Results tagged “fattyarbuckle”

After Fatty Arbuckle's career was deep-sixed by one of the biggest scandals of its day, he tried his hands at a few things, not the least of which was Fatty Arbuckle's Plantation Cafe. Built at 11700 Washington Boulevard in Culver City, across the street from the site of Arbuckle's elementary school.

William Desmond Taylor lived the kind of life that would be tough to live today, in our era of numbers and cards and facial recognition software. In the end, he paid a steep price for that life and so did Hollywood. Maybe he even lived many lives.

Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle had the dubious distinction of being the movie business' first scandal. Born in Kansas in 1887, Roscoe Arbuckle (who only used the name "Fatty" professionally, and otherwise detested it) was catapulted to fame in Mack Sennett's Keystone Cops movies. He made famous the "pie in the face" gag so familiar to many of us. For a larger gentleman, he was an astonishingly graceful tumbler, and was said to have a lovely singing voice. Opera singer Enrico Caruso told him, "with training you could become the second greatest singer in the world." The first, presumably, being himself. He mentored both Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton.

Jerry Stahl, the author of the imagined Fatty Arbuckle autobiography I, Fatty, will be in conversation on Wednesday night with Erica Jong. Since it's for her book tour, they'll probably spend more time talking about blow jobs than silent movies, but you never know. That Fatty had some pretty wild parties (he was acquitted, eventually, in his notorious murder trial). It's part of the excellent Writers Bloc reading series, taking place this time at the Skirball.

The Silverlake Film Festival is on and, as you might guess, it features new independent films, many from local filmmakers (right on). But if you guessed that the Silverlake Film Festival was taking place in Silverlake, you'd be dead wrong.