Letter from Hollywood — Part Two
Editor’s Note: Today is the hundredth anniversary of the start of Hollywood’s first celebrity trial. An adored actor, accused of rape and murder.
Mark J. Phillips is a shareholder at the law offices of Lewitt Hackman in Encino, California. Aryn Z. Phillips is a graduate of the Harvard School of Public Health and holds a Ph.D. in Public Health from UC Berkeley. In Part One in September, this father/daughter literary juggernaut wrote of the alleged crime.
This month: the trial and its aftermath, retold from their extraordinary book, “Trials of the Century.”
In 1921, Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle was the highest paid film star in Hollywood. King of the two-reel comedies, he was beloved by millions for his pratfalls, his pie fights and his innocent, angelic smile. Studios churned his movies out by the score, and excited ticket buyers across the country stood in line to watch them.
But all that came to an end on September 5, 1921. Coming off a punishing year-long schedule of back-to-back filming, Arbuckle drove with friends to San Francisco for rest and relaxation over the Labor Day Weekend. Prohibition was in full swing, but liquor was available to those who could afford it, and Arbuckle certainly could. That weekend, after a drunken revel in his suite at the St. Francis Hotel, Arbuckle was wrongfully charged in the rape and death of bit-part actress Virginia Rappe.
Arbuckle did not even know that Rappe had died until two men from the San Francisco Sheriff’s office knocked on the door of his West Adams home and summoned him to San Francisco for questioning. Early Saturday morning, Arbuckle returned to San Francisco with an attorney, Frank Dominguez, and reported to the Hall of Justice, where he was questioned for three hours. Dominguez believed the matter of Rappe’s death would be dispensed with easily and in due course, but was concerned about the consequences of Arbuckle’s possession of bootleg liquor in contravention of the Volstead Act. He advised Arbuckle to remain silent. His concerns were seriously misplaced and at about midnight that night, Saturday, September 10, Arbuckle was arrested and charged with first degree murder.
He spent the next 18 days in jail, a celebrity even incarcerated, until the charges were reduced to manslaughter and bail was granted on September 28.
That Arbuckle came to find himself in this fight for his life was the result of several colliding forces. First, petty criminal and Rappe acquaintance Maude Delmont’s inexplicable fabrication of the assault on Rappe, given in the form of a sworn affidavit, could not be easily explained away or ignored by the authorities. Second, the new district attorney in San Francisco was 46-year-old Matthew Brady, a politically connected and ambitious lawyer now in his second year as prosecutor. Brady, despite his reservations about the quality of his complaining witness, saw the prosecution of Arbuckle as a stepping-stone to higher office. Finally, and importantly, the immediate focus of both the local and national Hearst papers was overwhelming and uniformly biased against Arbuckle.
The coverage was all-pervasive. Beginning Monday, September 12, the Hearst dailies ran sensational front page headlines every day. Those of Hearst’s Washington Times, for example, splashed across six columns for each day that week, started with “Arbuckle’s Wife Rushes to Aid” on September 12th, and grew progressively more negative. On September 13th the headline read “Arbuckle Indictment Held Up,” followed by “Fatty Faces Coroner’s Jury,” “Arbuckle Ready to Give Bail — Orgy Girl Offered Bribe to Keep Mum,” and “Movieland Liquor Probe Started — 40 Quarts Killed At Fatty’s Big Party.” In the nation’s capital where Hearst owned two dailies, The Washington Herald ran similar articles on Arbuckle every day.
So did papers all over the United States. Coverage in The New York Tribune, founded by Horace Greeley in 1841, was nearly continuous, as it was in papers across America. While some reporting was relatively balanced, this was the age of yellow journalism, and much of the content pilloried Arbuckle. On September 13th, for example, The Tulsa Daily World, not a Hearst daily, ran a front-page headline that read “Fatty, Movie’s Falstaff, Falls from Film Throne As Evidence Web Tightens,” and the content included:
Miss Rappe went into the bathroom of 1219 leaving the rest of the party in Room 1220, and when she came out Arbuckle took hold of her and said “I have been trying to get you for five years”…He took hold of her and made the remark. He then closed and locked the door of Room 1219.
