Abandoned as a boy in Kansas, Fatty Arbuckle found adulation first onstage, and then in
the new medium of the cinema. In his day, during the second decade of the 1900s, Fatty
was more popular than Charlie Chaplin; he became the first screen actor to make a mil-
lion dollars a year. But in 1921 he was accused of the rape and murder of actress Virginia
Rappe, whom he encountered at a party in San Francisco and who died a few days later.
Though he was eventually acquitted by a unanimous jury, the virulent speculation by the
press ultimately destroyed Arbuckle's career for good. Framed for a crime he didn't com-
mit, and demonised by conservative powers that hyped the case as emblematic of all the
evils of show business, Fatty Arbuckle was the OJ Simpson of early Hollywood; the first
modern celebrity whose presumed guilt - and alleged innocence - scandalised a nation.
In I, Fatty, Jerry Stahl, the celebrated author of Permanent Midnight, tells the story from
Fatty's own perspective. This is an incisive and sympathetic look into the life of a man
whose astonishing rise and fall set the precedent for the scandals that still shake
Hollywood today.
Jerry Stahl is the American hipster bard'
James Ellroy
Jerry Stahl's work fills the gap in American literature left void since the death of the late,
great Terry Southern'
Jim Carroll
'[Stahl's] brilliantly demented riffs beg to be read - or screamed - aloud'
Entertainment Weekly
'Astonishing ...ingenious. Stahl's a fabulous writer, tunneling deeply into Fatty's mind,
creating a richly sympathetic voice that veers from wisecracks to woe, all brilliantly
illuminating the humanity behind the clown mask and revealing a man starved for love'
Boston Sunday Globe
Jo Bannister
Breaking Faith
Jo Bannister
See Review by
Martin Edwards
- author of the highly acclaimed Harry Devlin Mysteries
