The Fatty Arbuckle case (1962)

alone, smoking. "I'm not as young as I used to be," he said. "After all that noise and drinking and smoke I can't breathe." Ray sympathized. But Arbuckle came in to cut the cake, open the first bottle of champagne and make a toast: "To Addie on our first Let's all meet here for our fiftieth." It got a howl of approval. Then the boys insisted Arbuckle entertain. He refused, but constant urging brought out the ham and he did some imitations, told some jokes and did a scene from the short just completed. There wasn't a sour note in the evening. The party broke up at 2 a.m. Arbuckle and Addie were dropped off at their hotel and Arbuckle went right to bed with the words, "I'm beat." They were the last words he ever uttered. A few minutes later, at 3:12 a.m. Addie asked Arbuckle if he'd like some hot milk. He didn't answer. She took one look at him and screamed. She called the hotel doctor but Arbuckle was already gone. Doctor Liebling said it was a heart attack. He died in a hotel room not much different from the one in which his career had died twelve years before. The following Saturday, Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle was laid out in the Gold Room of Campbell's Funeral Parlor, where Rudolph Valentino's body had been placed on view. Thousands filed passed his bier to take a last look at the rotund comic. In death he drew bigger crowds than he had in the last twelve years of his life. Most newspapers were kind in their obituaries. The New York Herald-Tribune asked: "Did Roscoe Arbuckle rape and murder Virginia Rappe in a Hotel St. Francis room in San Francisco? We don't know. But if he didn't, life gave him a raw deal." That's the way we feeL 156