The Rise & Fall Of Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle

Laurel & Hardy, Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd. Names you all know from the silent and early talkie era. But what about ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle?

He was THE big thing around the first two decades of the 20th century. ‘Arbuckle was one of the most popular silent stars of the 1910s, and soon became one of the highest paid actors in Hollywood, signing a contract in 1921 with Paramount Pictures for an unprecedented US$1 million’ (Source: Website, Wikipedia). He mentored Charlie Chaplin (in fact Chaplin’s famous fork in the breadrolls scene was in fact a homage to Arbuckle doing this in an earlier film). He discovered Bob Hope and Buster Keaton but why isn’t he named in the same breath as the others?

I recently watched a wonderful documentary done by Paul Merton which explained why. It really opened my eyes that being at the wrong place at the wrong time can change your life and also opened up my interest in Roscoe and his work.

‘In September 1921, Arbuckle attended a party at the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco during the Labor Day weekend. Bit player Virginia Rappe became drunk and ill at the party; she died four days later at a sanitarium known for performing abortions. Arbuckle was accused by a well known madam of raping and accidentally killing Rappe. Arbuckle endured three widely publicized trials for manslaughter. His films were subsequently banned and he was publicly ostracized. Arbuckle was acquitted in the third trial and received a written apology from the jury; however, the trial’s scandal has mostly overshadowed his legacy as a pioneering comedian. Although the ban on his films was lifted within a year, Arbuckle only worked sparingly through the 1920s. He was finally able to return to making short two-reel comedies in 1932 for Warner Brothers. He died in his sleep of a heart attack, aged 46, in 1933, reportedly on the same day he signed a contract with Warner Brothers to make a feature film’ (Source: Website, Wikipedia).

Interestingly, Roscoe despised his screen nickname: ‘Which he had been given because of his substantial girth. “Fatty” had also been Arbuckle’s nickname since school; “It was inevitable”, he said. He weighed 185 lb (84 kg) when he was 12. Fans also called Roscoe “The Prince of Whales” and “The Balloonatic”. However, the name Fatty identifies the character that Arbuckle portrayed on-screen (usually, a naive hayseed)—not Arbuckle himself. When Arbuckle portrayed a female, the character was named “Miss Fatty”, as in the film ‘Miss Fatty’s Seaside Lovers’. Arbuckle discouraged anyone from addressing him as “Fatty” off-screen and when they did so his usual response was “I’ve got a name, you know.” (Source: website, Wikipedia).

‘The Death Of Virginia Rappe

On September 5, 1921, Arbuckle took a break from his hectic film schedule and, despite suffering from second degree burns to both buttocks from an accident on set, drove to San Francisco with two friends, Lowell Sherman (an actor/director) and cameraman Fred Fischbach. The three checked into three rooms: 1219 (Arbuckle and Fischbach), 1220 (empty), and 1221 (Sherman) at the St. Francis Hotel. They had rented 1220 as a party room and invited several women to the suite.

During the carousing, a 30-year-old aspiring actress named Virginia Rappe was found seriously ill in room 1219 and was examined by the hotel doctor, who concluded her symptoms were mostly caused by intoxication and gave her morphine to calm her. Rappe was not hospitalized until two days after the incident.

In fact, Virginia Rappe was already an ill woman. She suffered from chronic cystitis, a condition that flared up dramatically whenever she drank. Her heavy drinking habits and the poor quality of the era’s bootleg alcohol could leave her in severe physical distress. She developed a reputation for over-imbibing at parties, then drunkenly tearing at her clothes from the resulting physical pain. But by the time of the St. Francis Hotel party, her reproductive health was a greater concern. She had undergone several abortions in the space of a few years, the quality of care she received for such procedures was probably substandard, and she was preparing to undergo another (or, more likely, had recently done so) as a result of being impregnated by her boyfriend, director Henry Lehrman.

Author Andy Edmonds theorized that during the relatively innocent horseplay at the party, Arbuckle may have accidentally struck Rappe’s midsection with his knee. If she had undergone a botched abortion during the days immediately before, the blow might have been enough to badly damage her already compromised internal organs. This would also account for the statements that a delirious Rappe was alleged to have made later during the party, statements along the lines of “Arbuckle did it” or “He hurt me”, without implicating Arbuckle in any rape or violent attack on her.

At the hospital, Rappe’s companion at the party, Bambina Maude Delmont, told Rappe’s doctor that Arbuckle had raped her friend. The doctor examined Rappe but found no evidence. Rappe died one day after her hospitalization of peritonitis, caused by a ruptured bladder. Delmont then told police that Arbuckle raped Rappe, and the police concluded that the impact Arbuckle’s overweight body had on Rappe eventually caused her bladder to rupture. Rappe’s manager Al Semnacker (at a later press conference) accused Arbuckle of using a piece of ice to simulate sex with her, which led to the injuries. By the time the story was reported in newspapers, the object had evolved into being a Coca-Cola or champagne bottle, instead of a piece of ice. In fact, witnesses testified that Arbuckle rubbed the ice on Rappe’s stomach to ease her abdominal pain. Arbuckle denied any wrongdoing. Delmont later made a statement incriminating Arbuckle to the police in an attempt to extort money from Arbuckle’s attorneys.