This kind of reporting was typical. The film star was routinely referred to as “Arbuckle” or “Fatty,” while Rappe was always “Miss Rappe.” The San Francisco Examiner ran an editorial cartoon featuring Arbuckle with liquor bottles in the middle of a giant spider web and seven women caught in the web. On September 13, The Washington Times carried a Keystone photo of Arbuckle under the headline “Silly Mr. Arbuckle in Idiotic Pose,” and captioned “Roscoe (“Fatty”) Arbuckle, star of ‘The Life of the Party’, as he appeared in one of his extremely foolish films.” On the same page a picture of Rappe under the headline “Miss Rappe Dressed for Afternoon Walk” shows her stylishly dressed and carried the caption “The picture of the dead actress in sporty street attire. She was considered the best dressed woman on the movie screen.”
On September 14, The Washington Times late edition carried dueling headlines “Lead Quiet Life, Victim’s Last Advice to Girls” and “Arbuckle’s Fat and Rum Blamed By Psychoanalysts,” with the article beginning “If Roscoe Arbuckle committed the crime of which he is charged, he did it because he is fat.”
In contrast, prosecutor Matthew Brady was widely championed by the press. On September 16, The Washington Times late edition read:
Lionized by a city to whose service he has given a greater portion of his life Brady is preparing for the biggest battle of his history. “I will get the truth.” Behind these words of the district attorney there is a force at play, mighty and strong and irresistible.
Between his release from jail in late September and the beginning of trial in mid-November, Arbuckle withdrew from public view. His work for Paramount was suspended pending the hearing, and he made no public statements on advice of counsel. He lived quietly with wife Minta in his West Adams house, while his attorneys prepared for what was going to be one of the most visible celebrity trials in history.
That trial commenced before Superior Court judge Harold Louderback on Monday, November 14th with the voir dire of jurors. Arbuckle was now represented by attorney Gavin McNab, well known for representing Hollywood celebrities and highly regarded in San Francisco politics, along with a team of four other respected attorneys. Matthew Brady was assisted by Milton U’Ren and Leo Friedman. After five days of questioning, a jury of seven men and five women was empaneled.
Brady was working with weakening evidence and recalcitrant witnesses. Guests at the party Zey Prevon and Alice Blake had both been interviewed by the police immediately after Rappe’s death, and had initially backed Delmont’s story. While neither could say that they had seen Arbuckle personally assault Rappe, they did testify that the two had been alone in his room together for at least half an hour, and when Delmont attempted entrance the door was locked, facts that all of the men at the party had denied. They had both previously stated that they had heard Rappe accuse Arbuckle of assaulting her. But early on Prevon had recanted her testimony and refused to sign her statement. At the coroner’s inquest, she changed other parts of her testimony, denying that Rappe had named Arbuckle as her assailant. When Blake tried to do the same, Brady threatened both with perjury, and confined them in protective custody until the trial started to prevent the defense from interviewing them.
But Brady’s most difficult challenge was Maude Delmont. The charges were based largely on her claims, but not only was she a lifelong criminal, she had changed her story so many times that by the time trial commenced both sides knew that she was a liar as well. Brady had elicited her damning testimony at the earlier inquests, and to make sure her testimony would not be contradicted by the defense at trial, Brady had her jailed on bigamy charges and refused to release her to testify. Defense requests to call her to the stand were turned down by the court.
The prosecution called as its first witness Grace Halston, a nurse at Wakefield Sanatorium. She testified that Rappe’s body was covered with bruises, and she had found numerous organ ruptures and that the injuries were caused by force. On cross-examination the defense elicited her testimony that the injuries could have been caused by natural causes.
Dr. Arthur Beardslee testified for the prosecution about the actress’s injuries, which he also believed to have been inflicted by an outside force.
