| 13 | Swan Songs: Celebrity Suicides |
| 14 | We’re Gonna Need a Bigger Casket |
| 15 | Actors Who Had “Cut” Called Too Soon |
| 16 | More Mysterious and Ultimately Unresolved Celebrity Deaths |
| 17 | Actors Who Started Off as Porn Stars… and May Have Gone Back to Being Porn Stars |
| 18 | Factual Errors |
| 19 | Made for TV Movies That Would Never Be Made Today |
| 20 | Flop! |
| 21 | Great Artists Who Made Bad Decisions |
| 22 | The Most Glamorous Profession Meets the Oldest Profession |
| 23 | Marriages That Weren’t Meant to Be |
| 24 | Celebrities Who Made Sure Their Children Will Be Remembered |
| 25 | When Your Biggest Fans Turn Out to Be Crazy |
| 26 | Why Can’t We Be Friends? |
| 27 | Alan Smithee: The Alias Men |
| 28 | Anna Nicole Smith: Grave Robber |
| 29 | When Should You Talk to Your Children About Sex… with Rob Lowe? |
| 30 | “I’m Insane!” Christian Slater is Freaking Out! |
| 31 | Olive Thomas: The Flapper Hits the Crapper |
| 32 | Winona Ryder and the Five-Finger Discount |
| About the Author |
THE SCOOP:
TALES of Lust, Legends, Weirdness, and Woe
1
Fatty Arbuckle Suffers a Crushing Victory
ROSCOE CONKLING ARBUCKLE CAME crashing into the world on March 24, 1887, weighing sixteen pounds. If the birth of a sixteen-pound baby wasn’t enough cause for alarm, it happened in the midst of a tornado. In Arbuckle’s words, “My birth and a cyclone blew Smith Center [Kansas] off the map.” He was the youngest of nine children—little wonder his mother stopped with Roscoe. His young life was not filled with happiness. Roscoe’s mother died when he was twelve years old. His father was a drunk with a violent temper. But Roscoe grew up to be a rotund man who could make people laugh.
Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle may have played an idiot onscreen, but in reality he was an actor with great comic timing. His films were often a mixture of vulgarity and innocence—like a fat, horny five-year-old getting his first peck on the cheek.
Arbuckle could have been a legend. At one point he was more popular than his associate Charles Chaplin. He helped Buster Keaton become the star that he was. But one event at a Labor Day party—leading to the mysterious death of a young woman—would bring notoriety to Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle and ruin everything for him. Even after three trials—all ending in acquittal for Arbuckle—he would never recover from his