Introduction
The history of cinema is full of fascinating stories. In addition to being one of the earliest, this is one of the saddest. It’s the true story of Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle. You may not have heard of “Fatty” Arbuckle, but in the early days of silent cinema, there was perhaps no greater star.
Arbuckle got his start at Mack Sennett’s Keystone Studios as an extremely talented comedian. He made over 150 silent films. During the 1910s, when Hollywood was just beginning to develop a “star” system, people flocked to his movies.
Cinema’s First “Superstar” Comedian
Despite weighing close to three hundred pounds, Arbuckle was unbelievably light on his feet and was capable of performing the most delicate of stunts in front of the camera. Actress Louise Brooks remembered that dancing with him was:
“…wonderful…it was like floating in the arms of a huge doughnut…”
Mack Sennett once remarked that “Fatty” could:
“…do a backward somersault as gracefully as a girl tumbler…”
This physical dexterity made Arbuckle a natural for slapstick comedy. Indeed, the very first cinematic pie thrown in someone’s face occurred in a “Fatty” Arbuckle movie. His movies usually involved car chases, knock-downs, and sight-gags.
Arbuckle mentored Charlie Chaplin when he first arrived in Hollywood and gave Buster Keaton his first job. He also discovered Bob Hope. It’s not an exaggeration to say that Arbuckle was the cinema’s first superstar comedian.
Labor Day Weekend Party
Arbuckle was so popular with silent moviegoers that in 1921 Paramount Pictures offered him a new contract worth $3 million. Back then, this was a staggering amount of money. To celebrate, Arbuckle invited a bunch of his friends on an all-expenses-paid trip to San Francisco over Labor Day weekend.
While there, they rented three adjoining rooms at the St. Francis Hotel. Despite the prohibition, there was plenty of liquor (and single women) to go around. The celebration lasted the entire weekend.
While at the party, Arbuckle came across a single woman named Virginia Rappe who was very drunk and throwing up in a bathroom. Assuming she had too much “bootleg booze” to drink, he helped her to a nearby bed.
Then he found another guest named Maude “Bambino” Delmont to look after her. Arbuckle left them both alone and went back to join his other guests at the party. He thought nothing more of the incident.
Murder Charges
The following Saturday, while relaxing at his home back in Los Angeles, Arbuckle heard a knock at the door. When he answered it, he found two policemen. They told him he was being charged with murder and had to return to San Francisco for questioning. Thinking it was a joke, Arbuckle laughed and asked:
“and just who exactly do you think I killed?”
“Virginia Rappe” was the answer and Arbuckle wasn’t laughing when he picked up the newspaper the following morning. “Arbuckle Held For Murder” was plastered all over the front page in three-inch high letters. The biggest celebrity trial until O.J. Simpson’s was about to begin.
An autopsy report showed that Virginia Rappe had died four days after the party from acute peritonitis – an inflammation of the abdominal lining brought on by a ruptured bladder. Most of the evidence used to charge Arbuckle had come from the testimony of Maude Delmont. She claimed that she had seen Arbuckle assault and rape Miss Rappe.
People conjectured that the poor woman must have been crushed underneath the weight of the hefty comedian. In the process, her bladder had burst and had gone untreated until it developed into a massive abdominal infection.
Shaky Evidence
The District Attorney in San Francisco at the time was a gentleman named Matthew Brady. Described by others as “arrogant, ruthless, and short-tempered,” he had decided to bring charges against Arbuckle based solely on the eye-witness testimony of Ms. Delmont.
Brady had his eye on running for governor and knew that the publicity from the trial would go a long way toward making that happen. After announcing to the press that he had evidence that proved the guilt of Arbuckle beyond any reasonable doubt, he began to build his case.
However, there Brady ran into a problem. His only “evidence” was Delmont’s testimony. Brady then learned that during the time in question, his star witness had been drunk and locked in a bathroom with another (male) party guest. Multiple witnesses testified that it simply wasn’t possible for her to have seen the things she claimed.
Blackmail
If that wasn’t bad enough, a quick check of Delmont’s background produced a police record that contained more than fifty counts of bigamy, fraud, racketeering, and extortion…along with an outstanding warrant.
The real kicker however was a telegram that Delmont had dashed off to two different friends in the days following the party as Virginia Rappe lay dying. It said:
“We have Roscoe Arbuckle in a hole here…Chance to make some money out of him”
Even despite his political ambitions, Brady had absolutely nothing to go on. No physical evidence. Only one witness who kept changing their story and was a proven blackmailer. Plus, there were lots of other eyewitnesses who stood ready to exonerate Arbuckle of any wrongdoing.
The Court of Public Opinion
Then there was the court of public opinion. Arbuckle’s arrest had brought an avalanche of publicity. Yet, as facts about the case began to circulate, most of the contemporary newspapers realized that the silent star was completely innocent. These publications soon began to cool their “coverage.”
All publications except for those that were owned by newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst. Hearst realized that the Arbuckle trial was good for business. He later stated that the Arbuckle case had:
“…sold more newspapers than any event since the sinking of the Lusitania…”
To meet public demand, Hearst papers across the country began to publish up to six “special editions” a day to keep readers up to date on the latest news from the Fatty Arbuckle trial. With the sole aim of increasing circulation, many of these papers began to peddle the most lurid details imaginable about the events at the St. Francis Hotel. This included loads of unsubstantiated conjecture.
Then, a few days later, many of these same newspapers had begun to feed off one another, repeating these “imaginings” as fact. In the interest of decorum, most of these stories won’t be repeated here in a public forum, even one hundred years later. That’s how sordid some of them were.
