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3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
FUNNY HA-HA AND FUNNY PECULIAR, 1 Sep 2005
`I love this book,' reads Johnny Depp's comment on the front dust jacket of I, FATTY. `I like it,' is mine. It's a great title for a book and a tremendous tale of early Hollywood, told with a verve and flair reminiscent of that which E L Doctorow's RAGTIME applied to the eastern seaboard of the US of A. I, FATTY is a first-person narrative fictional reconstruction of the life and times of Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, the first Hollywood star to earn $1M a year, only to find his fame turn to infamy and fortune slip from his grasp after a party resulting in the death of a female partygoer in Room 1221 of San Francisco's St Francis Hotel. Revisionist in the sense that this is Arbuckle's personal take on his career and eventual disgrace, there is still no way the fat boy wasn't "at it" - whatever "at it" may mean, of course. He was not a rapist (for reasons revealed in the book), and he was certainly no murderer. But the precise details of Virginia Rappe's demise remain as unclear as they ever were. Fact: Fatty Arbuckle - a definite dipso and occasional drug addict - is caught in flagrante with a damsel in dire distress who subsequently dies. So what is Fatty Arbuckle exactly? A voyeur? Maybe. A raver? Well, yes: he's no angel, that's for sure. But neither is Virginia (-in-name-only) Rappe, the professional lady who expires subsequent to Fatty's alleged ministrations with a Coke bottle. And neither are the press and public any more angelic than they. Thanks to the concentrated attention of the Hearst press in the main (Buster Keaton apart, Fatty's friends are the kind best described as "fair weather") Fatty Arbuckle is a condemned man from the start, and his world caves in completely until, exonerated at last (after a trial and retrials), he makes a lacklustre, partial, almost hand-to-mouth comeback as William Goodrich. On the minus side, Jerry Stahl's narrative is a bit too magazine-speak smooth for my liking. Personal pronouns appear to be anathema to him: a hostile witness instantly becomes "madcap Mabel", Fatty's car is christened "Big man-mobile", and an ill-favoured acquaintance attracts the soubriquet "Old Onion-Breath". Nor is the odd anachronism outside the author's remit: Fatty (dead by 1933) bewails the lack of the GUINNESS BOOK OF RECORDS 20-odd years before its time. But on the plus side, though Chaplin is somewhat neglected due to Fatty's dislike of the man, there are wonderful characterisations here of Mack Sennett and Buster Keaton - in addition to which a young Bob Hope is glimpsed on stage with Fatty in Cleveland, Ohio - and Bogart on Broadway.
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by Simon Louvish
![The Keystone Comedies Collection [DVD]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51TM61NHVRL._SL500_SS90_.jpg)
DVD ~ Mabel Normand
by Simon Louvish
by Simon Louvish
by Simon Louvish
