Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle
Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle
"What hurts me most is the idea some people have that I owe my success to being fat. It is the hardest thing I have to overcome. I never play on my weight; in fact, I am constantly trying to make the audience forget it."
Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle
Birth name:
Roscoe Conkling Arbuckle
Born:
24th March 1887, Smith Center, Kansas, USA
Died:
29th June 1933, New York City, New York, USA
Years active:
1909 - 1933
Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle was one of early screen comedy’s most popular stars. At the height of his fame, he rivalled Chaplin in popularity and salary, and helped launch fellow comic legend Buster Keaton’s career. The infamous Virginia Rappe scandal destroyed his career in the early 1920s, despite a jury acquitting him of all charges after three trials. Forgotten by his former fans, Arbuckle spent his final years working in obscurity or under a pseudonym.
Early life and stage beginnings
Arbuckle was born on 24th March 1887, in Smith Centre, Kansas. Contrary to popular belief, he did not weigh 16lb at birth, nor was the trauma of giving birth to him the cause of his mother’s death when Arbuckle was twelve years old.
The youngest of five children (a sixth died at birth), his father was an abusive drunk who abandoned the family after they moved to Santa Ana, California. Arbuckle was about eighteen months old.
By the time he was five, he was delivering the clothes his mother washed for local families. Arbuckle was a lonely child: his father was absent, and his older siblings had already moved out. Although he wasn’t the monstrous size decreed by legend, he was always overweight. As a child, he suffered the dreaded nickname of Fatty, an epithet he despised throughout his life. With few friends his own age, he would sneak into vaudeville theatres, where his love of performing grew.
He first appeared on stage at eight, in the musical revue Turned Up, staged by the travelling Frank Bacon Stock Company. A last-minute replacement for a local child actor who failed to show, he appeared in blackface for three weeks, earning fifty cents a week.
When his mother died, Arbuckle he went to live with his absentee father, William Goodrich, who owned a hotel in Watsonville. However, he arrived there to find his father had sold the hotel and moved on. The hotel’s desk clerk took pity on the boy and gave him room and board for performing odd jobs. Arbuckle would also sing to diners for tips.
Eventually, his father resurfaced with a new wife, who had six children of her own. Arbuckle moved with them to a citrus farm in the town of Santa Clara. His father, a man of slim build, always doubted that Roscoe was his son, and would frequently beat the boy and berate him for his weight.
In 1903, Arbuckle found work performing in a vaudeville house, where he sang illustrated songs for $17.50 per week. A stint as a singing waiter in San Francisco followed. He then received an offer from Alexander Pantages to become a star singer with his vaudeville troupe, touring the American West. In 1905, he branched out into comedy when he teamed up with Leon “Rubberlegs” Errol and Pete Gerald. Errol became something of a mentor, teaching the ungainly but athletic youth how to take a fall without injuring himself.
In 1908, Arbuckle signed with the Elwood Tabloid Musical Comedy Company, where he met his first wife, Minta Durfee. On 5th August the same year, they wed in front of a paying audience at a special ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ show staged by their employer.
Entry into films and Keystone stardom
The following year, Arbuckle made his first movie, Ben’s Kid (1909), for director Francis Boggs, whom Selig had recently sent west. It was Boggs’ third film in California, placing Arbuckle at the very birth of the Hollywood film industry. Ben’s Kid was a western, and he played the comic relief at the going rate of $5 a day. In his next film, Mr. Jones’ Birthday (1909), he was the lead. ‘The Jones of the picture is a fat fellow,’ noted the New York Dramatic Mirror, ‘… and the earnestness of his work adds greatly to its value.’ However, his flirtation with the flickers, which he considered shameful, was brief. Soon, he teamed up with Irish vaudeville comedian Walter Reed to form the Reed and Arbuckle company. They played at the Orpheum Theater in the rough mining town of Bisbee, Arizona, just north of the Mexican border. It wasn’t long before Durfee joined them and became part of the act.