Ulterior Motives
Even with this circus as a backdrop, the case against Arbuckle would almost certainly have been dismissed for lack of evidence. However, Judge Sylvain Lazarus refused, citing the “larger issues” surrounding the case. In a ruling, he stated:
“I do not find any evidence that Mr. Arbuckle either committed or attempted to commit rape…but we are not trying Roscoe Arbuckle alone…we are trying our present-day morals, our present-day social conditions, our present-day looseness of thought, and lack of social balance”
Lazarus decided to hold Arbuckle for manslaughter. In summary, we had a District Attorney who knew that Arbuckle was completely innocent. As well as a judge who had gone on record stating that he was probably innocent, but thought a public showing would make a great platform for grandstanding and social commentary.
Along with a complete lack of evidence of any wrongdoing, the trial proceeded. This was just to satisfy the cravings of a public hungry for scandalous and sensationalized details. A true travesty was unfolding.
“Fatty” Arbuckle on Trial
The Arbuckle trial lasted from November 14 until December 4, 1921. More than sixty witnesses were called to the stand, including eighteen doctors. Many of the latter testified that Virginia Rappe had five abortions over thirty-six months, had a series of bladder inflammations and chronic cystitis for the past fourteen years, was afflicted with gonorrhea, and had a known fondness for hard partying and drinking.
The medical evidence concluded that the rupture of Ms. Rappe’s bladder was not caused by an external force, which seemed to exonerate Mr. Arbuckle. Especially, after he took the stand and told a story that was fully supported by the other eyewitnesses.
When the case went to the jury, it remained deadlocked after 44 hours of deliberation. It seemed that there was one holdout. A woman named Helen Hubbard had privately told the other jurors at the start of deliberations that she would vote to convict Arbuckle “until hell freezes over.” It later turned out that Hubbard’s husband was a lawyer who did work for Matthew Brady and the DA’s office.
A mistrial was declared. A second trial was conducted about a month later. Arbuckle’s lawyers were so convinced that they had an airtight defense that they didn’t even bother to put their client on the stand. This was a big mistake as this time, the jury deadlocked 9-3 in favor of a conviction.
Exoneration
Arbuckle was tried a third and final time in March of 1922. This time, his defense team took no chances. It provided even more documentation of Ms. Rappe’s shady past, and her ongoing medical problems, and had Arbuckle take the stand to tell the same story he had told the police from the very beginning.
This time, the jury only needed five minutes to deliberate. They came back into the courtroom and read a statement that was fairly unique in the history of the American criminal justice system:
“We the jury find Roscoe Arbuckle not guilty of manslaughter…Acquittal is not enough for Roscoe Arbuckle. We feel a great injustice has been done to him. We feel also that it was only our plain duty to give him this exoneration…for there was not the slightest proof produced to connect him in any way with the commission of a crime…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…Roscoe Arbuckle is entirely innocent and free from all blame”
Arbuckle kept a copy of the paper the statement had been written on and kept it as a memento for the rest of his life.
Consequences
Unfortunately, that wasn’t the end of the story. The trial had cost Arbuckle more than $750,000 and had wiped out his life savings. The $3 million contract with Paramount had disappeared in the wake of the scandal. And the IRS seized his estate as payment for the back taxes he was now no longer able to pay.
In addition, even during the 1920s, there were plenty of people who felt that Hollywood was a corrupting influence on the country’s moral standing. Arbuckle may have been proven innocent, but they held the trial up as proof positive that something needed to be done to tame the excesses of Tinseltown.
Feeling that it was better to clean up their act before someone in Washington did it for them, the studio moguls all got together and set up the “Hays Office.” This office was designed to be a self-policing censorship board that was headed up by former postmaster General William H. Hayes.
Hays banned Arbuckle from working in Hollywood a mere six days after he was acquitted. Once again, it was all politics. The various studio heads offered Arbuckle up as a sacrificial lamb so that no one would ask too many questions about some of their other stars who also had tended to party a bit too hard.
Ostracized and Outcast
During the next decade, “Fatty” Arbuckle tried desperately to find work. He suffered from deep depression and began to drink heavily. From his perspective, it must have seemed as if fate had pulled the world out from under him. He appeared in stage shows, ran a nightclub, and even directed several films under the pseudonym William B. Goodrich (Will B. Goode). The studio ban was eventually lifted.
It wasn’t until 1932 – some ten years after the trial – that Arbuckle finally got a job as a film actor again. Warner Brothers hired him to star in a series of two-reel comedy shorts, which proved to be very popular with the public. But even then, the British Board of Film Censors still refused to allow the exhibition of the shorts in England.
Potential Comeback
Still, after all that he had suffered, Arbuckle seemed to be on the verge of a comeback. On June 29, 1933, Warner Brothers signed him to star in a full-length feature film. Arbuckle told several friends that it was:
“…the happiest day of his life…”
To celebrate, he went out to dinner with his wife and then home to bed. That night, Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle had a heart attack and died in his sleep. At the time he was only 46 years old. His estate was valued at a mere $2,000.
Remembering “Fatty” Arbuckle
One of the most moving eulogies for “Fatty” Arbuckle came from 20th Century Fox founder Joseph Schenck:
“All who have ever known the real Roscoe Arbuckle will always treasure the great generous heart of the man…those who knew him for the great artist he was admired him…His was the tragedy of a man born to make the world laugh and to receive only suffering as his reward. And to the end, he held no malice”
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