way of reply, the doctor pulled a gleaming scalpel out of his bag and stabbed me in the leg.
I thought I knew what pain was, but I was wrong. When Junior started rooting around with the blade I bit through the gag and saw red and yellow stars. I screamed so loud the Dohenys, our snooty neighbors, sent a colored servant over to say they were calling the police. The Dohenys were old money and resented the influx of actor types creeping into their sanctum. "Boy, listen!" I yelped, delirious, spitting the rag out and spewing at the startled visitor. "Tell Mr. Dodo I have photos of Mrs. Dodo doing the funny can-can. That'll shut 'em up!"
Minta and the servant went wide-eyed. No surprise, considering I was ranting through a bloody mouth, with what looked like a rabid wolf bite on my knee.
"What photos?" Minta wanted to know.
"The ones of her and the pack mule," I cackled, winking at the colored fella, who didn't know if he was allowed to laugh, but when he started he couldn't stop until I sent Minta to the pantry for a glass of brandy and made sure she got it down him.
"Consorting with the help," Minta tut-tutted, in that way she had, where you didn't know if she was joking or not.
"It's that or scream," I said, and meant it. The pain made it hard to breathe. Then the pink-cheeked doctor, who'd remained mum through my little performance, stuck a drain in my leg and I started yowling all over again.
"Roscoe, please!" Minta shushed me. "The Dohenys!"
Before he fled, I made sure their loyal servant—dressed in a red jacket some organ-grinder might have stuck his monkey in—received a second brandy to fortify himself. It was a long slog through our back garden into theirs. I'd done it myself once, having mistaken their front door for mine after a long night imbibing furniture polish with Chaplin. At least I think it was Chaplin. After the first hour I went blind for a while. They don't make hooch like that anymore!
To shut me up—Minta claims I was howling—the medicine man pulled out a hypo and asked for my arm. With the pain I was in, I'd have given him both arms and an ankle. Doctor wrapped my bicep with a rubber tube, squeezed tight enough to find a vein floating in the fat, then stuck in the needle. Next thing I know I'm Floaty M'loaty. Falling down never felt so good. I wanted to thank the doctor, but my tongue seemed to have moved, with no forwarding address.
"That should settle you," the young sawbones smiled, almost like he knew a secret. Boy, did he, the peach-fuzzed little fraud! Then he snapped his bag shut and shook my hand like a grownup. "That leg is too dangerous to play with. I'm putting you on a daily dose of heroin. Stay off your feet a few weeks and you should heal up just fine."
I was more concerned about the staying-off-my-feet part than I was about taking the heroin. Though, now that I'd had a bang, I wasn't too concerned about anything, except maybe how soft the armchair felt when I ran my fingers over it. Funny, I never noticed before . . . Back then Bayer advertised heroin to mothers who wanted to calm their toddlers' cough. It was that benevolent. Oddly enough, it was their newest product, aspirin, that had solid citizens of the day concerned.
Heaven in a Tube
My new friend the doctor left enough medicine for a month. For the first two weeks while Minta went off to work—she was still at Keystone—I stayed at home, in that easy chair, happily staring off. Sometimes I'd move my toes. By the end of the third week, I was still staring off, but the pain had gotten worse. And the swelling doubled. When the doctor came for a follow-up he looked grim, said he'd heard of cases where this happened, and doubled my daily dose. Yum!
I'd had a screening room put in at the house, so every day I'd arrange my audience-of-one narcotic film festival. The studios were wild about drug movies—especially if there was a pretty girl who turned into a prostitute somewhere in the story. So I'd take my feel-no-pain shot, sit back, and nod in and out of White Slave Traffic, The Devil's Needle, The Girl Who Didn't Care, or this really strange one, Half-blood, directed by some pervert Kraut named Fritz Lang, about a party gal who lures a regular Joe to Hades with an opium pipe.
By early November, it was obvious that not only wasn't I healing, but the infection had spread. Now my entire thigh had swollen like a drowned man's. I had to measure every breath. The slightest movement was excruciating, like someone plunging a fork in my flesh and twirling the nerve ends like spaghetti. When the doctor made his next house call, he looked very grave. After administering a healthy injection (enough to set me off in a drooly smile, even though I knew, underneath, the pain was screaming) he announced, from very far away—possibly Ohio—that "the leg will have to go."
