WHERE FATTY ARBUCKLE
IS AND ISN'T BURIED
by Robert Young, Jr.
Legendary silent film comedian and director Roscoe
"Fatty" Arbuckle was on the eve of a revival of his career in
films as a performer when he took his third wife, actress Addie McPhail,
to dinner the evening of June 28, 1933, at Billy LaHiff's Tavern in West
48th Street, New York City, to celebrate their first wedding anniversary.
That afternoon, Arbuckle had completed shooting the last of five two-reel
sound comedies contracted for by Warner Bros. In the offing was the possibility
of again starring in features, as he had before accusations of rape and
murder and three high profile trials on charges of manslaughter destroyed
his million dollar-a-year career. He had been cleared. Nonetheless, film
censorship czar and Hollywood apologist Will H. Hays, honoring the studio
source of his $100,000 annual salary, banned him from in front of the cameras.
At LaHiff's that warm June evening, Arbuckle was in high spirits, excited,
and happy. "We had a lot of fun that night," Addie later recalled.
Roscoe greeted and talked with friends while she played backgammon with
LaHiff until the comedian said he was sleepy. It had been a long hard day.
He had been up since first light and had spent most of the day exerting
himself before the cameras. At one point he had had to take a break and
catch his breath. Director Ray McCarey remembered him gasping and puffing.
The Arbuckles left LaHiff's and returned to their suite in Manhattan's Park
Central Hotel. Roscoe was in bed and asleep by 12:30 A.M. Addie spoke to
him, but got no answer. The trace of a smile on his moon face, he was gone.
Long taxed by his weight and exertions, his heart had quit. He was dead
at 46.
Following the usual examination and cause of death ruling by the New York
City cxoroner, the comedian's body was enbalmed by the city's fashionable
society and celebrity mortuary, the Frank E. Campbell Funeral Church, on
Broadway. Addie announced it would be cremated, saying, "That was what
Roscoe wanted." Dressed in a conservative, medium gray, single-breasted
suit, white shirt, and dark bowtie, the body was placed in a grey casket
with silver handles and, for viewing, put in Campbell's celebrated Gold
Room, the same salon in which film idol and Arbuckle friend Rudolph Valentino
had lain following his lingering death in August 1926. Upwards of 12,000
curious and grieving had filed by his bier. An estimated 800 to 1,000, many
of them children, came to pass by Arbuckle.
Funeral services, conducted by the Elks, were held the afternoon of July
1, beginning at 1:30 P.M. Ray McCarey, comedian Bert Lahr, and vaudeville
great Gus Edwards, were among the honorary pallbearers. Old friends Charlie
Chaplin and Buster Keaton sent flowers. Will Rogers gave the eulogy, folowing
which the casket was closed and taken to Fresh Pond, Middle Village, Long
Island, where the body was cremated. Campbell's collected and stored at
ashes at the widow's request.
In September 1934, following her return to Los Angeles from New York, Addie
Arbuckle had a friend in Manhattan arrange to have Roscoe's ashes expressed
to her in Hollywood. Shortly thereafter, early one morning without fanfare---and
no admitted witnesses---she scattered them on the Pacific Ocean off Santa
Monica. The act went unreported in the newspapers. But she made no secret
of it.
Despite this, numerous writers over the more than sixty years that have
passed have seen fit to record as fact that Arbuckle is buried in Forest
Lawn in Hollywood and Woodlawn in New York City.
One of the most recent accounts of Arbuckle's life and career, by Stuart
Oderman, published early in 1994, has been interred in Forest Lawn and visited
there by his first wife actress Minta Durfee, who died in 1975. She may
have, as Oderman says, visited Forest Lawn and dropped a single red rose
on the fresh earth of a new grave, but it wasn't Roscoe's.
Author Andy Edwards, in her 1991 error-filled biography of the comedian,
has him cremated, but offers no disposition of the ashes.
British biographer David Yallop, despite exhaustive research, merely records
Arbuckle's peaceful New York hotel suite death.
David Cross and Robert Bent record in "Dead Ends," published in
1991, that Arbuckle is buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, New York.
It's possible they were thinking of actor Macklin Arbuckle.
In my bio-bibliograpy of Arbuckle, published in June 1994, thanks to a letter
to me from Addie Arbuckle Sheldon, now in her 90's, and corroboration by
a vice president of the Frank E. Campbell Funeral Church, who searched the
records for me, I established what followed cremation, and when.
All other accounts to the contrary, Roscoe Arbuckle's body was cremated
the evening of July 1, 1933. The ashes were shipped to his widow, Addie
McPhail Arbuckle, on September 6, 1934, and shortly thereafter, she told
this author, "they were given to the Pacific Ocean."
