25 Days of History: December 4th
- Jordan Spriggs
- Dec 5, 2019
- 14 min read
Hollywood's first prominent scandal involved slapstick comedy legend Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle and his first of three trials for the alleged manslaughter of actress Virginia Rappe
Image Credits: Wikimedia Commons
Thursday, December 5th, 2019 @ 09:20 (9:20am)
Who Was Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle?
Roscoe Conkling "Fatty" Arbuckle was an American silent film actor, comedian, director, and screenwriter. Arbuckle founded the Selig Polyscope Company, but eventually moved on to Keystone Studios, where he worked with Mabel Normand and Harold Lloyd. More notably, he mentored Charlie Chaplin and discovered Buster Keaton and later Bob Hope. Arbuckle was one of the most popular silent film era stars in the 1910's and one of the highest paid actors in Hollywood at the time. Arbuckle penned a contract in 1920 with Paramount Pictures for $14,000 (that is equivalent to approximately $175,000 in 2018 dollars, inflation adjusted).
Who Was Virginia Rappe?
Virginia Caroline Rappe was an American model and silent film actress in the 1910's. She worked mostly in small bit parts and is best known for her death after attending a party with actor Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, which I will explain and expand upon in the paragraphs below.
The Infamous Labor Day Party
On September 5th, 1921, Arbuckle took a respite from his hectic film schedule and drove to San Francisco with two friends, Lowell Sherman and Fred Fishback. He wanted to enjoy a weekend with friends and associates, despite suffering from second-degree burns to both buttocks from an accident on set that had recently occurred before disembarking for San Francisco. Upon arrival, the three pals checked into three separate luxury suites on the 12th floor at the St. Francis Hotel: Room 1219 for Arbuckle and Fishback to share, Room 1221 for Sherman, and Room 1220 was designated as a party room for all.
Several women were also invited to the suite for the party, and bootleg alcohol was served. That late afternoon in the midst of the festivities and merriment, a 26-year-old aspiring actress named Virginia Rappe was found seriously ill in room 1219, fully dressed on Arbuckle's bed, writhing in apparent excruciating pain. She was promptly evaluated by the hotel doctor, Dr. Arthur Beardslee, who concluded her symptoms were mostly caused by intoxication, and administered a dose of morphine to calm her down and subside her pain. Rappe was not hospitalized until two days after the incident. The remaining duration of the party and guests had no further incidents reported.
Virginia Rappe suffered from chronic cystitis, a condition that alcohol and liquor exacerbated exponentially. Her heavy drinking habits and the poor quality of the era's bootleg alcohol were a double whammy as it would put her in serious physical distress. Her reputation had been built as an over-imbiber at parties, who'd then drunkenly attempt to rip at her clothing from the resulting physical pain.
Rappe brought a companion to the party, Bambina Maude Delmont, a woman she had only recently befriended since moving out to California in 1916. Two days after the party when Rappe was admitted into the hospital, Delmont told Rappe's doctor that Arbuckle raped her friend. The doctor found no evidence of rape however, after examining Rappe the same day of Demont's bold allegation.
Rappe's Death and Arbuckle's Persecution
Rappe died one day after her hospitalization from peritonitis caused by a ruptured bladder. Delmont proceeded to tell the police, just like Rappe's doctor, that Arbuckle had raped Rappe. The police didn't conduct a thorough investigation, and going on the shaky credibility of a "key witness" who was present at the party, Delmont, the police concluded Arbuckle's overweight body lying on top of Rappe had eventually caused her bladder to rupture. Again, to reiterate, the police only made a conclusion based on the questionable credibility of a less than upstanding citizen. More on Delmont's character below.
Arbuckle vehemently denied any and all wrongdoing thrown his way. Delmont later made a statement incriminating Arbuckle to the police in an attempt to extort money from Arbuckle's attorneys. Delmont had a police record for extortion, prostitution and blackmail.