Arbuckle briefly returned to movies in 1910 before joining the Ferris Hartman Company. In 1912, he was the star attraction when the company travelled to tour the Orient. The couple returned to the States after a six-month tour that had tested, but not broken, their marriage. Still poor, despite Arbuckle’s star billing on the tour, they embarked on a sightseeing tour of Northern California.
Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle with Buster Keaton and Al St. John.
Arbuckle’s movie career truly started on an April morning in 1913, when he visited Mack Sennett’s Keystone lot in Edendale in search of work. Sennett hired him for a salary of $3 per day - considerably less than he had earned at Selig four years before. Sennett released Arbuckle’s first Keystone film, Murphy’s IOU, on 17th April 1913. However, he failed to realise his latest recruit’s potential. It was Mabel Normand, Sennett’s star performer and lover, who recognised Arbuckle’s talent. Mabel taught Arbuckle how to play to the camera, and soon the young comic replaced Ford Sterling as her regular co-star and saw his wage rise to $5 per day. By the end of the year, he had appeared in at least thirty-six comedy shorts, and his wage had risen to $200 per week. His wife joined him in September 1913. They appeared together in several films for Keystone, often supported by Arbuckle’s nephew, Al St. John.
Arbuckle added another string to his bow in 1914 by taking over directing duties when Henry Lehrman left Keystone. Legend has it that Arbuckle dismantled a camera to see how it worked before directing his first picture. That year, he appeared in half-a-dozen movies with Sennett’s newest sensation, Charlie Chaplin, while his continuing screen partnership with Normand cemented his place among Keystone’s comic aristocracy.
Chaplin’s departure in late 1914 stirred a growing discontent in Arbuckle. Sennett had paid the British comic $750 per week, but still it wasn’t enough to keep him at Keystone. Broadway comedienne Marie Dressler had earned $2,500 a week to appear in Tillie’s Punctured Romance (1914), the world’s first comedy feature. And yet Arbuckle, one of Sennett’s biggest stars, received only $500 per week. That didn’t go far for a man with an insatiable appetite for the finer things in life.
The sudden - and violent - end of Mack Sennett and Mabel Normand’s romantic involvement in 1915 spelled also the end for her screen union with Arbuckle. One of their last films together, Fatty and Mabel Adrift (1916), was arguably their best. But a near-suicidal Normand was finding it impossible to work for her former lover. She left Keystone to go independent, and Arbuckle signed a deal with Paramount. So keen were they to sign him, they offered him his own production company, a salary of $5,000 a week and 10% of his picture’s profits. The studio also threw in a Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost to sweeten the deal.From now on, Arbuckle would make films for his own production company, Comique.
Shortly after clinching the deal, Arbuckle suffered an inflamed carbuncle on his leg. For a while, it looked as if he might lose the limb. Doctors administered morphine to ease the pain. Arbuckle became addicted to a drug which, just a few years later, would contribute to the death of fellow star Wallace Reid. Arbuckle went cold turkey and suffered horrifying withdrawal symptoms for over a week. He lost over 80lbs in the time it took him to beat his addiction.
Arbuckle’s marriage to Minta Durfee ended soon after. She blamed Lou Anger, Arbuckle’s new manager, who had negotiated his lucrative Paramount deal, but the marriage had been dying before he came on the scene. Durfee was a stay-at-home; her husband liked wild nights out with the boys. To avoid the scandal of a divorce, Durfee signed a separation agreement that paid her $500 a week.
Around this time, Arbuckle forged a new friendship with twenty-two-year-old Joseph 'Buster' Keaton, a comic who had toured vaudeville theatres since he was four. The established comic became the screen newcomer’s mentor, once again taking apart a camera to show him it worked, and teaching him how to perform for it. Their first film together, The Butcher Boy (1917), was the first of seventeen collaborations between 1917 and 1921. After long hours at work, churning out a new two-reeler every couple of months, the two friends enjoyed a riotous swirl of nightclubs and parties.
