Some Additional Arbuckles

Having already written about such Fatty Arbuckle-adjacent figures as nephew Al St. John, wife Minta Durfee, ill-fated associate Virginia Rappe, and countless of his professional colleagues (Mack Sennett, Buster Keaton, Mabel Normand etc etc) one might think it safe to assume the Arbuckle-orbit fairly exhausted. But there’s always more. July 9 happens to have been the birthday of Maclyn Arbuckle (1866-1931), Roscoe’s cousin, a major stage and screen star in his own right.

If Fatty’s name has fallen by the wayside, Maclyn’s has fallen even farther, yet he is not without significance. The two men are invariably described as cousins, which is accurate, I think but misleading. From what I can glean, they weren’t first cousins or anywhere near it. Roscoe’s Arbuckle ancestor had immigrated to America from Scotland five generations earlier, during the Colonial period. Whereas Maclyn’s FATHER had come from Scotland. Historians and genealogists, understandably, err on the side of caution as a matter of course, which is one reason I prefer not to call myself by those titles, preferring to remain unbound by such restrictions. I like to lean on common sense and logic where information is lacking. They’re all from Scotland, and Arbuckle is not such a common name. Somewhere down the line they’re likely related.

It also seems likely to me that Roscoe, knowing of Maclyn’s fame, might have been drawn in part to the theatrical world on that account. Maclyn was over 20 years older than Roscoe. He was just starting his theatrical career around the time Roscoe was born. Educated in Glasgow and Boston, he’d originally studied to be a lawyer, and practiced for about a year, abandoning the career in pursuit of the greater financial fortunes to be derived from the stage. Having been born and raised in Texas, he first went on the stage just over the border in Shreveport. He traveled with stock companies for over a decade, spending four of those years as a member of the R.D. McLean company in New York State.

Arbuckle made his Broadway debut in 1899 as the title character in Why Smith Left Home opposite Annie Yeamans. He continued to star on the New York stage for the next quarter stage, in such things as the original production of Under Two Flags (1901), which was later made into a 1922 film by Tod Browning, then remade as a talkie in 1936; George Ade’sThe County Chairman (1903), in which he played the title character; The Round-Up (1907), which became the basis of Roscoe Arbuckle’s first feature length film; and the U.S. premiere of Shaw’s Misalliance (1917). Maclyn also starred in classics like The Merchant of Venice, The Rivals, and She Stoops to Conquer, and embarked on vaudeville tours on occasion with one-act plays.

Maclyn’s screen career was more modest. He appeared in 18 films between 1914 and 1926, starting with a movie version of his Broadway hit The County Chairman. The best remembered of his films isJanice Meredith (1924) with Marion Davies and W.C. Fields. I am particularly interested in the now-lost 1923 movie Broadway Broke, in which he played P.T. Barnum. His last was J. Stuart Blackton’sThe Gilded Highway (1926) with Dorothy Devore.

But wait! We have not yet exhausted our Arbuckles!

For there was also Maclyn’s much younger brother Andrew Arbuckle (1887-1938). Andrew was of Roscoe’s generation, and was known almost entirely as a film actor, although he had begun his career in vaudeville. Andrew was in 50 movies between 1915 and 1935, all but two of them silents. Andrew was a supporting player, usually pretty far down in the credits. He was second billed however in Peggy Leads the Way (1917) with Mary Miles Minter.Little Mary Sunshine (1916) starring Baby Marie, and Jazz Mad (1928) are a couple of his others. In 1932 he appeared in a comedy short called Ex-Rooster with Chic Sale and Bud Jamison. A bit part in The Dark Angel (1935) was his swan song.

For more on vaudeville,where all the Arbuckles once performed,consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, for more on silent film please check out my book: Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube.