ROSCOE 'FATTY' ARBUCKLE
24 March 1887 – 29 June 1933
Hollywood has always been a fertile breeding ground for scandal. This was as true at the birth of the motion picture industry in the first decade of the twentieth century as it is today where scandal has become a cunningly exploited marketing tool thanks to social media and the public's envy-driven need to pass judgement on those it elevates to the status of celebrities. Then as now, the scandals that received the most attention were those involving sex, either of the truly aberrant or only mildly sordid variety. Add the word 'rape' to the mix and you had a story guaranteed to sell fifteen million newspapers.
That was certainly the case with what came to be known as 'the Arbuckle scandal.' In September 1921 a rotund, baby-faced movie comedian named Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle — one of Hollywood's most popular and highest paid performers at that time — was accused of raping and murdering a thirty year old actress named Virginia Rappe, someone he had known professionally for six years without ever having made anything that could be remotely described as a pass at her, in a San Francisco hotel room where they were attending a raucous weekend party.
The fact that Arbuckle was completely exonerated of all the charges filed against him –– he was tried for his alleged crime three times, with the jury who served at his final trial taking all of six minutes to acquit him — made no difference to the public's media-driven perception of him as an obese, lust-crazed sex fiend. In their minds he was morally if not technically guilty of violating Ms Rappe and ending her life no matter what verdict had been delivered by the jury. Nor was he in any way supported by the industry he had been instrumental in helping to create as a member of Mack Sennett's knockabout Keystone Company. The studio heads, including his then boss Adolph Zukor of Paramount Pictures, were only interested in appeasing the opinion-leading women's clubs and religious organizations that were seeking to ban the production of motion pictures in the United States in the same way the prohibition movement had recently fought a successful campaign to make it illegal to manufacture, sell or consume alcohol anywhere within the country. Arbuckle — a lowly comedian rather than a 'respectable' dramatic actor — made the perfect scapegoat to sacrifice to the self-righteous defenders of 'traditional American values.'
It's tempting to speculate what might have become of Arbuckle — a
gifted physical comedian with a fine singing voice (he could have been
the second best operatic tenor in the world according to Enrico Caruso
had he been willing to abandon the silly business of picture making to devote himself exclusively to music) who excelled at impersonating women — had he accepted the invitation of his friend and colleague Buster Keaton to go fishing with him that Labor Day weekend instead of traveling to San Francisco's St Francis Hotel with fellow actors/directors Lowell Sherman and Fred Fishback to co-host a three day 'open house' party at which ample quantities of bootleg liquor would be consumed. Arbuckle
was that rarest of creatures in showbusiness — a major star who
was, by all accounts, completely devoid of ego. He was directly
responsible for introducing Buster Keaton to the screen, having invited
the talented young vaudeville performer to visit him on the set of a
1917 short titled The Butcher Boy he was then in the process of
shooting. Keaton made his cinematic debut in this film and went on to
co-star with the man he affectionately referred to as his mentor in
thirteen more shorts before inheriting Arbuckle's Comique company,
following his friend's sudden fall from grace, along with its producer Joseph Schenck. Keaton immediately signed over 35% of the
company's profits to Arbuckle to ensure his friend had some sort of
income on which to live and pay his legal costs. He then went out and
made the short film Cops, a nightmarish 'comedy' in which he's relentlessly pursued through the streets of Los Angeles by dozens of baton-wielding police officers.
© 1919 Paramount Pictures
Keaton was not the only fellow performer Arbuckle helped during the course of his prematurely curtailed career. He was already an established star, working with Keystone's leading lady Mabel Normand, when a British-born music hall comedian named Charlie Chaplin joined the company in early 1914, subsequently helping the newcomer find his feet in what was still a brand new industry. Arbuckle also gave a boost to another young Englishman named Bob Hope, helping the dancing duo Hope was originally a member of to find steady work in a revue titled Hurley's Jolly Follies. Roscoe Arbuckle was described by everyone who knew him — including his former co-star and soon-to-be ex-wife Minta Durfee who publicly stood by him throughout his ordeal — as an exceedingly nice man who wouldn't hurt a fly. He also disliked the nickname 'Fatty' and would politely tell fans who approached him for his autograph that he had another name if they cared to use it.
None of this mattered when he was arrested on 17 September 1921 as the result of a statement made to the police by Virginia Rappe's friend and fellow party guest Bambina Maude Delmont. Ms Delmont, a 'dress model' who it was eventually revealed had only known Ms Rappe for a matter of days prior to her death, accompanied her to the Labor Day gathering hosted by Arbuckle and his friends Mr Sherman and Mr Fishback along with Ms Rappe's agent Al Semnacher.