Arbuckle's subsequent arrest and trial became a major media event at the time. Self-made man William Randolph Hearst's nationwide newspaper chain exploited the situation with grossly exaggerated and sensationalized stories, in the hopes to cash in on the increased interest surrounding the scandal. The story was fueled by shameful yellow journalism, with many publications portraying Arbuckle as an unscrupulous behemoth who used his hefty frame to take advantage of innocent women. Hearst was pleased by the profits he accrued during the Arbuckle scandal, and later exclaimed that it "sold more newspapers than any event since the sinking of the Lusitania." Numerous morality groups wanted Arbuckle to fry, and insisted he be sentenced to death. The scandal absolutely annihilated both Arbuckle's acting career and his personal life.
Arbuckle was well regarded by those close with him as a good-natured man, who was rather shy around women. Regardless, studio executives, fearing negative publicity by association, ordered Arbuckle's industry friends and fellow actors to not publicly speak up for him, or risk losing work with them. Charlie Chaplin, who was in Britain at the time, told reporters that he could not and would not believe Roscoe Arbuckle had anything to do with Virginia Rappe's death. Chaplin had known Arbuckle since they both worked at Keystone in 1914, describing him as "...a genial, easy-going type who would not harm a fly."
Buster Keaton reportedly made exactly one public statement supporting Arbuckle's proclaimed innocence, a decision which earned him a mild reprimand from the studio where he worked. Film actor William S. Hart, who had never even met or worked with Arbuckle, made a number of damaging public statements in which he presumed that Arbuckle was guilty. Arbuckle later wrote a premise for a film parodying Hart as a thief, bully, and wife beater, which Keaton purchased from him. The resulting film, The Frozen North, was released in 1922, almost a year after the scandal first emerged. Keaton co-wrote, directed and starred in the picture; consequently, Hart refused to speak to Keaton for years afterward.
Before The Trials
On September 17, 1921, Arbuckle was arrested and arraigned on the charges of manslaughter. He arranged bail after nearly three weeks in jail.
The prosecutor, San Francisco District Attorney Matthew Brady, an ambitious man who was contemplating running for governor, made numerous public pronouncements of Arbuckle's guilt and pressured witnesses to make false statements. Delmont was Brady's star witness during the indictment hearing. Unfortunately for Brady and thankfully for Arbuckle, the defense had also obtained a letter from Delmont admitting her fiendish plan to extort payment from Arbuckle and his legal counsel.
Delmont's constantly evolving, inconsistent story was useless: her testimony would have ended any chance of going to trial. That, and her character came into serious question after the revelations of her premeditated extortion, though alarmingly not nearly as high on the priority list as one would think. The judge found no evidence of rape in the end. He did however decide that Arbuckle be possibly charged with first-degree murder after hearing testimony from one of the party guests, Zey Prevon, that Rappe told her "Roscoe hurt me" on her deathbed. Brady was chomping at the bit to pursue the death penalty, but the charge was later reduced to manslaughter.
First Trial, November 14 - December 4, 1921
The trial began November 14, 1921, in the city courthouse in San Francisco. Arbuckle hired Gavin McNabas as his lead defense counsel, a competent enough local attorney. The star witness for the prosecution was Ms. Zey Prevon, a guest at the party. At the immediate beginning of the trial, Arbuckle told his already-estranged wife, Minta Durfee, that he did not harm Rappe. She believed him and appeared regularly in the courtroom to morally support him. Public opinion of Arbuckle was so absurdly negative that she was later shot at while entering the courthouse.
An Inauspicious Start
Brady's first witnesses during the trial included model Betty Campbell, who attended the September 5th party, and weakly testified that she saw Arbuckle with a smile on his face a few hours after the alleged rape occurred; Grace Hultson, a local hospital nurse who testified it was quite likely that Arbuckle raped Rappe and additionally bruised her body in the process; and Dr. Edward Heinrich, a local criminologist who speculated that the fingerprints on the door to the hallway somehow proved that Rappe had tried to flee, but that Arbuckle had stopped her by putting his hand over hers. (A lackluster amount of evidence and testimony at this point to open up the trial.)