After over six months making movies in New York, Arbuckle returned to the West Coast - not to Hollywood, but to Long Beach, where he filmed at the Balboa Studio. While the location might have changed, the nightlife continued, with Arbuckle almost always paying the bill. Only WWI, during which Keaton was posted to France, interrupted the party.
In February 1919, Arbuckle re-signed with Paramount, silencing rumours he was about to join Pickford, Chaplin, Fairbanks, and Griffith at United Artists. This time, his three-year deal was worth a reported $1 million per year. He moved into the fashionable West Adams district and stocked his basement with a formidable supply of alcohol to ensure prohibition didn’t disrupt his lifestyle.
Two months after Arbuckle signed his new contract with Paramount, Keaton returned from the war and they resumed their screen partnership. But when Arbuckle decided he wanted to branch out into feature production, Keaton became Comique’s solo comic star. Arbuckle would make films for his distributor, Paramount, using material created by its team of writers.
Prohibition did little to slow Arbuckle’s dissolute lifestyle. He held regular parties at his newly purchased West Adams mansion. His first feature film, a western called The Round-Up (1920), marked a departure from his customary slapstick. Critics were unsure, but it was a box-office hit.
His popularity continued into 1921. He worked tirelessly, completing four feature films by the end of August. Life was good. The lavish parties continued, as did the public adulation, undimmed by the variable quality of his work for Paramount. Six cars filled the garage of his mansion, and he wore the finest clothes. Arbuckle was a man of unbounded generosity, for whom life must have seemed a giddy pleasure ride.
The Virginia Rappe Scandal
On 3rd September 1921, he drove to San Francisco with actor Lowell Sherman and writer/director Fred Fishback for the Labor Day weekend. He had reserved three adjoining rooms at the plush Hotel St. Francis. On Monday, 5th September, Arbuckle hosted the small, impromptu gathering that was to cost actress Virginia Rappe her life and bring his career to an abrupt and shocking end.
Four days after the party, thirty-year-old Rappe died of acute peritonitis caused by a ruptured bladder. The rupture, autopsy surgeon Dr Shelby Strange reported, was caused by “some external force.” The following day, 10th September 1921, police summoned Arbuckle for questioning and charged him with murder.
He had to suffer through three court trials conducted amid a media frenzy before receiving an acquittal that did little to salvage his reputation. The first, held less than two months after Rappe’s death, ended in a mistrial with jurors deadlocked 11-1 in favour of acquittal. Arbuckle’s defence team decided against having him testify during the second trial. It was a mistake: the jury was again deadlocked, but this time 9-3 in favour of a conviction. The third and final trial, which concluded on 12th April 1922, found the actor not guilty. He even received a written apology from the jury.
Had Adolph Zukor and Paramount stood behind their biggest star, it’s possible that Arbuckle’s career would have survived. But the spectre of censorship, and the vocal protests of fervent reformers, hung heavy over the mogul, and he made a clinical decision to abandon the funny man. He even pressured Will H. Hays, the newly appointed head of the Motion Pictures Producers and Distributors of America, into denouncing Arbuckle. By blacklisting Arbuckle from the movie industry, Zukor could show he was doing all that was necessary to rid it of its evils.
Bankrupted by enormous legal fees, Arbuckle found it virtually impossible to find work. His friends, at least, rallied around. Buster Keaton engaged him to direct Sherlock Jr., but Arbuckle, depressed, drinking heavily, and low on confidence wasn’t up to the task. Eventually, he found employment as a director, releasing several short comedies for Educational Pictures under the pseudonym William Goodrich.
In 1932, Warner Brothers signed him to star under his own name in six comedy shorts. They were successful enough to earn him a contract to star in a feature-length film. It looked as though his career might be back on the road to recovery, but after celebrating signing the contract with friends, he died in New York of a heart attack on 29th June 1933. He was 46 years old.
Reputation and legacy
Although his name became synonymous with Hollywood scandal, Arbuckle has become recognised as a pioneering silent screen comedian and director. His blending of sophisticated staging with rough-and-tumble slapstick, his mentoring of Buster Keaton, and his early adoption of the comedian-director role place him at the centre of silent-era comedy’s development.
