Editing Roscoe Arbuckle (section)

==Screen comedian==
[[File:OutWest1918-01.jpg|thumb|Arbuckle's nephew [[Al St. John]] (''right'') with [[Buster Keaton]] and Arbuckle in ''[[Out West (1918 film)|Out West]]'' (1918)]]
[[File:Fatty Arbuckle The Hayseed Film Daily 1919.png|thumb|upright|Ad for ''[[The Hayseed]]'' (1919) with Arbuckle holding his dog [[Luke the Dog|Luke]]]]
Despite his physical size, Arbuckle was remarkably agile and acrobatic. Mack Sennett, when recounting his first meeting with Arbuckle, noted that he "skipped up the stairs as lightly as [[Fred Astaire]]" and that he "without warning went into a feather light step, clapped his hands and did a backward somersault as graceful as a girl tumbler". His comedies are noted as rollicking and fast-paced, have many chase scenes, and feature [[sight gag]]s. Arbuckle was fond of the "[[pieing|pie in the face]]", a comedy [[cliché]] that has come to symbolize silent-film-era comedy itself. The earliest known pie thrown in film was in the June 1913 Keystone one-reeler ''[[A Noise from the Deep]]'', starring Arbuckle and frequent screen partner [[Mabel Normand]].<ref>{{Cite book|last=Unterbrink|first=Mary|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=TuFZAAAAMAAJ|title=Funny Women: American Comediennes, 1860–1985|date=1987|publisher=McFarland|isbn=978-0-89950-226-7|page=21|language=en}}</ref>

In 1914, [[Paramount Pictures]] made the then unheard-of offer of US$1,000 a day plus twenty-five percent of all profits and complete artistic control to make movies with Arbuckle and Normand. The movies were so lucrative and popular that in 1918 they offered Arbuckle a three-year, $3&nbsp;million contract (equivalent to ${{Inflation|US|3|1918|r=0}}&nbsp;million in {{Inflation/year|US}}{{inflation-fn|US}}).<ref>{{cite web |last=Rosenberg |first=Jennifer |url=http://history1900s.about.com/od/famouscrimesscandals/a/fattyarbuckle.htm |title=Fatty Arbuckle Scandal |publisher=[[About.com]] |access-date=January 30, 2015}}</ref>

By 1916, Arbuckle was experiencing serious health problems. An infection that developed on his leg became a [[carbuncle]] so severe that doctors considered amputation. Although Arbuckle was able to keep his leg, he was prescribed [[morphine]] against the pain; he would later be accused of being addicted to it.<ref>{{Cite web|last=Chamings|first=Andrew|date=2020-05-30|title=The death of an actress in San Francisco. What happened in room 1219?|url=https://www.sfgate.com/local/slideshow/How-did-Fatty-Arbuckle-kill-an-actress-in-a-SF-202654.php|access-date=2021-08-18|website=SFGATE|language=en-US}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|title=Arbuckle case first true scandal in Hollywood|url=https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2005/apr/17/arbuckle-case-first-true-scandal-in-hollywood/|access-date=2021-08-18|website=The Spokesman-Review}}</ref> Following his recovery, Arbuckle started his own film company, Comique, in partnership with [[Joseph Schenck]]. Although Comique produced some of the best short pictures of the silent era, Arbuckle transferred his controlling interest in the company to [[Buster Keaton]] in 1918 and accepted Paramount's $3&nbsp;million offer to make up to 18 feature films over three years.<ref name="Ellis"/>

Arbuckle disliked his screen nickname. "Fatty" had also been Arbuckle's nickname since school; "It was inevitable", he said. Fans also called Roscoe "The Prince of Whales" and "The Balloonatic". However, the name ''Fatty'' identifies the character that Arbuckle portrayed on-screen (usually a naive hayseed), not Arbuckle himself. When Arbuckle portrayed a female, the character was named "Miss Fatty", as in the film ''[[Miss Fatty's Seaside Lovers]]''. Arbuckle discouraged anyone from addressing him as "Fatty" off-screen, and when they did so his usual response was, "I've got a name, you know."<ref>{{cite web |quote=[[Alice Lake]] called him Arbie. To Mabel Normand he was Big Otto, after an elephant in the Selig Studio Zoo near Keystone. Buster Keaton called him Chief. [[Fred Mace]] called him Crab. And for some unexplained reason fellow comic [[Charles Murray (American actor)|Charlie Murray]] referred to him as My Child the Fat. His three wives always called him Roscoe |url=http://silent-movies.org/Arbucklemania/FACTS.html |title=Interesting facts about Roscoe Arbuckle |publisher=Arbucklemania |access-date=January 30, 2015}}</ref>