Arbuckle’s trial was a major media event; exaggerated and sensationalized stories were run in William Randolph Hearst’s nationwide newspaper chain. The story was fueled by yellow journalism, with the newspapers portraying him as a gross lecher who used his weight to overpower innocent girls. In reality, Arbuckle was a good-natured man who was so shy with women that he was regarded by those who knew him as, “the most chaste man in pictures”. Hearst was gratified by the Arbuckle scandal, and later said that it had “sold more newspapers than any event since the sinking of the RMS Lusitania.” The resulting scandal destroyed Arbuckle’s career and his personal life. Morality groups called for Arbuckle to be sentenced to death, and studio executives ordered Arbuckle’s industry friends and fellow actors (whose careers they controlled) not to publicly speak up for him. Charlie Chaplin was in England at the time and therefore was never available for comment on the Arbuckle case. Buster Keaton did make a public statement in support of Arbuckle’s innocence. Film actor William S. Hart, who had never met or worked with Arbuckle, made a number of public statements which he presumed that Arbuckle was guilty.

The prosecutor, San Francisco District Attorney Matthew Brady, an intensely ambitious man who planned to run for governor, made public pronouncements of Arbuckle’s guilt and pressured witnesses to make false statements. Brady at first used Delmont as his star witness during the indictment hearing. Although the judge threatened Brady with dismissal of the case, Brady refused to allow Delmont, the only witness accusing Arbuckle, to take the stand and testify. Delmont had a long criminal record with convictions for racketeering, bigamy, fraud, and extortion, and allegedly was making a living by luring men into compromising positions and capturing them in photographs, to be used as evidence in divorce proceedings.  The defense had also obtained a letter from Delmont admitting to a plan to extort payment from Arbuckle. In view of Delmont’s constantly changing story,  her testimony would have ended any chance of going to trial. Ultimately, the judge found no evidence of rape. After hearing testimony from one of the party guests, Zey Prevon, that Rappe told her “Roscoe hurt me” on her deathbed, the judge decided that Arbuckle could be charged with first-degree murder. Brady had originally planned to seek the death penalty. The charge was later reduced to manslaughter.

The First Trial

Arbuckle was then arrested on the charges of manslaughter, but arranged bail after nearly three weeks in jail. The first trial began on November 14, 1921 in the city courthouse in downtown San Francisco. Arbuckle’s defence lawyer was Mr Dominquez. The principal witness was Ms Zay Prevost, a guest at the party. At the 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 support him. Public feeling was so negative that she was later shot at while entering the courthouse.

Brady’s first witnesses during the trial included Betty Campbell, a model, who attended the September 5 party and testified that she saw Arbuckle with a smile on his face hours after the alleged rape occurred; Grace Hultson, a local nurse who testified it was very likely that Arbuckle did rape Rappe and bruise her body in the process; and Dr. Edward Heinrich, a local criminologist who claimed he found Arbuckle’s fingerprints smeared with Rappe’s blood on room 1219’s bathroom door. Dr. Arthur Beardslee, the hotel doctor, testified that an external force seemed to have damaged the bladder. During cross-examination, Betty Campbell, however, revealed that Brady threatened to charge her with perjury if she did not testify against Arbuckle. Dr. Heinrich’s claim to have found fingerprints was cast into doubt after Arbuckle’s defense attorney, Gavin McNab, produced the St. Francis hotel maid, who testified that she had cleaned the room before the investigation even took place and did not find any blood on the bathroom door. Dr. Beardslee admitted that Rappe had never mentioned being assaulted while he was treating her. McNab was furthermore able to get 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 also have been a result of the heavy jewelry she was wearing that evening. During the defense stage of the trial, McNab called various pathology experts who testified that while Rappe’s bladder had ruptured, there was evidence of chronic inflammation and no evidence of any pathological changes preceding the rupture; in other words, there was no external cause for the rupture.

Taking the witness stand as the defense’s final witness, Arbuckle was simple, direct, and unflustered 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 around midnight, and that some time afterward Mae Taub (daughter-in-law of Billy Sunday) asked him for a ride into town, so he went to his room (1219) to change his clothes and discovered Rappe 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. 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. After the doctor declared Rappe was just drunk, Arbuckle then drove Taub to town. The courtroom spectators, most of whom were fans and supporters of Arbuckle, reportedly booed and jeered at Brady and most of the prosecution witnesses during the entire trial, and they also reportedly stood, cheered and applauded for Arbuckle after he testified.