The intense coverage of Arbuckle’s trial - much of it highly sensationalised - influenced Hollywood’s later adoption of self-regulation, including the eventual introduction of the Production Code. While he might notbe as revered as his protégé Keaton, or Chaplin and Lloyd, he has come to be recognised as one of the founding fathers of American film comedy.
Sources: Room 1219: The Life of Fatty Arbuckle, the Mysterious Death of Virginia Rappe, and the Scandal that Changed Hollywood, Greg Merritt; The Day the Laughter Stopped: The True Story of Fatty Arbuckle, David Yallop.
Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle Filmography
Ben's Kid (1909), short, Selig Polyscope, Dir: Francis Boggs. With Tom Santschi, Harry Todd; Mrs. Jones' Birthday (1909), short, Selig Polyscope; Making It Pleasant for Him (1909), short, Selig Polyscope.
The Sanitarium (1910), short. With Nick Cogley, George Hernandez
Alas! Poor Yorick. (1913), short, Selig Polyscope Company, Dir: Colin Campbell. With Wheeler Oakman, Tom Santschi, Lillian Hayward. Released on same reel with Canton, China; Murphy's IOU (1913), short, Keystone, Dir: Henry Lehrman. With Fred Mace, Mack Sennett, Dot Farley. First film for Sennett’s Keystone; The Gangsters (1913), short, Keystone, Dir: Henry Lehrman. With Fred Mace, Nick Cogley, Hank Mann; Passions, He Had Three. (1913), short, Keystone, Dir: Henry Lehrman. With Beatrice Van, Charles Avery, Nick Cogley; Help! Help! Hydrophobia! (1913), short, Keystone, Dir: Henry Lehrman. With Beatrice Van, Nick Cogley; The Waiters’ Picnic (1913), short, Keystone, Dir: Mack Sennett. With Mabel Normand, Ford Sterling, Nick Cogley. First film with Normand; A Bandit (1913), short, Keystone, Dir: Mack Sennett. With Beatrice Van, Nick Cogley Bill Hauber; Peeping Pete (1913), short, Keystone, Dir: Mack Sennett. With Mack Sennett, Ford Sterling, Nick Cogley; For the Love of Mabel (1913), short, Keystone, Dir: Henry Lehrman. With Mabel Normand; Rastus and the Game Cock (1913), short, Keystone, Dir: Mack Sennett. With Mack Sennett, Ford Sterling, Bill Hauber; Safe in Jail (1913), short, Keystone, Dir: Mack Sennett. With Ford Sterling, Edgar Kennedy, Raymond Hatton; The Telltale Light (1913), short, Keystone, Dir: Mack Sennett. With Mabel Normand; A Noise from the Deep (1913), short, Keystone, Dir: Mack Sennett. With Mabel Normand, Nick Cogley, Edgar Kennedy. First Keystone comedy to feature a pie in the face; Love and Courage (1913), short, Keystone, Dir: Henry Lehrman. With Mabel Normand; Prof. Bean’s Removal (1913), short, Keystone, Dir: Henry Lehrman. With Mabel Normand, Ford Sterling; The Riot (1913), short, Keystone, Dir: Mack Sennett. With Mabel Normand, Charles Inslee, Alice Davenport; Mabel’s New Hero (1913), short, Keystone, Dir: Mack Sennett. With Mabel Normand, Charles Inslee, Virginia Kirtley; Fatty’s Day Off (1913), short, Keystone, Dir: Wilfred Lucas. With Charles Avery, Grover Ligon, Fred Gamble; Mabel’s Dramatic Career (1913), short, Keystone, Dir: Mack Sennett. With Mabel Normand, Mack Sennett, Ford Sterling; The Gypsy Queen (1913), short, Keystone, Dir: Mack Sennett. With Mabel Normand; The Fatal Taxicab (1913), short, Keystone, Dir: Mack Sennett. With Mabel Normand, Ford Sterling, Charles Inslee; When Dreams Come True (1913), short, Keystone, Dir: Mack Sennett. With Mabel Normand, Ford Sterling, Hank Mann; Mother’s Boy (1913), short, Keystone, Dir: Henry Lehrman. With Alice Davenport, Nick Cogley, Bill Hauber; Two Old Tars (1913), short, Keystone, Dir: Henry Lehrman. With Nick Cogley, George Jeske; A Quiet Wedding (1913), short, Keystone, Dir: