Tinseltown: Murder, Morphine, and Madness at the Dawn of Hollywood

by William J. Mann

  Zukor fretted that once again, Loew was trying to do him one better.

  Loew’s business interests had become nearly as integrated as Zukor’s. Buying up theaters left and right, Loew owned more than a hundred by now. “Unless Marcus Loew slows up in this business of acquiring theaters,” wrote the New York Times, “some city, somewhere, some time, is going to achieve fame unique . . . as the only place without a Loew house.” Now he was looking across the Atlantic as well, sending his son Arthur to England, France, Belgium, Sweden, Portugal, and Spain in a couple of weeks, “in the interests of Metro Pictures.” Naturally Zukor’s daughter Mickey would accompany and assist him.

  That summer, Loew seemed to be taking everything near and dear to Zukor.

  At least the sneak preview of Camille was held at the Ritz, not Loew’s new State Theatre, the opulent movie house at the base of his skyscraper. Like its proprietor, the State was gauche and flamboyant, with imported Sienna marble wainscoting and walls finished in walnut and gold leaf. Hundreds of goldfish swam in a giant reflecting pool in the lobby. Over it all, Loew ruled from his perch on the sixteenth floor.

  That Zukor attended the Camille preview was a testament to his pride and resilience. As he had demonstrated in Minneapolis, he would not retreat into seclusion when things got tough—and these past several weeks had been the toughest of Zukor’s movie career. In July the Tufts trial had gotten under way with an overflow crowd listening raptly as all the lurid details were exposed. “An orgy of drink and lust” was how one prosecutor described the night at Mishawum Manor. Dragging on through the summer, the trial had Christian reformers declaring that Zukor had been poisoned by “the greed of Gehazi and the sins of Sodom.”

  And if the film chief had hoped for a quick resolution once final arguments were made on August 11, he was disappointed when the five justices of the Supreme Judicial Court announced they would take their sweet time with the evidence. Now, with nearly a month gone by, there was still no verdict. Zukor dreaded the return of the headlines—and the snickering behind his back—once the decision was finally announced.

  Yet as embarrassing as the trial in Boston had been, the end of the month brought an even worse calamity for Zukor. The Federal Trade Commission finally launched its attack.

  As he took his seat to watch Camille, Zukor knew that everyone around him, despite their warm greetings in the lobby, was rooting for him to fail. Even those who held no personal animus against him were hoping this latest challenge to Zukor’s supremacy would succeed—because if it did, they’d all have a much easier time of things.

  Late in the day on Tuesday, August 30, Famous Players was officially cited by the FTC for violating antitrust laws. “As a result of conspiracies and combinations and through acquisition and affiliation,” the conscientious Houston Thompson declared, “the Famous Players–Lasky Corporation is now the largest concern in the motion picture industry.” Much of the company’s unchecked growth had been accomplished by “coercion and intimidation,” Thompson charged. In short: Famous Players was a trust. And the job of the Federal Trade Commission was to break up trusts.

  Thirty days. That was how long Zukor and his subsidiary companies were given to answer the complaint before hearings would be held and a trial date set. In public Zukor acted unworried, making light of stories that had him “gobbling up” the industry. “For dinner it seemed I started off with a theater or two,” he said, “followed by a producing company, and ended with a few stars lured from other companies, served up with cream and sugar.”

  But back at the office, his lawyers were working day and night to come up with a defense that would keep their multimillion-dollar conglomeration together. If they failed, Zukor’s dreams would have to be cut back, reconsidered. And cheapening his vision was something Zukor could never abide.

  Yet for all that, as he filed out of the screening of Loew’s Camille, Zukor was likely smiling.

  One thing he’d learned in his nearly two decades in the film industry was just what made a good movie. He knew a hit the moment the rushes flashed on a screen. He could stand outside in the lobby, listening to an audience’s reaction, and gauge how much money a picture would make. He could also sniff out a flop. Surely he knew that Madame Nazimova’s pretentious film was doomed to be a financial disaster. As he offered his polite congratulations to Loew, a smug little smile must have played over Zukor’s face, leaving his rival to worry.