"Go where?" I asked, feeling positively blithe after the injection. "On vacation?"
Minta knew what he meant, and she was aghast. Paramount had paid for a whole comedian. They were funny that way. If they shelled out a million, they wanted the whole star. Panicked, Minta called everyone she knew—up till now, my condition'd been top secret—asking them if they could recommend a doctor. It was Max Hart, of all people, who provided one. The new medico was a serious old gent who informed us that, first of all, the so-called doctor who'd been treating me was actually an intern, and had no business not telling us. And second, the infection in my leg could be treated in the hospital, but once that was done, there was the other problem.
"What other problem?" Minta and I both wondered aloud.
"Heroin addiction," said the doctor, looking so doctorly he could have been acting. "It usually affects housewives." Here he paused, raised his eyes to the ceiling, as if appealing for divine guidance, and lowered them to me and Minta again. "I know what kind of pain you've gone through, son. But that's nothing compared to what you're going to go through coming off this stuff."
I Get a Kick out of Life!
Minta wasn't surprised that I was scared. Being the reasonable type, she assumed that what I was scared of was the pain of withdrawal. Which was true, as far as it went. How could I tell her I was even more scared of living without heroin?
From that first shot, when the turned-out-to-be-an-intern pushed in the needle, it was like I was home. Returned, in swaddling, to a blessed baby-state I never knew existed. The pain relieved was not the pain the drug was prescribed for. Or not just. It killed everything—the agony in my leg and the anxious, restless Daddy's-Right-I'm-A-Freak-And-EverythingGood-Is-For-Other-People heebie-jeebies. It's as if the fingers wrapped around my throat since childhood began to loosen. I'd gotten so used to them, I didn't know I was being choked until they were gone. Even when I closed my eyes and relived Daddy's drunken punches, heroin made them fluffy pillows.
I had two choices, the new doctor told me: six months of slow, careful withdrawal—uncomfortable, but not that—or three weeks, over and out, of utter hell. I wanted to go for careful. (I never said I was brave.) But my career required over and out. The hell route. Paramount had set up a nationwide tour to promote its hearty new star. And when I asked Anger for more time to get well, he turned me down flat. "Zukor," he said, "doesn't give more time."
The doc arranged for a private hospital, so nobody would know I was in there, plus a padded cell, so I couldn't bang my head off the wall trying to knock myself out. Talk about a dream vacation!
At the last minute, naturally, I chickened out. But not all the way. If I was going to bite my feet and claw the walls in a padded cell, I'd rather it was my padded cell. So we set up
a room in West Adams. The place was so big, even the closets had closets.
My home kick-bin had all the amenities: rubber sheets and foam rubber walls. I don't know what the workmen thought when they installed the stuff. I was too busy shaking and sweating to inquire. For two weeks Minta listened to me scream and beg and upchuck like a gut-shot buffalo. The people we trusted, like my friends Barney Oldfield and Charlie C, came over to empty my barf buckets. Friends like that you can't buy more than once.
I wasn't even allowed alcohol, so on top of the pain-shakes and puking I got DTs. God knows what my poor wife thought when she heard me thundering around in there, trying to dodge the tiny red-eyed rhinos. I would have killed for a good old-fashioned pink elephant, but they never showed up. She said I cried so much she had to put cotton in her ears or go crazy herself. But all I remember is those rhinos. The scut they left all over the room. And the rat-sized fleas that hopped out of them, then burrowed under my skin, until I had to rip the skin off my flesh to dig them out.
By the day the doctor came and let me out, I'd lost nearly 100 pounds. From 285 to 190. My pants fit about as well as the ones I lent Chaplin way back whenski, as Mabel used to say, doing her Polish-maid routine. Anger stopped by, but he was all business. All he said when he saw me was, "The studio better send some tailors."
Minta, brazen as ever, told Anger I couldn't go on the tour—now only weeks away—and you'd have thought she said I planned to rape his grandmother. His rage was instant, but he kept a lid on it.