Mack Sennett. With Minta Durfee, Charles Inslee, Charles Avery; The Speed Kings – Earl Cooper and Teddy Tetzlaft (1913), short, Keystone, Dir: Wilfred Lucas. With Mabel Normand, Ford Sterling, Earl Cooper. Teddy Tetzlaff’s name is misspelled in title. Filmed at Santa Monica racetrack; Fatty at San Diego (1913), short, Keystone, Dir: George Nichols. With Phyllis Allen, Minta Durfee, Nick Cogley; A Small Town Act (1913), short, Keystone, Dir: George Nichols. With Ford Sterling; The Milk We Drink (1913), short, Keystone, Dir: Wilfred Lucas; Wine (1913), short, Keystone, Dir: George Nichols. With Ford Sterling, Minta Durfee, Charles Inslee; Fatty Joins the Force (1913), short, Keystone, Dir: George Nichols. With Dot Farley, Edgar Kennedy, Minta Durfee; The Woman Haters (1913), short, Keystone, Dir: Henry Lehrman. With Nick Cogley; A Ride for a Bride (1913), short, Keystone, Dir: George Nichols. With Edgar Kennedy, Charles Avery, Virginia Kirtley; Fatty’s Flirtation (1913), short, Keystone, Dir: George Nichols. With Mabel Normand, Minta Durfee, Hank Mann; His Sister’s Kids (1913), short, Keystone, Dir: George Nichols. With Minta Durfee, Ford Sterling, Jack White; Some Nerve (1913), short, Keystone, Dir: Mack Sennett. With Ford Sterling, Dot Farley, George Nichols; He Would a Hunting Go (1913), short, Keystone, Dir: George Nichols. With Hank Mann, Grover Ligon, Virginia Kirtley.
A Misplaced Foot (1914), short, Keystone, Dir: Wilfred Lucas. With Mabel Normand, Minta Durfee; The Under Sheriff (1914), short, Keystone, Dir: George Nichols. With George Nichols, Minta Durfee, Alice Davenport; A Flirt’s Mistake (1914), short, Keystone, Dir: George Nichols. With Minta Durfee, Edgar Kennedy, Frank Cooley; In the Clutches of a Gang (1914), short, Keystone, Dir: George Nichils. With Ford Sterling, Hank Mann, Rube Miller; Rebecca’s Wedding Day (1914), short, Keystone, Dir: George Nichols. With Billy Gilbert, Minta Durfee, Phyllis Allen; A Robust Romeo (1914), short, Keystone, Dir: George Nichols; ‘Twixt Love and Fire (1914), short, Keystone, Dir: George Nichols; A Film Johnnie (1914), short, Keystone, Dir: George Nichols. With Charlie Chaplin, Peggy Pearce, Edgar Kennedy. Cameo appearance playing himself; Tango Tangles (1914), short, Keystone, Dir: Mack Sennett. With Charlie Chaplin, Ford Sterling, Edgar Kennedy; His Favorite Pastime (1914), short, Keystone, Dir: George Nichols. With Charlie Chaplin, Peggy Pearce, Frank Opperman; A Rural Demon (1914), short, Keystone, Dir: Henry Lehrman, Mack Sennett. With Eva Nelson; Barnyard Flirtation (1914), short, Keystone, Dir: Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle; Arbuckle’s first directing credit. The Chicken Chaser (1914), short, Keystone, Dir: Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle. With Charles Avery, Rube Miller, Bill Hauber; A Bath House Beauty (1914), short, Keystone, Dir: Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle. With Minta Durfee, Gordon Griffith, Edgar Kennedy; When Hazel Met the Villain (1914), short, Keystone, Dir: Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle; The Bowery Boys (1914), short, Keystone, Dir: George Nichols; A Suspended Ordeal (1914), short, Keystone, Dir: Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle; A Water Dog (1914), short, Keystone, Dir: Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle. With Baby Doris Baker, Minta Durfee, Alice Davenport; The Alarm (1914), short, Keystone, Dir: Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle (and wrote). With Mabel Normand; The Knockout (1914), short, Keystone, Dir: