The best Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle’s documentary movies
If you love cinema, you will share this ranking of the best Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle’s movies, although you may have ordered them differently. In any case, we hope you love it and with a little luck discovering a movie that you still don’t know about Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle.
Days of Thrills and Laughter
7.1/10
An appreciative, uncritical look at silent film comedies and thrillers from early in the century through the 1920s.
Looking for Mabel Normand
A documentary on the life and career of silent film star Mabel Normand.
When Comedy Was King
7.4/10
A compilation featuring comedic stars of the silent era including Fatty Arbuckle, Charles Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Charley Chase, and Laurel and Hardy.
So Funny It Hurt: Buster Keaton & MGM
7.2/10
A Turner Classic Movies (TCM) documentary about Keaton's discontented relationship with MGM and the events that eventually led to his career downfall.
Screen Snapshots (Series 1, No. 20)
Intimate views of the movie stars of the Silent Era, at work and play; featuring Sessue Hayakawa, Lillian Gish and others.
Mabel and Fatty Viewing the World's Fair at San Francisco
5.3/10
Frequent comedy co-stars Fatty Arbuckle and Mabel Normand take viewers on a tour of the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco. Attractions shown include the U.S. Battleship "Oregon", the Australian convict ship "Success" (complete with such punishment devices as a flogging rack and a spiked Iron Maiden), the world's tallest flagpole (251 feet), the Court of Abundance, the Court of the Universe (with sunken garden) and the Tower of Jewels. Fatty and Mabel also visit Frisco's still-under-construction City Hall, accompanied by Frisco's then-Mayor James Rolph Jr. Also appearing in the film is opera star Ernestine Schumann-Heink.
Buster Keaton: From Silents to Shorts
7.1/10
A documentary short included as an extra with "The Buster Keaton Collection".
A Glimpse of the San Diego Exposition
4.2/10
In 1915-16, San Diego's Balboa Park was the scene of an exposition to mark completion of the Panama Canal. This film takes us through the exposition: from the Cabrillo bridge and a panoramic view of the site, to the facades of the California Building, Horticultural Building, Panama Canal Exhibit, and the reproduction of the locks at Gatuna. We see tourists on the isthmus and a crowd outside the Panama Film Company's exhibit of how movies are made. We watch the feeding of fish at the laguna, and we end at the Plaza de Panama where toddlers are surrounded by pigeons. Fatty Arbuckle makes a brief appearance outside the Panama Film exhibit. Titles give us each structure's cost.
