I, Fatty

by Jerry Stahl

"Roscoe's going on that tour," Anger said. Then he looked my way, adding icily, "He can't disappoint his public."

  When the film business started, the Myrons who ran the companies tried to keep actors and actresses no-names—so other studios couldn't steal 'em. Now the big boys played it just the opposite. They did everything to make us famous. When you signed on the dotted line, you didn't just pledge your talent, you forked over your life. The real acting job was trying to make the public think you were what the studio said you were. Which, in my case, meant being the perpetual happy-go-lucky fatso funster. Not a half-dead junkie, a fraction of his normal size, who shuffled like a piped-up Chinaman and burst into tears 'cause his hair hurt. The slightest breeze raked my skin like a cheese grater. And I hadn't had a bowel movement since Lincoln died. I felt like one of those sideshow boas with a gopher in it. At the other end, whatever I tried to eat had a round-trip ticket. But I'm lying about shuffling like a Chinaman. I could barely crawl.

  Needless to say, the studio put out a story I'd injured my knee doing a tricky stunt.

  Party Problems

  Zukor insisted on an elaborate bash, a "kickoff dinner" at the Hotel Alexandria, to publicize the nationwide tour. I spent the weeks beforehand practicing walking in my living room. By the morning of the event, I could make it from the Victrola to the couch without a pair of canes. While Anger, pragmatic right down to the soul he didn't possess, had arranged to have three suits of clothes made for the journey: one for the svelte new me, one a bit bigger, and one, optimistically, for my old nearly 300-pound self. My Svengali made it clear I needed to get back up to Fatty status pronto. In case I didn't, however, he laid in a fat suit of foam-rubber padding, to slip over my skin and bones so the public would never know I was secretly wizened. Already clammy, as a by-product of my narcotic problems, beneath that foam suit my sweat turned to horse lather. It was like wearing a portable steam room. Even Minta, most tolerant of women, remarked on my pungent new stench.

  The night of the big do, Paramount prez Zukor sat on the dais with Jesse Lasky and Marcus Loew, alongside Doug Fairbanks, my pal Barney Oldfield (who walked around with a steering wheel in his hand), the lovely Mary Pickford, and Charlie Chaplin. For the occasion, Thomas Woolwine, L.A. district attorney, served as master of ceremonies. Woolwine showing up gave the soiree a kind of legitimacy most movie events couldn't claim. Zukor, whose past was said to be slightly less than legit, was always big on legitimacy. In fact, Woolwine was in Zukor's pocket. When William Desmond Taylor was killed, and Mabel Normand was involved up to her coke-addled eyeballs, it was an open secret big Adolph had his boy Wooly quash the whole thing. When it was my turn in the barrel, I had no such gestures made on my behalf. But why barrel into that maw before we have to?

  Anger made me promise I'd walk up to the dais. On my own. The sight of me crawling might have scared exhibitors. So we waited in a hall backstage for my entrance cue. Drumroll, please, and a big bleat from the band. Off I go, and—uh-oh!—here comes the floor rushing up to my face. S-LAM! Before I even made it out of the wings, I fell flat on my kisser.

  Thinking fast, Minta and Lou wrapped their arms around me from either side. They propped me up that way, linked like ice skaters, till I made it to the podium.

  Not to go misty-eyed, folks, but I gotta say, the standing O I got from the crowd helped keep my pins steady. I was able to stand upright and say the few words I'd prepared with Anger. Cornpone stuff. "Well, friends, as some of you know, I almost didn't make it up here tonight. No, not cause of the knee injury—I couldn't fit through the ballroom door . . . Who'd they design this dump for, anyway—some little tramp?"

  That got a hoot or two, even though I kept waiting for a hunk of foam rubber to pop out of my collar and give me away. My fat suit must have soaked up 40 pounds of perspiration. And it chafed where it dug into my privates. It took a little maneuvering on the part of Lou and Minta to make it look like I was walking under my own steam to my seat on the dais, but we pulled it off. By the time the waiters—all smiling Negroes, who'd seen me flop in the wings—delivered our filet mignons, I was so happy I was able to eat three bites of meat without throwing up. It was the first solid food I'd had since my detoxification in the family rubber room.