Making Matters Worse
Dr. Arthur Beardslee, the hotel doctor who had examined Rappe, testified that an external force seemed to have damaged the bladder. In a shocking turn of events during cross-examination, however, Betty Campbell revealed that Brady had threatened to charge her with perjury if she did not testify against Arbuckle. Making matters worse for the prosecution, Dr. Heinrich's baseless claim to have found fingerprints was (thankfully) cast into legitimate doubt after McNab produced the St. Francis hotel maid, who testified that she had thoroughly cleaned the room before the investigation took place. Then, Dr. Beardslee confessed that Rappe had never mentioned a single word about being assaulted while he was treating her. McNab was also successful in coaxing Nurse Hultson to admit that the rupture of Rappe's bladder could very well have been a result of cancer, and that the bruises on her body could have also been a result of the heavy gaudy jewelry she was wearing that evening. It was an unbelievable turn of events shaping up during the successive, consecutive failures of the prosecution due to the collapse of nearly all witness testimonies and credibility. During the defense stage of the trial, McNab called various pathology experts who testified that although Rappe's bladder had ruptured, there was evidence of chronic inflammation, and no evidence of any pathological changes preceding the rupture; to put it bluntly, there was no external cause for the rupture.
Arbuckle Testifies
On November 28, Arbuckle testified as the final witness for the defense. Arbuckle was simple, direct, and unperturbed in both direct and cross examination. In his testimony, Arbuckle claimed that Rappe, whom he testified that he had known for five or six years, came into the party room (1220) around noon that day. Some time afterward, Mae Taub asked him for a ride into town, so he went to his room (1219) to change his clothes and discovered Rappe in the bathroom vomiting in the toilet. Arbuckle then claimed Rappe told him she felt ill and asked to lie down, and that he carried her into the bedroom and asked a few of the party guests to help treat her. When Arbuckle and a few of the guests re-entered the room, they found Rappe on the floor near the bed tearing at her clothing and having a fit of violent convulsions. To calm Rappe down, they placed her in a bathtub of cool water. Arbuckle and Fischbach then took her to room 1227 and called the hotel manager and doctor. At this point, all those present likely assumed or thought Rappe was just extremely intoxicated, including the hotel doctors. Probably assuming Rappe would simply sleep it off, Arbuckle drove Taub into town.
During the whole trial, the prosecution presented medical descriptions of Rappe's bladder as evidence that she had an illness. In his testimony, Arbuckle denied he had any knowledge of Rappe's illness. During cross-examination, Assistant District Attorney Leo Friedman aggressively grilled Arbuckle over the fact that he refused to call a doctor immediately when he found Rappe sick, and argued that he took no action because he had prior knowledge of Rappe's illness and saw a perfect opportunity to rape and kill her. Arbuckle calmly maintained that he never physically hurt or sexually assaulted Rappe in any way during the September 5th party, and he additionally stated that he never made any inappropriate sexual advances against any woman in his life, period. After over two weeks of testimony with 60 prosecution and defense witnesses, including 18 doctors who testified about Rappe's illness, the defense rested.
A Hung Jury Results In A Mistrial
On December 4, 1921, the jury returned five days later deadlocked after nearly 44 hours of deliberation with a 10–2 not guilty verdict, and a mistrial was declared.
Arbuckle's attorneys later concentrated their attention on one woman named Helen Hubbard who had told jurors that she would vote guilty "until hell freezes over". She ignorantly refused to look at the exhibits or read the trial transcripts, having made up her closed mind in the courtroom. Hubbard's husband was a lawyer who did business with the D.A.'s office, and expressed great surprise that she was not disqualified when selected for the jury pool. While much attention was paid to Hubbard after the trial, some former jury members told reporters that they believed that Arbuckle was indeed guilty, but not beyond a reasonable doubt. During the deliberations, some jurors joined Hubbard in voting to convict but they all recanted, except for Thomas Kilkenny. There is an account that jury foreman August Fritze attempted to bully Hubbard into changing her vote to 'not guilty'. While Hubbard offered explanations on her vote whenever challenged, Kilkenny remained mysteriously silent and quickly faded from the media spotlight after the trial ended.
