Based on real events, Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle was an even a bigger silent movie star than Charlie Chaplin. In fact, Chaplin's "Little Tramp" was costumed partially with a pair of Fatty's trousers. In 1921 at the height of his popularity, Fatty is entangled in the scandlous death of a Hollywood starlet at a San Francisco hotel during a Labor Day Party. The famous silent comic is accused of raping the young woman with a Coke bottle which lead to her to bleeding to death. Overweight newspaper magnet William Randolph Hearst tries and convicts Fatty Arbuckle in Hearst's coast to coast tabloid newspapers while living a life of luxury and excess with his demunitive screen star mistress, Marian Davies. Three different trials are required before the murder charges are settled.