Fatty Arbuckle’s Plantation Club, 10920 Washington Blvd, Los Angeles, circa 1928
Poor ol’ Fatty Arbuckle. In the early 1920s, a series of highly publicized rape trials in which he was found innocent irreparably damaged his reputation and he was held up but the more conservative elements as an example of the worst of Hollywood’s deviant excesses. With his movie career in tatters, he opened up a place at 7600 Washington Boulevard on August 2nd, 1928. It wasn’t too far from M.G.M. and he called it the Plantation Club (presumably because it looked like a Tara-style home on a Southern plantation.) As we can see from the sign, he used his real name—Roscoe Arbuckle—because by then “Fatty” was too notorious. And he might have made a real go of it. It opened to great success, his Hollywood pals rallying around him. But then the Depression hit and he was wiped out all over again.
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I guess cancel culture isn’t anything new. Buster Keaton defended him at his trial, though, and later gave him a 35% share of the profits in Buster Keaton comedies.
Did he really? I didn’t know that, Denise. That was damn decent of him!
Buster offered to appear at trial as a character witness, but he wasn’t brought to testify. He did publicly defend Arbuckle, however, as did Chaplin. And yes, it has been stated that he shared his studio profits with Roscoe, at least for a time.
I believe Buster was one of his movie friends who performed at the opening of the club. Arbuckle had a circle of friends who stood by him through it all, and they wanted to see him get off to a good, fresh start.
Also want to comment on why the club was called Roscoe Arbuckle’s Plantation Club… Arbuckle absolutely did not want to be called Fatty in his private life. Fatty was his movie character. If someone called him that off-screen, he would correct them and tell them to call him Roscoe. As a club owner, he was most definitely Roscoe, not Fatty.