Second Trial, January 11 - February 3, 1922
The second trial began January 11, 1922, with a new jury of course, but with the same legal defense and prosecution representation as well as the same presiding judge. The same exact evidence was presented, but this time one of the witnesses, Zey Prevon, testified that Brady had forced her to lie. Another witness who testified during the first trial, a former security guard named Jesse Norgard, who worked at Culver Studios where Arbuckle worked, testified that Arbuckle had once shown up at the studio and offered him a cash bribe in exchange for the key to Rappe's dressing room. Norgard claimed that the comedian supposedly said he wanted it to play a joke on the actress, to which he refused to give him the key. During cross-examination, Norgard's testimony was called into question when he was revealed to be an ex-convict who was currently charged with sexually assaulting an eight-year-old girl, and who was also looking for a sentence reduction from Brady in exchange for his testimony. The prosecution was rapidly derailing yet again.
A Second Hung Jury, A Second Mistrial
Furthermore, in contrast to the first trial, Rappe's history of promiscuity and heavy alcohol consumption was detailed. The second trial also discredited some major evidence that was disturbingly overlooked. The identification of Arbuckle's fingerprints on the hotel bedroom door was a prime example, as Heinrich retracted his earlier testimony from the first trial and testified in the second that the fingerprint evidence was in all likelihood faked. The defense was so convinced of an acquittal that Arbuckle was not called to testify. This would prove to be an ill-advised decision. Arbuckle's lawyer, McNab, made no closing argument to the jury. Some jurors interpreted the refusal to let Arbuckle testify as a sign of guilt. After five days and over 40 hours of deliberation, the jury returned on February 3, deadlocked with a 9–3 guilty verdict, resulting in another mistrial.
Third Trial, March 13 - April 12, 1922
By the start of the third trial, Arbuckle's films had been banned, and newspapers had been inked for the past seven months with sensationalized stories of alleged Hollywood orgies, murder, and sexual perversion running rampant in Tinseltown.
The third trial began March 13, 1922, and this time the defense took no chances. McNab took an aggressive defense, completely eviscerating the prosecution's case with extensive and aggressive examination and cross-examination of each witness. McNab also managed to squeeze even more evidence about Virginia Rappe's lurid past and medical history than mentioned before in the first two trials into this one. Zey Prevon, a key witness in the first two trials, was out of the country after fleeing police custody and unable to testify, drilling yet another hole in the prosecution's case.
As in the first trial, Arbuckle testified as the final witness and again calmly maintained his denials in his heartfelt testimony about his version of the events at the hotel party. Buster Keaton is said to have been in the courtroom and provided important evidence to prove Arbuckle's innocence; the revelation came to light finally concerning Delmont and her participation in prostitution, extortion, and blackmail. During closing statements, McNab gave a fiery review about how flawed the case was against Arbuckle from the very start and how District Attorney Brady fell for the outlandish charges of Maude Delmont, whom McNab described as "the complaining witness who never witnessed".
Finally A Free Man
The jury began deliberations April 12, and took only six minutes to return with a unanimous not guilty verdict—five of those minutes were spent writing a formal statement of apology to Arbuckle for putting him through the ordeal; a dramatic move in American justice. The jury statement as read by the jury foreman stated:
Acquittal is not enough for Roscoe Arbuckle. 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 who have sat listening for thirty-one days to evidence, that Roscoe Arbuckle is entirely innocent and free from all blame.
After the reading of the apology statement, the jury foreman personally handed the statement to Arbuckle who kept it as a treasured memento for the remainder of his life. Then, one by one, the 12-person jury plus the two jury alternates walked up to Arbuckle's defense table where they shook his hand and/or embraced and personally apologized to him. The entire jury proudly posed with Arbuckle for photographers after the verdict and apology.
