Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle is roundly remembered for something awful which he did not do. I'm not ... It Ain't Over 'Til

Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle is roundly remembered for something awful which he did not do. I'm not even going to mention what it was, it's haunted him unfairly for so long.

Fatty Arbuckle was the first and most notable casualty of moral right-wing crusades against the presumed (and in some cases readily evident) debauchery of Hollywood. After Arbuckle was drawn and quartered by the tabloid press, the scandal (of which a courtroom and countless scholars have found him completely innocent) led directly to such do-gooder dominations as the Hays Office, the Hollywood Production Code, and hundreds of puritanical small-town committees which assured that Hollywood product would be free of sinful or salacious content, and that filmmakers who stepped out of line would be censored into oblivion.

At one time the most famous and highest-paid film star on the planet, Arbuckles' legacy lived on in the work of others: Charlie Chaplin, who borrowed Arbuckle's oversize trousers to become "The Tramp"; Buster Keaton, who moved from the vaudeville stage to film frolics under Fatty's tutelage; and his frequent co-star Mabel Normand, whose prominence as the finest comic actress of her day and perhaps the first female film director was overshadowed by her own scandals and rapid career decline.

Arbuckle is suddenly back in vogue, with a celebrated novel about him, a painstaking restored sampling of his work spanning a four-DVD set, a modern jazz tribute to him touring the country, and a feature film about his life rumored to be in development.

In 2001, Kino Video indirectly started the revival by releasing two volumes of silent short films Arbuckle directed and starred in between 1917 and 1920. Those shorts, made for Comique/Paramount, put the lie to the impression that Arbuckle was some stereotypical fat clown comic whose work was horribly outdatedbecause otherwise why wouldn't he be better known today?

If you assume that early motion pictures had more tired old comic cliches, were made with less skill, and had no longtime value after the dawn of talkies and technicolor, just put Fatty Arbuckle's oeuvre up against the work of Dom DeLuise or even James Coco and see who comes off smelling the sweetest. His was not "fat man" humor. Graceful, sweet-faced, expressive, versatile, a master of comic timing, Arbuckle's performances are revelatory. Better yet, they're funny.

He plays real, deep characters, indulges in broad caricatures, and dresses decently in drag. He can casually grab a frying pan and flip a flapjack over his head, catching it behind his back. Or kick a hat so that it lands atop his head. He can fall down a flight of stairs, or flip backwards in and out of a wheelbarrow, with maximum comic impact.

Arbuckle was also exalted for his dexterity at the misunderstood art of pie-throwing. In our age, when the splattering of businessmen and celebrities is done as a form of public protest, it's hard to appreciate how pure and refined pie-throwing could be.

Yes, he dressed up as a big baby for a role or two, but most Arbuckle films depict him as a regular guy. In some, he's a mild-mannered married man, open to thoughts of adultery. In others, he turns the tables on con men who take him for a patsy. He foils robberies, merrily chases evildoers as one of the Keystone Cops. More often than not, he gets the girl, and more often than not she's the adorable, energetic Mabel Normand. He defies narrow-minded ideas of what a man with a non-average physique can achieve, in film and in life.

Take the aforementioned He Did and He Didn't , which rates two different versions (one in basic black and white, the other with flashy atmospheric tinting) on the four-DVD set The Forgotten Films of Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle , released last month by Mackinac Media. In this slick comic melodrama, a happily married couple (Fatty and Mabel) entertain the wife's handsome childhood friend, and a bunch of misconstrued coincidences lead Fatty to suspect his wife of adultery. That's when the film lurches into gothic weirdness, with murderous interludes that are alternately funny and scary. There's a moony-faced happy ending and intimations of sex with Mabel.

Arbuckle was no saint, onscreen or off, but he wasn't anywhere near as repellent as the tabloids made him out to be. It's common for fans, friends and relatives of silent movie stars to deny allegations of drug abuse in early Hollywood, even though the scene is well documented. In fact, in many cases the drug habits were even excusable. Slapstick stars, like Arbuckle, were often prescribed painkillers, including the then-new wonder drug heroin, for lingering injuries suffered while doing stunts.

Fatty's most fervent fans and defenders might not agree, but Arbuckle couldn't have asked for a more compassionate "biography" than Jerry Stahl's I Fatty , a true-to-life work of fiction that came out last year. Writing in Arbuckle's voice, Stahl captures the incredible highs and lows of Arbuckle's life: Born into extreme poverty, he became one of the best-paid entertainers in the world, only to lose it all. One of the most familiar faces in filmdom, he had to end his career behind the cameras as a director.

The Arbuckle baggage, the despair that undercuts all the euphoria, has been eloquently captured in Stahl's words. But how does one put those emotions to music?

When the historic Paramount Theatre in Peekskill, N.Y., commissioned acclaimed modern jazz trumpeter and composer Dave Douglas to score a silent film of his choice, he gradually latched onto Arbuckle as his muse.

"Left to my own devices, I found him," says Douglas. "What a great guy. I wasn't aware of him at all, really. But there's this sense of innocence plus a sly wit. His films are so fast-moving compared to other silent comedies I've seen. He's so innovative, inventing the medium itself as it went along."

Douglas quickly caught up on Arbuckliana, reading Stahl's novel as well as investigative journalist David Yallop's landmark 1976 chronicle of the Arbuckle scandal The Day the Laughter Stopped and Andy Edmond's more recent account, Frame-Up .

Douglas' score had its live premiere earlier this month at the Paramount, has been released as a combination CD/DVD called Keystone and figures in Douglas' current tour, which stops Oct. 20 at Firehouse 12 (45 Crown St., New Haven, 785-0468). Using the same band that appears on the recording, Douglas is taking his Arbuckle artistry on the road, performing live while classics like Fatty's Tin-Type Tangle (which is chopped up for the DVD into a spirited music video called "Just Another Murder"), Fatty and Mabel's Wash Day and other "silent" stunners are screened.

Douglas' greatest Arbucklian accomplishment is his moody, tremulous whirlwind accompaniment to Fatty and Mabel Adrift . The 35-minute film is perhaps Arbuckle's best-known, since it yielded some of the most common still photos of him to be found in the film history books: Fatty and Mabel inside a heart-shaped frame, and the sodden couple floating on beds in a flooded bedroom. Like He Did and He Didn't , Fatty and Mabel Adrift is a textured, beauteous blend of over-the-top gags and under-the-skin romantic idealism. Douglas' dynamic score matches the shifting moods, shade for shade. "My intention," Douglas says, "was to write something that's a counterpoint, which runs parallel to the image rather than illustrating it. I doubt Arbuckle would have wanted old-fashioned music illustrating his films today. I rebel against that. Film is a living document."

Live, the project poses special challenges. "I think this band is suited to it. It's an update of an ensemble I had a few years ago [for his album Freak-In], and reminiscent of when I wrote music for the choreographer Tricia Brown. We do add some sound effects. I don't ask the musicians to watch the screen while we're playing, but I have to watch the screen. I didn't want either medium to be a detriment to the other musicians. I want a mood where there can be a killer saxophone solo, and it doesn't detract from the film."

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