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, Brady aggressively grilled Arbuckle that he refused to call a doctor when he found Rappe sick, and argued that he refused to do so because he knew of Rappe’s illness and saw a perfect opportunity to rape and kill her. Despite the frequent and aggressive badgering Brady inflicted upon Arbuckle during cross-examination, Arbuckle calmly maintained that he never physically hurt or sexually assaulted Rappe in any way during the September 5 party, and he also maintained that he never made any inappropriate sexual advances against any woman in his life. After over two weeks of testimony with 60 prosecution and defense witnesses, including 18 doctors who testified about Rappe’s illness, the defense rested. On December 4, 1921, the jury returned deadlocked after 44 straight hours of deliberation with a 10–2 not guilty verdict, and a mistrial was declared.

Arbuckle’s attorneys later focused on one holdout named Helen Hubbard who had told jurors that she would vote guilty “until hell freezes over” and that she refused to look at the exhibits or read the trial transcripts, having made up her mind in the courtroom. Hubbard’s husband was a lawyer who did business with the D.A.’s office, and expressed surprise that she was not challenged when selected for the jury pool. While most of the focus was laid solely on Hubbard after the trial, a portion of the jurors felt Arbuckle guilty but not beyond a reasonable doubt, and various jurors joined Hubbard in voting to convict, including – repeatedly at the end – Thomas Kilkenny. Arbuckle researcher Joan Myers describes the political climate and media focus concerning women on juries (which had only been legal for four years at the time), and how Arbuckle’s defense immediately focused on singling out Hubbard as a villain, while Hubbard described attempts to bully her into changing her vote by the jury foreman, August Fritze. While Hubbard offered explanations on her vote whenever challenged, Kilkenny remained mum and quickly faded from the media spotlight after the trial ended.

The Second Trial

The second trial began on January 11, 1922 with a different jury, but with the same legal defense and prosecution as well as the same presiding judge. The same evidence was presented, but this time one of the witnesses, Zey Prevon, testified that Brady had forced her to lie. Another witness who claimed that Arbuckle had bribed him not to tell anyone about harming Rappe turned out to be an ex-convict who was currently charged with sexually assaulting an eight-year-old girl, and who was looking for a sentence reduction from Brady in exchange for his testimony. Further, in contrast to the first trial, Rappe’s history of promiscuity and heavy drinking was detailed. The second trial also discredited some major evidence such as the identification of Arbuckle’s fingerprints on the hotel bedroom door: Heinrich took back his earlier testimony from the first trial and testified that the fingerprint evidence was likely faked. The defense was so convinced of an acquittal that Arbuckle was not called to testify. Arbuckle’s lawyer, McNab, made no closing argument to the jury. However, some jurors interpreted the refusal to let Arbuckle testify as a sign of guilt. After over 40 hours of deliberation, the jury returned on February 3, deadlocked with a 9–3 guilty verdict. Another mistrial was declared.

The Third Trial

By the time of the third trial, Arbuckle’s films had been banned, and newspapers had been filled for the past seven months with stories of alleged Hollywood orgies, murder, and sexual perversion. Delmont was touring the country giving one-woman shows as “The woman who signed the murder charge against Arbuckle”, and lecturing on the evils of Hollywood.

News story of the six minute not guilty verdict, 1922.The third trial began on March 13, 1922, and this time the defense took no chances. McNab took an aggressive defense, completely tearing apart the prosecution’s case. This time, Arbuckle again testified and maintained his denials in his heartfelt testimony about his version of the events at the hotel party. McNab also managed to get in still more evidence about Virginia Rappe’s lurid past, and reviewed how Brady fell for the outlandish charges of Delmont, whom McNab described in his long closing statement as “the complaining witness who never witnessed”. Another hole in the prosecution’s case was opened because Zey Prevon, a key witness, was out of the country and unable to testify. On April 12, the jury began deliberations and it took only six minutes to return a unanimous not guilty verdict—five of those minutes were spent writing a statement of apology, 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 to him… 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 which we all believe. We wish him success and hope that the American people will take the judgement of fourteen men and women that Roscoe Arbuckle is entirely innocent and free from all blame”.

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, 1921 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[26] At the time of his acquittal, Arbuckle owed over $700,000 (around $9,444,583 adjusted for inflation in 2012) 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 debt.

Although he had been cleared of all criminal charges, the scandal and trials had greatly damaged his popularity among the general public, and 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 complied. In December of the same year, Hays elected to lift the ban, but Arbuckle was still unable to secure work as an actor. Most exhibitors still declined to show Arbuckle’s films, several of which now have no copies known to have survived intact. One of Arbuckle’s feature-length films known to survive is Leap Year, which Paramount declined to release in the United States due to the scandal. It was eventually released in Europe (Source: Website, All Wikipedia)

Interestingly Buster Keaton gave some cameos during his ban to Arbuckle. Dressed as a women he came on set like that and never revealed who he actually was. I find it astonishing that even after aquital, that he was banned from working in the US.

To my knowledge there hasn’t been a film made about the subject but I am sure you agree that it makes interesting reading and that this would make a great film!