  I have a dim memory of thinking, at the writhing height of withdrawal, that this whole thing could be a funny two-reeler. Really! I'm a kick-crazy patient. Mack Sennett's the male attendant. Mabel's the cutie-pie nurse he flirts with—forgetting that he's left me tied to the bed with my head over the bucket! I scream, but Mack just pooh-poohs my pleas. Until Nurse Mabel, concerned, pushes past him and finds me flopping like a hooked cod. "It's the H," Mack says. "Poor baby," coos Nurse Mabel, kneeling to stroke my sweaty brow while Mack looks on, aggrieved. In a fit of jealous pique, he straps me to the bed and covers me with a sheet so just my big toe's sticking out. A fly lands on my toe. Hijinks ensue. Later, when Minta told me how much I screamed my first week in the room, I told her, "Darling, I just wanted a pencil. I had an idea."

  After my debut, so to speak, it was off on the grand tour. For the trip, we were packed into a private railway car. Zukor, pulling strings as usual, got it on loan from Evalyn Walsh McLean, a Washington, D.C. society lady and newspaper publisher. She was also owner of the Hope Diamond. According to Anger, who knew this kind of stuff, she'd loaned it to President Roosevelt's daughter for her honeymoon trip.

  I understand that some couples find long train rides romantic. Mabel said train wheels had "sex rhythm." But that kind of thing was not exactly a big part of my marriage to Minta. Every city we went to the routine was the same. I would hop off the sleeper, show up and make some snappy patter to a Women's Club or a cadre of local theater owners. Then I'd repeat the performance until there was no place left to sing the praises of Paramount's family fare, and we'd hop back on the train for the next whistle stop.

  Travel Contracts as It Broadens,

  and Vicey-Versey

  Twenty miles out of Kansas, the pain in my legs grew so bad I sat down on the floor of the sleeper and cried. Minta heard me, and swore she was going to make Anger stop the tour, whatever it took. I tried to grab her ankles, but she was too fast for me. Five minutes later, Anger stormed into the room, railing. "These people pay your salary, and you're going to earn it!" Five minutes after that bit of kindness, a doctor showed up. Before you could say "Drop your pants and lick your kneecaps," I had a needle in my buttocks. Five seconds later, my pain was gone. The world took on a fuzzy glow. Anger led me out on the platform, where I waved gaily to the crowds, feeling love in my heart for every one of them. By then my eyes were so crossed the people looked more like seaplants. A happy gaggle of seaplants, gently waving underwater.

  At first I thought it was the goofer dust, but no! There really was an ocean of humanity out there. Zukor had worked out the Local Boy Makes Good angle, and—be still, my heart—about a quarter-million proud Kansans waggled their hankies and screamed for a glimpse of Y-O-Me. When it came time for me to say a few words, my tongue felt coated in wet concrete. But somehow I managed. "I'm not gonna lie, folks, I had to come halfway across the country for some decent barbecue . . ." They loved me up. I hobbled back to the pain chamber. Then I collapsed and cried in Minta's lap till I passed out.

  And that, my friends, was how it went. By the time we hit Massachusetts, I was back to taking my medicine in the morning like a good boy. My butt cheeks, by this point, resembled elephant hide from the constant poking. Zukor kept an elephant-leg umbrella stand in his foyers. But I tried not to think about my own gam with parasols sticking out of it.

  Every night Minta and I would fight about my "dependence"—on Lou Anger, on Paramount, on the painkiller. Maybe even on her, though I was too dense to see it then. I'd stalk off, as best as a fat man could stalk with two canes, and go drink with whoever was up. Let her hole up by herself!

  The worst fight we had was just outside Boston, near the end of the line. After saying a lot of things she'd already said a million time
s, she got quiet and said something she'd never let slip before. "You didn't even care enough to get me written into your deal with Zukor!"

  I was flabbergasted. How dare she accuse me of not caring. Me! I informed her, with as much dignity as I could muster while drooling, that a lot of gals would be pretty damn happy if their hubbies handed them the kind of career I'd handed her. I'd given her a pretty fine run, all things considered. I don't know if her horrified silence was the result of my words or my by-now-nightly practice of lying in bed and wetting myself. It's not the kind of thing you really want to know, anyway.

  Boston

  My wife and I were not quite speaking when, per usual, I made my way off the train leaning heavily on her shoulder. Paramount was footing the bill for a banquet for the New England Theatre Association at the Copley Plaza, a stuffy old Back Bay hotel. This was a big one: about 10 dozen Paramount exhibitors, along with Zukor, Walt Green, and Hi Abrams, the three owners of the studio. Plus—just to round things out—Marcus Loew, who happened to run the most massive theater chain in the country. And don't let me forget Jesse Lasky, Paramount's resident genius VP. Blow the place up, and you'd wipe out a quarter of the big brass in the movie business. Why didn't I think of that then?