Mack Sennett. With Minta Durfee, Edgar Kennedy, Charlie Chaplin; Fatty and the Heiress (1914), short, Keystone, Dir: Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle. With Phyllis Allen; Fatty’s Finish (1914), short, Keystone, Dir: Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle. With Phyllis Allen, Bill Hauber; Love and Bullets (1914), short, Keystone, Dir: Unknown. With Charlie Murray, Minta Durfee, Edgar Kennedy; A Sky Pirate (1914), short, Keystone, Dir: Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle. With Edgar Kennedy; Those Happy Days (1914), short, Keystone, Dir: Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle. With George “Slim” Summerville; That Minstrel Man (1914), short, Keystone, Dir: Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle. With Frank Hayes; Those Country Kids (1914), short, Keystone, Dir: Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle. With Mabel Normand, Al St. John, Frank Opperman; Fatty’s Gift (1914), short, Keystone, Dir: Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle. With Minta Durfee, Coy Watson Jr; The Masquerader (1914), short, Keystone, Dir: Charlie Chaplin. With Charlie Chaplin, Charlie Murray, Mabel Normand; His New Profession (1914), short, Keystone, Dir: Charlie Chaplin. With Charlie Chaplin, Charles Parrott, Jess Dandy; A Brand New Hero (1914), short, Keystone, Dir: Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle; The Rounders (1914), short, Keystone, Dir: Charlie Chaplin. With Charlie Chaplin, Phyllis Allen, Minta Durfee; Bombs and Bangs (1914), short, Keystone, Dir: Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle; Lover’s Luck (1914), short, Keystone, Dir: Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle. With Minta Durfee, Frank Hayes, Josef Swickard; Fatty’s Debut (1914), short, Keystone, Dir: Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle; Fatty Again (1914), short, Keystone, Dir: Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle. With Minta Durfee, Frank Opperman, Phyllis Allen; Their Ups and Downs (1914), short, Keystone, Dir: Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle. With Billie Bennett; Zip, the Dodger (1914), short, Keystone, Dir: Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle. With Minta Durfee, Wallace MacDonald, Phyllis Allen; Lover’s Post Office (1914), short, Keystone, Dir: Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle. With Minta Durfee, Mabel Normand; An Incompetent Hero (1914), short, Keystone, Dir: Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle. With Edgar Kennedy, Lucille Ward, Minta Durfee; Fatty’s Jonah Day (1914), short, Keystone, Dir: Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle. With Norma Nichols, Al St. John, Frank Hayes; Fatty’s Wine Party (1914), short, Keystone, Dir: Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle. With Mabel Normand, Syd Chaplin, Mack Swain; The Sea Nymphs (1914), short, Keystone, Dir: Mack Sennett. With Mabel Normand, Mack Swain, Minta Durfee; Leading Lizzie Astray (1914), short, Keystone, Dir: Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle. With Minta Durfee, Ed J. Brady, Mack Swain; Shotguns That Kick (1914), short, Keystone, Dir: Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle; Fatty’s Magic Pants (1914), short, Keystone, Dir: Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle. With Minta Durfee, Harry McCoy, Alice Davenport; Fatty and Minnie He-Haw (1914), short, Keystone, Dir: Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle. With Minta Durfee, Minnie He-Haw, Josef Swickard.
