The Sheila Variations

I not sure who this Roscoe Arbuckle person is, but looking at his eyes, he appears to be a psycho killer...

Close.

..okay, I need a history lesson, what is the dirt on Fatty?

Read this link. It tells all.

It's a famous scandal - one of the first scandals in Hollywood. And it's nasty.

Buster smiled and laughed a lot in the Fatty shorts. It wasn't until he starred in his own shorts that he bacame known as the Great Stone Face.

I think we should all shove a pie in someone's face today in honor of poor Roscoe.

The most high-profile dirt was his arrest and prosecution for Manslaughter in 1921 in connection the death of a self-described actress named Virginia Rappe.

The story goes that during a Labor Day weekend party at the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco, some vague horror occurred between the two (the stories are too numerous to summarize . . . though the press of the day settled on dark musings about Champagne bottles . . . and, believe it or not, the prosecution never settled on a single version of events, even as they brought the case to court) which resulted in her demise from Peritonitis just three days later. At the time it was as big a story as the O.J. Simpson snuffs would be in the 90s, but unlike the defendant in that circus, Arbuckle was, by every scrap of available evidence (much of which was known to prosecutors at the time), totally innocent to the charge. Unfortunately he had to endure two hung juries and three trials before he was acquitted, and even then it did him no good. He remains one of the few individuals in that industry to have been openly and publicly banned from it (though the proscription was lifted a number of years later).

There are countless theories of what exactly happened that weekend and what may have been behind it all; few of them reliable. My own theory is that Arbuckle was the victim of a scheme to publicly embarass him that spun out of all control.

The best book on this subject is 'Frameup!' by Andy Edmonds; which incidentally is also the best biography of Roscoe Arbuckle to date.

(thanks for linking to the image!)

And William Randolph Hearst made it his number one priority to convict the guy in the press. For his own scandalous reasons - I would LOVE to know what REALLY happened with all those scandals back then, Thelma Todd, and Ince, and all that.

For a rather good writeup on the Arbuckle scandal,
take a look at: http://www.thensaiswatchin.com/
scroll down on the right and there's a section
called Classic Scandals.

As for the picture Tom put up,
I thought it was fascinating but as I write this,
I have no idea who Al St. John is, but he sure
has quite the expression on his face.

Regards, Hank

Al St. John is Roscoe's nephew and co-starred in a lot of his and Buster's films. Later, he fell into the "comedy relief sidekick" role in several westerns. He also starred in some solo shorts in the 40s; I recently saw one that was...odd.

He has a page on Wikipedia if you want details.