On Monday, November 21, the prosecution called Betty Campbell, a model who testified that she was a guest of the party at the St. Francis. She had arrived an hour after the incident and found Arbuckle, Sherman, Fischbach, Semnacher, and Prevon relaxing in the suite. Brady offered this to show that Arbuckle exhibited neither remorse nor concern for the condition of Rappe. On cross-examination, Campbell testified that Brady had threatened her with prison if she refused to testify against Arbuckle, and McNab presented sworn affidavits by Campbell, Blake, and Prevon backing up claims of Brady’s intimidation tactics.
Brady was ordered by the court to bring Prevon to the stand to testify, and when she finally did so she informed the court that she was still being held a prisoner by the district attorney and had been repeatedly interrogated by Brady and his staff. She claimed that Brady kept insisting that she sign a statement that Rappe had said “He has killed me” even though she had already told the grand jury that she was mistaken when she first made that statement and that it was not true.
Prevon recounted to the jury the events leading up to Rappe’s collapse, testifying only that the actress had said “He hurt me,” which could have referred to Fischbach manhandling her into the ice bath, or to an abortion it was rumored she had gotten at a clinic the day before the party. Called next, Alice Blake reiterated Prevon’s story. Neither actress testified that Rappe had accused Arbuckle of causing any injuries.
Prosecution witnesses to follow included a studio security guard who testified to Arbuckle’s having met Rappe two years before in 1919, a hotel chambermaid who testified to the rowdy nature of the St. Francis party, and a criminologist who testified that Arbuckle’s fingerprints on the inside of his bedroom door obscured those of Rappe, suggesting that Rappe had struggled to open the door and that Arbuckle had forced it closed.
The defense opened its case on Tuesday, November 22. Medical witnesses were called to demonstrate that Rappe’s ruptured bladder could have been the result of disease. Three witnesses testified that they had witnessed Rappe on prior occasions drink to excess and run about tearing at her clothes, even running naked in the streets. Fischbach testified that Rappe had been his guest at the party, but witnessed nothing that could have caused her injuries or death.
Arbuckle was the final witness in his defense. His testimony was described as calm, lasting four hours. He recounted the events of the party and how he found Rappe on the floor of his bathroom in front of the toilet, carried her into room 1219 and put her on the bed. He described her distress, the screaming and the tearing at her garments. He testified that it was Delmont that put the ice on Rappe and Fischbach who had carried her into the bathroom for her ice bath.
The cross-examination was carried out by assistant district attorney Leo Friedman. He retraced Arbuckle’s testimony, but was unable to find chinks in his defense. It was clear that if a crime had been committed, no one had seen it and there was no physical evidence that pointed to Arbuckle.
Rebuttal witnesses were called, including medical experts, but the prosecution was unable to demonstrate that the rupture of Rappe’s bladder was the result of external force.
Maude Delmont, with her black past and her shifting story, was never called as a witness.
Both sides made closing arguments, the defense portraying Arbuckle as a kind man who had sweetened the lives of millions of little children, now needlessly suffering when no crime had been committed, and the prosecution calling the same defendant a moral leper with whom no woman in America was safe.
The jury retired for deliberation. After forty-one hours they remained hopelessly deadlocked. After numerous ballots, the jury returned on December 4, unable to reach a verdict at 10-2 for acquittal.
Arbuckle continued to protest his innocence. On December 31st, he told Movie Weekly:
The undisputed and uncontradicted testimony established that my only connection with this sad affair was one of merciful service, and the fact that ordinary human kindness should have brought upon me this tragedy has seemed a cruel wrong. I have sought to bring joy and gladness and merriment into the world, and why this great misfortune should have fallen upon me is a mystery that only God can, and will, some day reveal.
A second trial commenced on January 11, 1922, before a new jury, again featuring Brady for the prosecution and McNab for the defense. Many of the same witnesses testified, and buoyed by his near success in the first trial McNab chose not to have Arbuckle testify, focusing instead on a parade of witnesses who trashed Rappe’s reputation. The strategy backfired, with nearly disastrous results. After two days of deliberation, the jury returned deadlocked again, but this time 10-2 for conviction.