Mabel and Fatty’s Wash Day (1915), short, Keystone, Dir: Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle. With Mabel Normand, Harry McCoy, Alice Davenport; Fatty and Mabel’s Simple Life (1915), short, Keystone, Dir: Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle. With Mabel Normand, Al St. John, Josef Swickard; Fatty and Mabel at the San Diego Exposition (1915), short, Keystone, Dir: Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle. With Mabel Normand, Glen Cavender, Minta Durfee; Mable, Fatty, and the Law (1915), short, Keystone, Dir: Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle. With Mabel Normand, Harry Gribbon, Minta Durfee. Title misspelled Normand’s name; Fatty’s New Role (1915), short, Keystone, Dir: Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle. With Mack Swain, George “Slim” Summerville, Bobby Dunn; Mabel and Fatty’s Married Life (1915), short, Keystone, Dir: Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle. With Mabel Normand, Glen Cavender, Al St. John; Hogan’s Romance Upset (1915), short, Keystone, Dir: Charles Avery, Charlie Murray. With Charlie Murray, Bobby Dunn, Billie Brockwell; A Glimpse of the San Diego Exposition (1915), short, Keystone, Dir: Mack Sennett; Fatty’s Reckless Fling (1915), short, Keystone, Dir: Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle. With Minta Durfee, Edgar Kennedy, Katherine Griffith; Fatty’s Chance Acquaintance (1915), short, Keystone, Dir: Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle. With Billie Bennett, Minta Durfee, Harry McCoy; That Little Band of Gold (1915), short, Keystone, Dir: Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle. With Mabel Normand, Ford Sterling, May Emory; Fatty’s Faithful Fido (1915), short, Keystone, Dir: Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle. With Minta Durfee, Al St. John, Frank Hayes; When Love Took Wings (1915), short, Keystone, Dir: Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle. With Ollie Carlyle, Al St. John, Joe Bordeaux; Wished on Mabel (1915), short, Keystone, Dir: Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle. With Mabel Normand, Alice Davenport, Joe Bordeaux; Mabel and Fatty Viewing the World’s Fair at San Francisco (1915), short, Keystone, Dir: Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle. With Mabel Normand, Mayor James Rolph Jr., Mme Ernestine Schumann-Heink; Mabel’s Wilful Way (1915), short, Keystone, Dir: Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle. With Mabel Normand, Edgar Kennedy, Alice Davenport; Miss Fatty’s Seaside Lovers (1915), short, Keystone, Dir: Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle. With Walter Reed, Billie Bennett, Harold Lloyd; The Little Teacher (1915), short, Keystone, Dir: Mack Sennett. With Mabel Normand, Owen Moore, Mack Sennett; Fatty’s Plucky Pup (1915), short, Keystone, Dir: Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle. With Phyllis Allen, Edgar Kennedy, Joe Bordeaux; Fatty’s Tintype Tangle (1915), short, Keystone, Dir: Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle. With Norma Nichols, Louise Fazenda, Edgar Kennedy; Fickle Fatty’s Fall (1915), short, Keystone, Dir: Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle. With Minta Durfee, Phyllis Allen, Al St. John; The Village Scandal (1915), short, Keystone, Dir: Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle. With Raymond Hitchcock, Flora Zabelle, Al St. John; Fatty and the Broadway Stars (1915), short, Keystone, Dir: Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle. With Ivy Crosthwaite, Al St. John, Joseph Weber.
Fatty and Mabel Adrift (1916), short, Keystone, Dir: Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle (and wrote). With Mabel Normand, Al St. John, Frank Hayes; He Did and He Didn’t (1916), short, Keystone, Dir: Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle (and wrote). With Mabel Normand, William Jefferson, Al St. John; The Bright Lights (1916), short, Keystone, Dir: Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle. With Mabel Normand, William Jefferson, Al St. John. Arbuckle’s last film with Mabel Normand; His Wife’s Mistake (1916), short, Keystone, Dir: Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle. With Al St. John, Minta Durfee, Betty Gray; The Other Man (1916), short, Keystone, Dir: Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle. With Irene Wallace, Horace J. Haines, Lillian Shaffner; The Moonshiners (1916), short, Keystone, Dir: Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle. With Al St. John, Alice Lake, Joe Bordeaux. Directed only; The Waiter’s Ball (1916), short, Keystone, Dir: Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle. With Al St. John, Corinne Parquet, Joe Bordeaux.