Roscoe Arbuckle a feature film. Roscoe Conkling Arbuckle was born on March 24, 1887, in Smith Center, Kansas, one of nine children of Mary E. "Mollie" Gordon (d. February 19, 1898) and William Goodrich Arbuckle. He weighed in excess of at birth and, as both parents had slim builds, his father believed the child was not his. Consequently, he named the baby after a politician (and notorious philanderer) whom he despised, Republican senator Roscoe Conkling of New York. The birth was traumatic for Mollie and resulted in chronic health problems that contributed to her death 12 years later. When Arbuckle was nearly
Roscoe Conkling figures of the day (including former presidents Martin Van Buren and John Quincy Adams) left an impression on young Roscoe. However, described by his father as "utterly untutored" and a "romping boy," Roscoe (age thirteen at the time) was left in the care of Professor George W. Clarke at the Mount Washington Collegiate Institute in New York City so that he may "be trained to studious habits." While constantly referring to a 1787 British textbook titled "The Art of Speaking," which emphasized the importance of facial action and gesture, Roscoe and his older brother took lessons in diction from an