The details of exactly what happened on the afternoon of 5 September have been the subject of much lurid conjecture in the hundred years since the alleged crime occurred. What is known is that Arbuckle went to his suite around 2pm to freshen up and change his clothes, only to find Ms Rappe either lying on its floor and physically blocking its door or vomiting into the toilet bowl inside its bathroom (sources disagree). After giving the distressed woman the drink of water she had asked him for, Arbuckle then carried her to the nearest bed and went to seek help from his fellow revelers, returning with them — one of whom may (or may not) have been the prosecution's future star witness Bambina Maude Delmont — to find that Ms Rappe had fallen off the bed and was spread out on the floor with her dress partially torn off, experiencing violent convulsions that were causing her to moan and clutch frantically at her abdomen. The concerned observers placed Ms Rappe in a bath of cool water and, when she appeared to be a little calmer, moved her to a different room where they hoped she would sleep off what were presumed, by them and the hotel physician who was called in to examine her, to be the after effects of having consumed too much poor quality bootleg liquor.
The next morning Arbuckle returned to Hollywood in the company of Mr Sherman and Mr Fishback. In the meantime, Ms Delmont had taken her own room at the St Francis Hotel with the intention of sobering up after hitting the bottle rather heavily herself. The following day, Wednesday 7th September, she apparently went to check on Ms Rappe who was still in bed and, by this time, extremely unwell. After possibly calling in an outside physician named Rumwell to examine her (his attendance has never been confirmed), Ms Delmont arranged to have her 'friend' taken to hospital where she was diagnosed as suffering from systemic alcohol poisoning. Ms Rappe died on Friday 9 September, with an autopsy citing the cause of death as secondary peritonitis caused by what a second post-mortem examination of her body revealed to be a ruptured bladder.
VIRGINIA RAPPE
c 1920
Arbuckle, Sherman and Fishback returned to San Francisco on Saturday 10 September to provide statements to the police. While they were doing this, Ms Delmont remained safely ensconced inside her hotel room, supposedly near to a state of collapse as she described to a police stenographer how Arbuckle had dragged Ms Rappe to his suite and sexually violated her while she had stood outside shouting in protest and trying in vain to kick down the room's internally locked door.
Ms Delmont, who later embarked on a successful public speaking tour of the United States in which she lectured on the wickedness running rampant in sin-and-gin soaked Hollywood, neglected to mention that Ms Rappe had long been a sufferer of cystitis, a form of urinary tract infection aggravated by the consumption of alcohol. (There was also a suggestion that Ms Rappe may have undergone or was seeking an abortion before attending the party, though this was never conclusively proven despite the fact that she'd undergone up to five abortions since the age of sixteen, had given birth to one child out of wedlock in 1917 and had a history of promiscuity and mental instability.) Nor did Ms Delmont mention that no other guest attending the party at the time the alleged rape and murder took place — a group that included Ms Rappe's agent Al Semnacher who subsequently testified in court that Arbuckle had performed sexual acts on his deceased client with either a piece of ice or a Coca-Cola bottle — had been aware of what was happening to her or, even more shockingly, had made any effort to stop it.
Ms Delmont's testimony, which varied each time it was repeated and was subsequently revealed to have been made for the purpose of extorting money from the accused before his case went to trial, became the cornerstone of the prosecution argument presented to the court by District Attorney Matthew Brady, supported by testimony provided by another female party guest identified as Zey Prevon (or Sarah Reiss, sources again disagree) that was supposedly even more shocking than that offered to the jury by Ms Rappe's so-called 'friend.' Zey Prevon/Sarah Reiss would go on to publicly state during Arbuckle's second trial in January 1922 that she had been bullied into providing false evidence by Brady who had threatened to charge her with perjury if she refused to cooperate. (Her true identity remains a mystery to this day.)
Neither Brady nor the police bothered to inform the court that Bambina Maude Delmont had a criminal record following her own convictions for extortion, prostitution and blackmail or that she was scheduled to appear before a circuit court judge on 18 December 1921 to defend herself against a new charge of bigamy. Instead, Arbuckle was arrested on 17 September and charged with Ms Rappe's murder, with Brady — a highly ambitious individual who had his sights set on becoming the next Governor of California — vowing to seek the death penalty while local coroner Harry Kelly began to be hounded by The Federation of Women's Clubs and religious groups like the Lord's Day Alliance to provide evidence that would guarantee the comedian's conviction before the homicide charge against him was reduced to the slightly less serious charge of manslaughter.