The third and final trial commenced on March 6, 1922. After the near scare of the second jury, this time McNab left no stone unturned, carefully detailing both Rappe’s sordid past and calling Arbuckle to testify in his own defense. After five weeks and only six witnesses called by the exhausted prosecution, the jury retired to deliberate on April 12.
It returned in less than five minutes. Not only did it vote unanimously for an acquittal, it took the few minutes behind closed doors to craft a written apology to Arbuckle which it handed to the court. The jurors wrote:
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.
We wish him success, and hope that the American people will take the judgment of fourteen men and women who have sat listening for thirty-one days to evidence, that Roscoe Arbuckle is entirely innocent and free from all blame.
But the verdict of a single San Francisco jury, even one motivated to the extraordinary gesture of penning a written apology to the defendant, was not enough to save Arbuckle’s career. Within a week of the death of Virginia Rappe, exhibitors in every city in America had withdrawn Arbuckle’s films, and those that had been completed and ready for distribution were never released. His record-setting three-year $3,000,000 contract was canceled. The day after Arbuckle had been freed on bond pending the first trial, he received a telegram stating that he was in breach of his contract with Paramount and suspended until cleared. Throughout the early fall of 1921, spontaneous women’s groups gathered to protest in front of any theater showing his films to shout at patrons who entered. Although the studio paid for much of his legal defense, without the ability to work Arbuckle was financially ruined.
Delmont’s part in Hollywood’s history was also played out. Why she set the destructive storm in motion with her criminal complaint against Arbuckle is unknown. She had a history of procuring young women as party guests and then blackmailing wealthy men into silence, and perhaps she saw the opportunity to make some money. She is reputed in 1921 to have sent telegrams to attorneys in both San Diego and Los Angeles stating, “We have Roscoe Arbuckle in a hole here. Chance to make some money out of him.” “I believe that the whole trouble started,” Minta Arbuckle wrote on Christmas Eve in 1921, “when someone who thought that Mr. Arbuckle would be an ‘easy mark’…seized on Miss Rappe’s death as the reason for wild statements and unfounded charges. It is difficult to discuss that point without making direct accusations, and that I prefer not to do…” Delmont disappears from the record after 1921.
Fueled by newspaper coverage, the groundswell of negative publicity continued to build. Amid a Hollywood lifestyle considered by most Americans to be out of control, Arbuckle was only the most visible example. In early 1922, other scandals set the newspaper presses running. On February 2, 1922, while the second trial was underway in San Francisco, Paramount director William Desmond Taylor was found murdered. A prolific actor and director, Taylor’s body was found inside his bungalow on Alvarado Street in the Westlake Park area of Los Angeles, then a trendy and affluent neighborhood. He had been shot in the back. Numerous suspects were identified by both the police and the newspapers, including workers in his home, neighbors, employees of Paramount, women with whom he had rumored romantic liaisons, including Mabel Normand, but the crime was never solved. When word of Taylor’s death was brought to Arbuckle as he sat at counsel table awaiting the second jury’s verdict in San Francisco, his eyes filled with tears. In March, papers reported that movie heartthrob and Paramount star Wallace Reid was undergoing treatment for drug addiction. His treatment was unsuccessful and he was dead within a year.
These scandals, along with the Arbuckle trials, led to the creation of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America, known as the Hays Office, under the dictatorial sway of Presbyterian elder and former Postmaster General, Will Hays. Just as major league baseball hired Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis as Commissioner in 1921 to quell questions about the integrity of the sport following the 1919 World Series Black Sox Scandal, so the movie industry the next year formed the Hays Office to deal with public backlash against a trail of broken lives and scandals that threatened the young industry. Formed in January of 1922, one of Hays’ first moves was to blacklist Roscoe Arbuckle, prohibiting him from working in films. After consultation with Hays, Adolph Zukor and Jesse Lasky canceled the distribution and showings of all of Arbuckle’s films in April of 1922. Although the ban was lifted eight months later in December of 1922, his career was finished.
