#fatty's suitless day 1914

[vintagedreamsofsennett]

Roscoe and Minta Arbuckle - They should've been happy

(part 2)

One day, while returning to Long Beach from a sightseeing trip in Los Angeles, Arbuckle noticed a young woman seated across from him on the electric train. He offered up a smile to the auburn-haired, blue-eyed girl, who was barely five feet tall and one hundred pounds. She refused it. When her suitcase began to slip in the luggage rack above her, he pushed it back, again bidding for her attention.

"Please don't touch my suitcase," she told him. "I don't like blonds or fat men. I can manage for myself."

"Sorry," he said. "Gee, I'm sorry." He moved to another seat.

"I don't know what got into me," the woman later recalled. "Actually, I was attracted to him, but I could not let myself be picked up, could I?" Of his appearance, she remembered: "He was heavy but handsome. Oh God, he looked like he had been scrubbed to death. He had a complexion any woman in the world would die to have. His hair was so blond. And he was dressed meticulously, white trousers, white shoes, blue coat, and a straw hat." Self-conscious about his excess weight, Arbuckle remained a meticulous dresser throughout his life.

The young woman was Minta Durfee.

-Merritt, G., 2016, Room 1219, Chicago Review Press Incorporated, pp. 25~26

[vintagedreamsofsennett]

Roscoe and Minta Arbuckle - They should've been happy

(part 1)

On a train to Sacramento in September 1911, Durfee experienced cramps. She soon discovered she was pregnant, but her and her husband's ecstasy was short-lived before she suffered a miscarriage. They were divastated. Arbuckle blamed himself, as he reflexively did when bad things happened to those around him. They were young. They were certain would have other opportunities to be parents. (1911)

The new offer from Ferris Hartman was an opportunity for the Arbuckles to see exotic places to which few Americans ventured. Hartman made by a Manila-based American tycoon, to take his company on a tour of the Orient; perpetually in debt, Hartman had to scramble to assemble the necessary cast, costumes, props, and scripts. The troupe of forty-three singer-actors, dancers, musicians, and stagehands set sail on August 12, 1912, on a Pacific Mail steamship headed west. It was a protracted voyage over seven thousand miles of ocean. One room was occupied by the Arbuckles. (1912)

Durfee later remembered their excitement in the journey's early days: "Roscoe and I made it a habit to stand together at the rail late at night, staring at the running sea. We were extremely close at those moments, closer perhaps than any other times in our lives. We were happy, truly happy." (1912)

-Merritt, G., 2016, Room 1219, Chicago Review Press Incorporated, pp.56~7