Already facing harsh criticism from these self-appointed moral watchdogs and eager to avoid any further damage to its increasingly tarnished reputation, the motion picture industry wasted no time banning Arbuckle's films from the nation's cinema screens. The ban remained in force throughout his first two trials — the second of which revealed details of Ms Rappe's history of promiscuity and heavy drinking and saw the prosecution rely heavily on the testimony of a former studio guard named Jesse Norgard, an ex-convict who had recently been charged with the sexual assault of a minor — and was not rescinded after his third trial in March 1922 despite the jury's insistence that he was in no way responsible for Ms Rappe's death.
'Acquittal is not enough for Roscoe Arbuckle,' the jurors' unanimously signed statement to the court began. 'We feel that a great injustice has been done him. We feel also that it
was only our plain duty to give him this exoneration, under the
evidence, for there was not the slightest proof adduced to connect him
in any way with the commission of a crime. He was manly throughout the
case and told a straightforward story on the witness stand, which we all
believed. The happening at the hotel was an unfortunate affair for
which Arbuckle, so the evidence shows, was in no way responsible. We
wish him success and hope that the American people will take the
judgment of fourteen men and woman [sic] who have sat listening for thirty-one
days to evidence, that Roscoe Arbuckle is entirely innocent and free
from all blame.'
But the editors and the nation's self-appointed guardians of decency had done their work too well. By the time of Arbuckle's acquittal his case had become a salacious daily headline story in virtually every US newspaper, with media mogul William Randolph Hearst reportedly boasting to an acquaintance that the scandal had sold more copies of his New York Evening Journal than the 1915 sinking of the unarmed passenger liner Lusitania by a prowling German u-boat. Nor did Arbuckle get off scot-free after being cleared of the charges brought against him. He was fined $500 because alcohol had been available at the party and consumed there by his guests, violating the federal Prohibition laws which had been in place since February 1919. This sum was a drop in the ocean, however, compared with his unpaid legal bills. By March 1922 Arbuckle owed his trial attorney Gavin McNab something in excess of $700,000 (equivalent to approximately $14 million today). As this was more than half of the $1 million per year (equivalent to approximately $20 million today) salary he'd been earning under his recently terminated contract with Paramount Pictures he was obliged to sell his home and beloved automobiles in order to clear the debt.
© 1932 Vitaphone/Warner Bros Pictures
Worse was to follow. On 18 April Arbuckle was banned by Will Hays, President of the newly formed Motion Pictures Producers and Distributors of America organization, from ever appearing in another film made in the United States. Although Hays lifted the ban in December, the gesture came too late to save the comedian's screen career. Exonerated or not, US distributors remained reluctant to book Arbuckle films for their theaters, with this and the ban imposed by what was now known as the Hays Office eventually forcing the comedian to seek work as a director under the pseudonym William Goodrich. (Buster Keaton suggested that he use the name 'Will B Goode' to send an ironic message to those who had so casually sabotaged his career.)
Although Arbuckle did direct a number of films under this pseudonym between 1924 and 1932, he did not appear again on screen until he was offered the starring role in a 1931 Vitaphone short titled The Back Page. This was the first of six sound shorts he was contracted to make for Warner Bros, all of which proved successful enough with audiences (children were particularly fond of them) for the company to offer him the leading role in a feature scheduled to begin production in mid-1933. Thrilled to be working again and recently married for the third time, Arbuckle went out with friends to celebrate his newfound success on the evening of 29 June 1933, only to die in his sleep of a cardiac arrest later that night at the age of forty-six. What had been a massive misunderstanding or, as some have suggested, a publicity stunt engineered by Matthew Brady and his supporters to boost his pre-election profile by drawing attention to the unchecked immorality of the movie community, had cost him not only his career and home but quite probably his life. (Brady was ultimately unsuccessful in his bid to become Governor but remained District Attorney until 1943.)
The same was true of Virginia Rappe, a damaged and troubled young woman whose agonizing death might have been prevented had the men charged with examining and caring for her not been so quick to dismiss her condition as a simple case of intoxication. She was as much the victim of Hollywood's form of self-serving hypocrisy as Roscoe Arbuckle proved to be. Unlike the comedian, she's hardly remembered today despite having been named 'The Best Dressed Girl in Pictures' for 1918 and having appeared in at least half a dozen films.
ROSCOE ARBUCKLE and his dog LUKE
(Co-star of many of the comedian's funniest films)
c 1920
Use the link below to view several films starring ROSCOE 'FATTY' ARBUCKLE, including a few featuring his friend and co-star BUSTER KEATON:
Special thanks to those who take the time to upload movies to YouTube. Your efforts are appreciated by movie lovers everywhere.
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