  The next day, that smile was still there. Reports from Wall Street were very good. The FTC announcement had come just as the markets were closing for Labor Day, and for the next three days Zukor had wondered how it would affect the company’s stock. Much to his relief, when business resumed, prices remained unchanged. Zukor relished the Variety headline on his desk:

  FAMOUS PLAYERS UNSHAKEN BY GOV’T INVESTIGATION

  “The general view was that the company would emerge victorious from any investigation by the Federal Trade Commission,” the story reported.

  Zukor’s enemies could stick the corks back in their bottles of champagne.

  But very different headlines were just a day away.

  On the afternoon of September 10—exactly one year after the story of Olive Thomas’s poisoning broke—another of Zukor’s fears came true: one of his own stars was caught in a scandal.

  FATTY ARBUCKLE EXPLAINS DEATH OF MOVIE BEAUTY

  VIRGINIA RAPPE MYSTERIOUSLY STRICKEN

  AT PARTY GIVEN BY COMEDIAN

  The next day’s news was even worse. Arbuckle had been taken into custody by the police, wanted in connection with the young woman’s death.

  It seemed at every turn, whenever Zukor found some measured reason for optimism, he was forced to negotiate some new calamity. Over the past year, he and the industry had weathered suicides, drug use, prostitution, and graft. This time, however, it might be murder.

  For the first time, Adolph Zukor had no idea what to do.

  CHAPTER 25

  A PRODUCT OF THE GUTTERS

  As soon as she heard the news about Roscoe Arbuckle, Mabel Normand rang her old friend Mintrattie. That was the nickname she’d given Arbuckle’s wife, Minta Durfee, back when they were all just kids, jumping out of cars and slipping on banana peels for Sennett’s Keystone pictures. In those days, Mabel had nicknames for everybody. Arbuckle was Big Otto, after the elephant at the Selig Zoo in Lincoln Park. Roscoe hated being called Fatty, but he was fine with Mabel calling him Big Otto. He knew she said it with love.

  By now, Big Otto and Mintrattie had separated, but they remained good friends. When Mabel got her on the phone, Durfee was preparing to head to San Francisco, where Roscoe was being held at the city jail as lawyers fought over his bail. Mabel told Mintrattie she knew Big Otto was innocent. Surely everyone would see that eventually.

  But the world had changed since those carefree, prewar Keystone days, before Tinseltown had become a corporate behemoth. Certainly Mabel had changed. She was on her annual sojourn back East, once again staying at the Ritz. Nearly a year had passed since her rehab at Glen Springs. But the vulgar details of Roscoe’s troubles, printed in all the newspapers, no doubt revived painful reminders of her old life. Booze, drugs, sex. A party that got out of control. Mabel knew the scene all too well.

  But she also knew the charges against Arbuckle couldn’t be true. The district attorney was claiming that Roscoe had raped and murdered a starlet named Virginia Rappé—that his three-hundred-pound bulk had crushed the young woman when he forced himself upon her.

  That was a lie, Mabel knew. Roscoe was far too gentle, too considerate, ever to hurt someone deliberately. Some believed that the case against Roscoe grew out of an attempt to extort some money from him or from Famous Players–Lasky. There were also rumors that Rappé had undergone an abortion shortly before the party, and that it was this procedure, not Arbuckle’s weight, that had ruptured her bladder and led to the peritonitis that killed her.

  Roscoe had thought they’d all just had too much to drink. He’d gone b
ack home to Los Angeles after the party without a clew as to Rappé’s true condition. Not until police showed up at his door did he even know that she had died. When he was told he was wanted on suspicion of murder, Arbuckle was bewildered. “And who do you suppose I killed?” he asked.

  Watching her old pal torn apart in the press, Mabel was shattered. She and Roscoe had been babes in the business together. In those simpler times, costarring in a series of popular “Fatty and Mabel” comedy shorts, they’d thrown custard pies at each other, tumbled down flights of stairs, and gotten washed away by floods. Off camera, they would joyride through the Palm Springs desert and swim with the dolphins off Venice Beach. Now Roscoe was behind bars. His lawyers—led by the flashy Frank Dominguez, the same who’d gotten Margaret “Gibby” Gibson acquitted of prostitution four years earlier—were fighting to get him released on bail. But San Francisco district attorney Matthew Brady, who had his eye on the governorship, was fighting just as hard to keep Arbuckle incarcerated until his trial.