  Shrewd Zukor was always big on dragging locals into the act. So along with the showbiz bigwigs, the attorney general of Massachusetts was on hand, accompanied by a gaggle of staffers from the governor's and mayor's offices. All in all, the kind of affair you'd have to be either drunk or ambitious to attend. I'd rather have kissed a stoat than show up, but I did, and performed my public duties with dispatch. Then I collapsed, more or less.

  Having tooled all the way from Los Angeles to Beantown, I was so tired I was seeing triple. But the Paramounters announced they were going for a "private party" after the Copley dinner, at Mishawum Manor in nearby Woburn. The "manor" was run by a sporting lady who called herself Brownie Kennedy. Not exactly my cup of fun.

  Pleading honest exhaustion, I bowed out of the festivities and went to bed. Though you wouldn't know that from the publicity later, after the press got wind of the nonstop debauchery these rich, respectable giants of commerce and government indulged in—and the whole affair became known as "Fatty's Orgy."

  Anger said it was going to be a "chicken and champagne" party, code for whores-and-hooch. I'd never heard of Brownie's but I'd heard of Woburn. Everybody had, since four years earlier the Woburn town council passed a resolution banning movie theaters. They didn't want citizens of their fine burg to sample any of that "celluloid degeneracy" and end up a pack of raving sinners.

  From the sound of that party, the Woburners may have had the right idea. Madame Brownie—who also went by the name of Helen Morse and Lily Dale—apparently enlisted some underage "entertainment" for the evening. And some of the entertainers returned home so ravaged that their loved ones, demanding to know what happened to the poor girls, got wind of the affair. Even more damning, the piano player, one Theresa Sears, claimed that Hiram Adams, head of the New England Baseball League, paid cash for the party. She also laid out the one detail that made me wish I had been there. I mean, if I was going to be blamed anyway.

  According to Miss Sears, a giant tray was wheeled out with a clamshell cover on top made of sterling silver. "Gentlemen," Hiram is alleged to have said to the guests, "I bring you tonight's specialty—Pleasant Under Glass." And there, when the straight-faced servant lifted the lid, was a naked girl on hands and knees, an apple in her mouth and a few sprigs of parsley scattered over her body. "Pleasant," that old cutup Hiram continued, "say hi to the boys. Boys, meet Pleasant."

  The singing pianist's account spared no detail. As she recounts it, after Pleasant plucked out her apple and said hi, the rest of the entrées sashayed in. A dozen nubile beauties—including three of the Negro persuasion—none of them even wearing parsley.

  Not all of the girls were underage, as it turned out. Some were married.

  My Once Good Name Tarnished

  When the whole affair blew up in the papers, nationwide, writers insisted on referring to it as "Arbuckle's party." Something Adolph didn't seem to mind. I'd go so far as to say he encouraged it. Why? Because my friend Zukor took care of his own rear end first, that's why. The Federal Trade Commission already had Famous Players-Lasky in its sights. They were just waiting for an excuse to pull the trigger. A scandal would do nicely. Thank you. And Zukor would do anything to keep his name out of the papers, including implicate the one high-profile Paramount employee who wasn't there. Namely me.

  To know how spooked Zukor was, you have to know how dicey the whole film business was looking, investment-wise. Wall Street money was getting antsy. A big stink linking the top dogs at Famous Players-Lasky to prostitution and political payoffs would have sunk the studio—and Adolph—like a Kraut torpedo.

  Long story short, Zukor presented a cool 100,000 simoleons to the Middlesex County DA, an unctuous three-piece suit named Nathan Tufts. One minute Nate was railing about those "amoral Jews at Paramount," condemning "that elephantine debaucher Fatty Arbuckle." The next he was quietly quashing the entire investigation. Funny what a little moola can do.

  Zukor and the gang dodged the bullets while I took one for the team. That's how I, Fatty, ended up looking like the host of the depraved ceremonies. A fact that played no small part in the prosecution's case after another party that got out of control, on the other side of the map, in San Francisco.

