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
Billy West (silent film actor) became his own producer, and dropped the Chaplin imitation in favor of a dapper, straw-hatted, pencil-mustached character. Moving behind the cameras in 1925, West produced a brief series of slapstick comedies co-starring the fat-and-skinny team of Oliver "Babe" Hardy and Bobby Ray, and a series of "Winnie Winkle" comedies with Ethelyn Gibson. West took small roles in sound films, first for small independent companies and later for Columbia Pictures. He became manager of the Columbia Grill restaurant. He died July 21, 1975, of a heart attack while leaving the Hollywood Park racetrack in Hollywood, California. Billy West (silent film actor)