  What was most unreal to Mabel—to all who knew Arbuckle—was how quickly the public turned on their former idol. Once as beloved as Santa Claus, the roly-poly comedian was now booed whenever he appeared on the screen. Petitions demanded that Adolph Zukor fire the rogue. In the public mind, Arbuckle had already been found guilty.

  In Washington, DC, a black-robed figure looking like death itself approached a group of waiting reporters, a prepared statement fluttering in his skeletal hands. “A product of the gutters!” Brother Wilbur Crafts hissed. “A man who never rose above the gutters despite wealth and success. Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle should be hanged within ten days after his conviction!”

  Sensing the opportunity, reformers wrung every drop of outrage they could from Rappé’s death, hoping to use the scandal to spur the sort of regulations they’d nearly given up on achieving. “Picture the scene for yourself,” Crafts raged. “Arbuckle, clad only in his night clothes, is kidding Miss Rappé. She doesn’t seem to mind his attentions. The party gets wilder. More liquor is consumed. Jazz music fills the room. It’s all just part of the immorality . . . typical of life in Hollywood.”

  Overnight, Arbuckle vanished from the screen. At the Manhattan Opera House, a rerelease of one of his shorts with Mabel, Fatty and Mabel Adrift, was scrapped at the last minute. When a title card announced that “in view of public feeling due to the San Francisco affair, it was deemed advisable to substitute another subject,” the audience erupted in applause.

  That broke Mabel’s heart.

  It also terrified her.

  Because if they were gunning for Fatty today, she might be in their crosshairs tomorrow.

  In the media firestorm surrounding Arbuckle’s arrest, the big guns were out, trained on everyone in Hollywood. All their secrets were fair game.

  Something had fundamentally shifted. The movies, once the nation’s happy diversion, had become a scapegoat for those who were frightened by the changes rocking American society since the end of the war. Women were claiming social and sexual freedom. Divorce was on the rise, church attendance on the decline. The races were mingling, and the laboring classes were demanding better conditions and pay. Alarmed by a free-floating sense of moral decay, angry citizens swarmed town-hall meetings, gathered at statehouses, and picketed theaters. The movies were to blame!

  Leading the charge, Brother Crafts called the Arbuckle affair “a fire bell to awaken the public to the need for reforms at which many have sneered.”

  The triumph in his voice was clear. Let Adolph Zukor try to stop censorship now, with all of Tinseltown’s secrets being exposed.

  With growing alarm, Mabel read the current issue of Variety. “There is a dope ring on the Coast beyond shadow of a question,” the paper reported, having uncovered details of Tom Green’s investigation some months earlier. “It is known that the wife of one of the most popular of the younger male stars has time and again had the peddlers of dope supplying her husband arrested, but she has been unable to get her husband to break his habit.” The article practically spelled out Wallace Reid’s name.

  But Reid wasn’t the only one Variety had targeted. “One young girl star,” the article continued, “who spent several months in the east . . . took a cure and signed a contract to star again, only to fall back on the use of the ‘stuff’ and slip among the addicts.”

  Reading that, Mabel must have wept.

  Because they were wrong. She was not an addict, not anymore. She had worked hard to stay clean. She had sweated and cursed and struggled and turned the relentless dealers away from her door. Billy was proud of her. But no one believed she was clean. The problem was that she was ill so often. The bloom of good health she’d enjoyed the previous winter had faded once she’d started work on Molly O’. Sennett thought “she photographed without her old-time sparkle and bounce.” Mabel was off the hop, but her former lover knew that “all those years of neglecting herself, of fun for fun’s sake and ice cream for breakfast . . . had left a mark.”

  Indeed, earlier that summer, Mabel’s doctor had diagnosed her with pleurisy. For nine days she’d been sick in bed, sending forlorn telegrams to Billy in London. Four months later, she still wasn’t entirely recovered. She was tired all the time. Hacking, coughing. Now that she was sober, why did she have to be sick? Besides diminishing her sparkle, her ill health convinced people that she was still using.