  The Truth, As If It Matters

  The truth is, that night, while young Pleasant was appearing under glass, not only did Minta and I stay in, we—Oh, why lie, Arbuckle?—I mean I, tried to accomplish my manly duties. And was, I do not say proudly, unable. Had Minta gone to the press and made public what everybody at Keystone used to tease her about, she could have easily cleared my name. "Your Honor, the only thing my husband would be good for at an orgy is serving canapes or getting plastered. He can't even—well, I don't like to be vulgar . . ."

  Sadly, this proved to be but the first occasion when Minta's testifying to my nether problems might have spared me a world of trouble. The truth is—and I know this must sound loathsome—I preferred the penalty for committing sin to the shame of admitting that I couldn't commit it. There, I said it!

  "Honey," Minta explained, as delicately as possible, "if I don't tell them about your condition, they'll think you're guilty. We could bring in the doctor you visited."

  "The one who recommended bloodmeats? Never!"

  My pained reaction moved her to unusual candor.

  "Roscoe, if we don't speak up, your name is going to be associated with sex orgies . . ."

  No man should have to make a choice like this even once in a lifetime. Little did I realize, I was a man who'd have to make it twice.

  I guess I've just always been lucky.

  A Dodged Bullet in My Chest

  Happily, the Mishawum Mess blew over fast. At least it seemed to. Until a judge in Boston found Tufts guilty of taking bribes and tossed him out of office. Zukor and Lasky both saw what was coming. Whole chunks of the public were already boycotting the movies, and being tied to "an orgy of drink and lust" did not help with the League of Decent Christian Mothers. That's when Zukor got the idea of finding somebody so respectable they glowed to set up a Hollywood Morality Code.

  The idea was to make the rest of the country see how sincere the industry was about "clean living." Zukor's first choice for Morality Czar was Herbert Hoover. Hoover said no, but recommended Postmaster General Will Hays, a Bible-thumping Indiana Republican with close ties to President Harding.

  I did not anticipate that Hays's first target would end up being my own wide behind. If you were the suspicious type, you might almost think I was the red meat Zukor cooked up to throw to Hays and his morals squad. I'll give you the details and let you judge for yourselves. See, Zukor had a director with gambling debts named Fred Fischbach. Fred and I were friendly, but not close. All of this will mean something later. I mention it here to show the tin
y seeds that grew into a jungle that swallowed me up.

  In the wake of Mishawum only one thing was clear. As the old joke around the lot went: If you pushed Adolph Zukor off the Paramount water tower, someone else would take the fall . . .

  New Yorking

  After the tour, it was Schenck's idea to head back to New York, to stay there and work on The Butcher Boy at Norma Talmadge Studios. Norma being his wife and all, Joe no doubt had his own reasons for the deal. What he told us was that it was convenient—a short hike from the suite Minta and I took at the Cumberland Arms, at 54th and Broadway, to the studio, at 48th.

  "Bubby, how many guys get to stroll to work?" Joe said. Whenever he marched out that "Bubby," you knew you were in trouble. The truth was, unless it was three in the morning, we both knew I couldn't do much strolling without attracting oglers the way a sheepdog draws fleas. Plus which, my legs weren't exactly overdependable. But the good news was I could walk, thanks to the top-drawer New York doctors the studios corraled. So how could I complain?

  By now, Minta and I were fighting so much, I couldn't step through the door without first arming myself with a fifth. I'd start gulping on the elevator and by the time I stepped out at our floor either the walls were weaving or I was. It got so I didn't want to come home. All day I'd be hashing out ideas with the writers on Butcher Boy. And it was so—I don't know any other word—stimulating! just to be able to decide what I wanted to film, and how I wanted to film it, without anyone meddling . . . Heaven! I never wanted to stop. But the other guys all had lives they liked, so eventually I'd have to walk back through the door of the Cumberland, and the Battle Royale would resume.

  One night I smashed a wing chair off the wall. Another I put my head through a pantry door. It got so bad, people in apartments on either side of us moved, and the building manager threatened to sue if we didn't keep it down. As it happened, Minta'd gotten me a membership in the Friars Club for my birthday. A few nights later, after Minta broke a sugar bowl on my chin when she found a flask in the hamper—breaking the no-booze- in-the-house rule—it just occurred to me: I could live at the Friars Club. Women weren't allowed. Heh-heh-heh. If the missus wanted to carp at me for being an overly ambitious, self-centered, selfish, and gluttonous son of a beanbag—all true, by the way—she could do it over the phone to the Friars. We'd save a lot of crockery that way.