Paradise Found on Grounds of Arbuckle Home

callmefatty.com in front of Arbuckle's fit-for-a-king home in Los Angeles

Click here for more images of Arbuckle's home

April 9, 2005: Roscoe Arbuckle's home isn't on Sunset Boulevard. It isn't in Beverly Hills, and it isn't near the beach. It's squarely in downtown Los Angeles, five miles from Florence and Normandie--the notorious intersection at the epicenter of the 1992 riots.

And yet, you'd never know it. Sure, West Adams Boulevard is surging with traffic, and there's a Popeye's Chicken & Biscuits on the corner, but thanks to community efforts, the West Adams neighborhood Arbuckle once called home looks better than ever--maybe even as good as it looked 100 years ago, when the area was famous for its Victorian homes and lush gardens.

Arbuckle's block is green and serene, rife with palm trees and--last month--blooming pink azaleas and orange trumpet lilies. The home at 649 West Adams Boulevard is adjacent to the scrupulously maintained Doheny Campus of Mount St. Mary's College, and right next-door is the elegant St. Vincent Catholic Church, built an L.A. eternity ago in 1887.

Like Arbuckle himself, the home is big and looks splendid. Currently said to be occupied by Catholic priests, it's a five-bedroom, Tudor-style mansion that doesn't appear to have aged a day since 1921.

Arbuckle paid about a quarter of a million dollars for the home back in the teens. According to Arbuckle's first wife, Minta, the estate was built for a woman named Mrs. Huntington Randolph Miner, whose relations included the king of Spain. The home was replete with mahogany-paneled walls, a drawing room large enough to accommodate 200, an elaborately carved front door, and a backyard wishing well and waterfall. It was also partly furnished; Minta wrote that some of Miner's fancy wedding gifts remained in the home even after Arbuckle purchased it--including a dining table from the emperor of China.

Arbuckle lived here for only about two years, but because it was his residence when scandal hit in 1921, it's the home most often associated with him. The mansion is also famous for having been the residence of another silent great, actress Theda Bara. And after Arbuckle moved out, it was home to Arbuckle's great friend, producer Joe Schenck, and his wife, actress Norma Talmadge.

Today, the St. Mary's campus is aligned directly behind the home, and you can walk right up to the estate's back gate and peek though the bars at its sprawling backyard. If you do, you may notice a certain ethereal stillness. You may hear the birds chirp and the low whirr of a mower somewhere, and the breeze stirring among the leaves of the giant, overarching trees. For me, it was almost like stepping back through time, and as if at any moment I might realize that the soft breeze wasn't a breeze at all, but the sad and wistful sigh of the man who used to live here.

April 9, 2005: He's still light on his feet, still attired in the same baggy pants and diminutive bowler, still executing the same gags, expertly calibrated for laughs. But it's not the same Arbuckle. This time, there's a sad cast to his eyes, lending tragic undertones to an otherwise harebrained little two-reeler called "Buzzin' Around."

"Buzzin' Around" was among Arbuckle's final films, one of six comedy shorts he made for Warner Brothers in 1932 and 1933. More than a decade after the scandal that deflated his career, Arbuckle was back on track, poised for a comeback.

I viewed "Buzzin' Around" last month in Los Angeles, where it's part of the vast collection housed by the UCLA Film and Television Archives. The print had long ago lost its soundtrack, but I didn't care. Released the year he died, the film promised a glimpse at the post-scandal Arbuckle, the Arbuckle who'd been to hell and back and was still able to carry on, to work, to create. I'd heard this Arbuckle still had it going on--still had the talent, the timing, the magic--and I wanted to see so for myself.

The Archives stores its fragile nitrate stock at a Hollywood facility just south of Santa Monica Boulevard at 1015 North Cahuenga. The viewing room was no more than a tiny office, part of a lot known as Television Center, where somewhere down an alley that day they were shooting a Wells Fargo commercial. Moments after I arrived for my appointment, an attendant named Joey was ready to thread the first reel of "Buzzin' Around" through a Steenbeck flatbed projector (similar to a microfilm viewer), favored by archivists because it places only minimal stress on delicate film stock.

As best as I could discern given that this was an unintentionally silent film, the picture casts Arbuckle as the inventor of a special formula capable of "rubberizing" anything breakable; dab it on a vase, say, and the vase is rendered indubitably bounce-able. Naturally, mix-ups abound, and plenty of chases and melees ensue--particularly when Arbuckle calls on the proprietor of a china shop.

Arbuckle is terrific--game, funny, charming. Warners clearly wanted to play it safe by having him adopt his old screen persona, and even though Arbuckle was older (and wiser), the Fatty schtick still works. Like Chaplin's Little Tramp, Arbuckle's "Fatty" is ageless and timeless, a symbol of innocent good intentions butting up against unforeseen and extraordinary chaos, a hapless rascal in an amoral world.

Arbuckle's nephew, Al St. John--an integral part of the Arbuckle team at Comique--co-stars, and at a glance, the film almost looks as if it sprang from Arbuckle's salad days of the late teens.

Almost. I couldn't overlook those sad eyes. Woody Allen's latest characters may wonder if life is a comedy or tragedy, but we all know that it's both. As Bernard Malamud has put it, "Life is a tragedy full of joy." Or maybe it's a comedy full of heartbreak, kind of like "Buzzin' Around."


Warners gambled on Arbuckle, and Arbuckle delivered. The studio was so pleased with his work in "Buzzin' Around" and the other shorts that the studio wanted Arbuckle to star in feature-length films. The paperwork was already being prepared. Arbuckle had passed the test, and here it was: the chance to reclaim his spot in the comedy pantheon.

My guess is that the studio would have let him shed the baggy pants and the bowler. I also reckon that Arbuckle, newly married and by all accounts entering a new period of stability, might have been able to find his groove, to build his craft and channel his wrenching life experiences into his art--shaping, crafting, and innovating, just as he did at Keystone and Comique.

Warners may have been ready to give him a chance, but fate wasn't. Arbuckle died shortly after completing a sixth Warners short--by some accounts, that very night. Just as in 1921, the man who'd only just reached the summit got unmercifully pushed off.