  It was brutally unfair, but Mabel no longer expected fairness. She had witnessed just how impersonal moviemaking had become, the way the lust for profits and control had crowded out everything else. Was this what happened to those with too much ambition, to those who set out to prove themselves in the big, wide world? Would the public always turn on its heroes once they got too big, too successful, too proud, too careless?

  If so, Mabel might have been better off staying on Staten Island after all.

  On the night of September 15, Mabel headed uptown to the Apollo Theater in Harlem for the New York premiere of Mary Pickford’s Little Lord Fauntleroy. A gala crowd turned out: Norma and Constance Talmadge, Joe Schenck, Dorothy Gish, Marshall Neilan, Mae Murray, and Jack Pickford, among others. Douglas Fairbanks was also on hand to support his wife. But outside the theater, so many reporters shouted questions about Arbuckle that Mary was left rattled when she tried to give her welcoming speech. Bursting into tears over the continued assault on her beloved industry, she had to leave the theater by a rear exit.

  If Mabel shed any tears that night, they were for Roscoe and for her friends and for herself. For the industry, she had shed her last tears long ago.

  CHAPTER 26

  RIDING FOR A FALL

  Adolph Zukor had always prided himself on having it all figured out. He was never caught off guard. He had responded quickly and effectively to the exhibitors and their shenanigans. His lawyers had been prepared for Nathan Tufts. He’d even been one up on the FTC, having his own moles in the Harding administration.

  But this new battlefront was something altogether different.

  Gigantic black headlines stared up at him.

  SCANDAL HITS INDUSTRY

  WORLDWIDE CONDEMNATION OF PICTURES

  Oh, how Zukor despised Roscoe Arbuckle.

  He’d resented Fatty ever since he’d hired him for Famous Players a few years back. Arbuckle had demanded an obscene salary: $3,500 per week, plus 25 percent of the profits from his pictures, which he split with his producer-manager, Joseph Schenck. To make matters worse, Arbuckle spurned the kind of personal publicity Zukor felt was necessary to sell pictures properly. The movie chief had wanted his star to visit theaters showing his film Gasoline Gus over Labor Day weekend, but Arbuckle had refused. He’d had other plans.

  A certain party in San Francisco.

  Zukor could have throttled him.

  Scandal was always arriving at the least opportune moment. Although business had started to improve in the last few months, financial conditions remained fragile, and something like the Arbuckle brouhaha could easily dest
roy all the gains they’d made. “At this time, when business in the theaters is not too good,” Variety opined, “the attacks against the picture industry delivered by the various churches may hurt the box offices everywhere, with the exception of possibly the big centers.”

  May hurt the box offices everywhere.

  In the foulest of moods, Zukor rode the elevator to the ground floor and stormed out onto Fifth Avenue.

  Immediately reporters pounced. Flashcubes popped. “No comment,” Zukor snapped when asked about Arbuckle. So far he’d said nothing about the scandal, and he intended to keep it that way. But the newsmen kept shouting after him. There was a report out of Los Angeles that Sid Grauman had yanked Gasoline Gus from his Million Dollar Theatre and canceled all outstanding contracts for Arbuckle films. Was it true?

  Hurrying into the backseat of his waiting car, Zukor said nothing. But the report was true. Despite the fact that Famous Players controlled Grauman’s theaters, the exhibitor had bowed to public sentiment and banned all Arbuckle pictures from his screen. Grauman had no other choice, and Zukor knew it. “To have shown them,” the film chief said, “might have resulted in riots. At best the outcry would be so great as to damage the whole industry.”

  From across the country, he was hearing the same thing. Theater owners told horror stories of church ladies and civic reformers, many brandishing crucifixes as if to ward off vampires, barging into their offices and demanding they never again show Arbuckle’s films. Otherwise, they promised, they’d be back—with placards and bullhorns and photographers. One by one, theater owners in cities from coast to coast backed out of their agreements to show Arbuckle’s films. Portland, Maine. Providence, Rhode Island. Buffalo. Detroit. Chicago. And so Zukor kept the unreleased Arbuckle pictures in the vault, “at a loss of roughly a million dollars.”

  Oh, how he cursed Fatty Arbuckle.