Not everyone was sorry. William Jennings Bryan, devout Christian, perennial Presidential candidate and a chief proponent of Prohibition, wrote to Hays:
His [Arbuckle’s] acquittal only relieved him of the penalty that attaches to a crime. The evidence showed a depravity entirely independent of the question of actual murder. As long as his character must be measured by such orgies as that in which he played the leading part, there is no reason why he should be given another chance.
The best of his friends stood by, including Buster Keaton, Al St. John, and his agent, Joe Schenck. When he couldn’t act, he found some work directing. He couldn’t use his own name, so he took credit as William Goodrich, his father’s first two names. Keaton called him Will B. Good. Surprisingly, one of the directing jobs offered him was “The Red Mill,” bankrolled by William Randolph Hearst to feature his companion, Marion Davies. The experience was a disaster for Arbuckle, and the film a box-office flop. Arbuckle did a little live performing on stage for Alexander Pantages, who had given him work when he was an unknown comic. In many places citizens objected to his appearances, forgetting the acquittal and remembering only the rumors of sexual depravity, and battles took place in city councils about whether he should be allowed to perform.
In 1925, Minta, from whom he had been separated nine years, divorced him.
He married twice more. In 1925 he wed actress Doris Deane, whom he met for the first time on the fateful ferry ride home from San Francisco on September 6, 1921. He met her again during a stint doing an unaccredited cameo role for a feature called “Hollywood,” a send-up of the movie business in which dozens of famous Hollywood stars had cameos, including Charlie Chaplin, Cecil B. DeMille, Douglas Fairbanks, William S. Hart, Mary Pickford, and Will Rogers. The marriage was short-lived, exacerbated perhaps by Arbuckle’s heavy drinking. They divorced four years later in 1929. He married again in 1933, wedding actress Addie Oakley Dukes McPhail, then twenty-six.
Over the ten years that followed his acquittal, Arbuckle had small un-credited roles in only four films. He finally had an opportunity to return to pictures under his own name, appearing in six two-reelers between February of 1932 and June of 1933, but his art and style had not kept up with the public’s taste. His broadly comic slapstick shorts were old-fashioned and forgettable in an industry now producing high-brow full length features. In 1932, the Oscar-winning best film was “Grand Hotel,” the stylish period piece starring Greta Garbo, John Barrymore, and Joan Crawford. In 1933, movie audiences had a choice of Busby Berkeley’s spectacular “42nd Street,” “A Farewell to Arms” starring Gary Cooper and Helen Hayes, and Mae West and Cary Grant in the comedy “She Done Him Wrong.” Katherine Hepburn won her first Best Actress Academy Award that year. Arbuckle’s two-reelers simply didn’t measure up, and it was clear that both his fans and his culture had abandoned him.
After a high-spirited dinner on June 29, 1933, to celebrate a just-received offer to appear in a feature length film for Warner Brothers, Arbuckle and Addie returned to the Central Park Hotel at 55th Street and 7th Avenue in Manhattan and went to bed. Arbuckle died in his sleep. He was forty-six.
His films unwatched, America has forgotten Arbuckle, once its darling. A century of innovation, from silent to sound, short to feature length, black and white to color, faltering nitrate to sophisticated computer graphics, has relegated Arbuckle and his contributions to the back drawer of history. Scholars and critics may know him, but most Americans today will barely recognize his name, and those who do remember only vaguely the rape and rumored coke bottle; the legacy, obituary really, written for Arbuckle in the newspapers in the fall of 1921 when he was still a household name. Few in America have fallen so far or so fast. And few profited from that fall, except perhaps William Randolph Hearst, who once boasted to Buster Keaton that the Arbuckle trial sold more of his newspapers than the sinking of the Lusitania.
“The sentiment of every church on Christmas Day,” Arbuckle had written the December following his acquittal, “will be peace on earth and good will toward all mankind. What will be the attitude the day after Christmas to me?”