Some experts later concluded that Rappe's bladder might also have ruptured as a result of an abortion she might have had a short time before the September 5 party. Rappe's organs had been destroyed and it was now impossible to test for pregnancy. Because alcohol was consumed at the party, Arbuckle was forced to plead guilty to one count of violating the Volstead Act, and had to pay a $500 fine. At the time of his acquittal, Arbuckle owed over $700,000 in legal fees to his attorneys for the three criminal trials, and he was forced to sell his house and all of his cars to pay off some of the massive debt he owed.
Arbuckle's Aftermath
The scandal and trials had severely damaged Arbuckle's popularity among the general public, and in spite of the acquittal and the apology, his reputation was not restored, and the ill effects of the scandal continued to drag his career and life down. Will H. Hays, who served as the head of the newly formed Motion Pictures Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA) Hollywood censor board, cited Arbuckle as an example of the poor morals in Hollywood. On April 18, 1922, six days after Arbuckle's acquittal, Hays banned Roscoe Arbuckle from ever working in U.S. movies again. He had also requested that all showings and bookings of Arbuckle films be canceled, and exhibitors were compliant.
In December of the same year, under public pressure, Hays elected to lift the ban. However, Arbuckle was still unable to secure work as an actor and as dreadful as that was, even more so was that most exhibitors still declined to show his films, several of which now have no copies known to have survived intact. With Arbuckle's films now banned, in March 1922, Buster Keaton signed an agreement to give Arbuckle 35 percent of all future profits from his company, Buster Keaton Comedies, in hopes of easing his financial burdens.
Hollywood purposely and determinedly destroyed copies of films starring Arbuckle, further shunning him. In November 1923, Minta Durfee filed for divorce, charging grounds of desertion. After a brief reconciliation, Durfee again filed for divorce in December 1924. Arbuckle married Doris Deane on May 16, 1925.
Arbuckle tried returning to filmmaking, but industry resistance to distributing his pictures continued to linger even after his acquittal. He sadly retreated into alcoholism. In the words of his first wife, "Roscoe only seemed to find solace and comfort in a bottle". Buster Keaton attempted to help Arbuckle by giving him work on his films. Arbuckle wrote the story for a Keaton short called Day Dreams (1922). Arbuckle allegedly co-directed scenes in Keaton's Sherlock Jr. (1924), but it is unclear how much of this footage remained in the film's final cut. In 1925, Carter DeHaven's short Character Studies, shot before the scandal, was released. Arbuckle appeared alongside Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, Rudolph Valentino, Douglas Fairbanks, and Jackie Coogan.
Comeback and Death
Roscoe Arbuckle spent more than a decade on the comeback trail, during which time he worked under a pseudonym, William Goodrich, and discovered Bob Hope in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1927.
In 1932, Arbuckle signed a contract with Warner Bros. to star under his own name in a series of six two-reel comedies, to be filmed at the Vitaphone studios in Brooklyn, New York. These six short films constitute the only recordings of his voice to date. Silent-film comedian Al St. John (Arbuckle's nephew) and actors Lionel Stander and Shemp Howard appeared with Arbuckle on the reels. One of the films, How've You Bean?, had grocery-store gags reminiscent of Arbuckle's 1917 short The Butcher Boy, with vaudeville comic Fritz Hubert as his assistant, dressed like Buster Keaton.
The Vitaphone shorts were a rousing success in America, and on June 28, 1933, Arbuckle had finished filming the last of the two-reelers, four of which had already been released. The next day he signed a contract with Warner Bros. to star in a feature-length film.
That night he went out with friends to celebrate his first wedding anniversary, and the new Warner Bros. contract, when he reportedly said: "This is the best day of my life." In a twist of irony or perhaps cruel fate, he suffered a heart attack later that night and died in his sleep. Roscoe Arbuckle was 46 years old.
Legacy
Arbuckle's early influence on American slapstick comedy is widely recognized, even to this day. He became the inspiration for many famous heftier set comedians later down the road.
For his contributions to the film industry, Arbuckle has a motion pictures star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame located at 6701 Hollywood Boulevard.
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