But what if the opposite lesson was learned?
Well before ten o’clock in the morning on Saturday, April 15—Holy Saturday, the day before Easter—lines began forming outside the Garrick Theatre in Los Angeles, stretching all the way down Broadway to the corner of Eighth Street and beyond. Men and women laughed and joked. Children ran about excitedly, impatient to see the picture. The marquee on the theater read FATTY ARBUCKLE IN GASOLINE GUS. Newspaper advertisements bannered FATTY IS BACK! and promised continuous screenings of Gasoline Gus from ten a.m. to eleven p.m.
“If the comedian had arranged a professional comeback himself,” Grace Kingsley wrote in the Los Angeles Times, “he couldn’t have stage-maneuvered the job as Fate did it for him.” The Garrick was filled with “the fans who have waited all this time for another booming laugh, such as only Fatty can give them,” Kingsley wrote. “They cheered his first appearance on the screen, and applauded when the picture was finished, and laughed in between.” The Garrick did a bang-up business all day long, and the same numbers crowded in the next day, even though it was Easter Sunday.
The crowds that filled the Garrick to capacity—on the holiest days of the Christian calendar!—belied the moralists’ vision of America. So did the little children who met Arbuckle at the train station with their parents, throwing their arms around his neck. The welcome Arbuckle received debunked the claim that the public would rise against him, that a majority of Americans were repulsed by the permissive, cosmopolitan, secular lifestyle Hollywood both presented and represented. If America had ever been the country the moralists described, it wasn’t anymore. A world war and the changes it brought to society had seen to that.
In Chicago, the censor board took a new, progressive stand, announcing that Fatty was welcome once again on the city’s screens. Films were to be judged on their individual merits, the board said, “without any reference to the private life of the actors.” And while it was no surprise that Gasoline Gus would attract capacity crowds in big cities like Chicago and Los Angeles, Paramount exchanges were getting enthusiastic responses from all around the country. In the little city of Washington, Indiana, the Liberty Theatre polled its audiences that weekend—and the vote was 1,066 to 140 in favor of Arbuckle. From Great Falls, Montana, came an appeal from a theater manager asking for “the privilege to be the first [in the region] to show an Arbuckle photoplay.” One Paramount agent noted ironically, “Practically all the same managers who ordered the films cancelled out of their theaters when Arbuckle became involved in the Rappé case are the first to ask that his productions be reissued now.”
Buoyed by such support, Famous Players scheduled a gala New York premiere for Gasoline Gus at the Rivoli Theatre on April 23.
But the moralists weren’t conceding defeat quite yet.
“The public knows full well,” wrote the Kokomo Tribune, in Will Hays’s home state of Indiana, “even if Arbuckle has been acquitted, that the party he gave was an affair of disgusting debauchery and unspeakable licentiousness.” That alone, the moralists believed, should be enough to bar him from the screen.
In an open letter to Will Hays, the Lord’s Day Alliance, Wilbur Crafts’s organization, implored the new head of the MPPDA to use his authority “to intervene and prevent the outrage to the moral sensitivities to the citizens of this country threatened by the proposal to again exhibit Arbuckle films.” And “in case it should be that the exercise of such authority” was not within the bounds of Hays’s power at the MPPDA (it wasn’t), then the group urged him to use his “great personal influence for the accomplishment of this end.”
Others weren’t willing to wait for Hays. In Sheboygan, Wisconsin, the local paper pressured its common council to ban Arbuckle films. In Hartford, Connecticut, after calls from religious organizations, theater owners pledged that Fatty’s face would never again be seen on their screens. This included the Majestic Theatre, a Paramount licensee. Zukor had meant it when he said he wouldn’t “force” the pictures on his theaters; he knew what kind of backlash that would cause. For practically the first time in his career, he ceded a shred of authority to his exhibitors: Arbuckle pictures would be released to Paramount theaters, but no one would be compelled to accept them.
That was still not good enough for Zukor’s antagonists.
The Lord’s Day Alliance threatened to protest outside theaters that dared screen Gasoline Gus. Petitions from conservative religious groups piled up on Hays’s desk, overwhelming his first weeks on the job. To get the results they wanted, reformers made sure to stack local theaters whenever public debates over Arbuckle were scheduled; there would be no more of those embarrassing polls if they could help it. In St. Louis, the boos were louder than the applause when one theater asked its patrons whether they ought to show Arbuckle. The powerful Federation of Women’s Clubs sent its members into battle, targeting any theater that presented Arbuckle films. A group of Chicago women disregarded their own censor board and stormed the screen at the Blackstone Theatre when an old Arbuckle two-reeler appeared, forcing the owners to shut down the exhibition.
And in Washington, the Federal Trade Commission took note of just how unmanageable, how unregulated, the film industry had become.
Only days after his “experiment” of releasing Arbuckle’s film, Zukor knew what he had to do. The pushback from the reformers was not going to end. They would mobilize; they would boycott; they would tear films out of projectors if they had to. They would bring down government regulation. The reformers had won.
Even though Zukor had ten thousand contracts with theaters across the country to show Gasoline Gus—even though the film was pumping a steady supply of nickels, dimes, and quarters into his coffers, on schedule to recoup the million dollars he had feared lost—he would have to turn off the tap. He had to willingly give up all that income—another first for Zukor’s career.
Arbuckle’s comeback had to be halted. It was the only way. And only one person could make that happen.
On Tuesday, April 18, Will Hays was summoned to a meeting with Zukor at the Famous Players office, a block and a half down Fifth Avenue. Despite being what wags called the “highest paid executive the avenue knows,” Hays obeyed the order from Zukor and made the trip.
Jesse Lasky and Nicholas Schenck, representing his brother Joe, were also summoned. Once they were all present, Zukor made his wishes clear: with all the agitation and threats of boycotts, Arbuckle’s films had to be banned.
The men were shocked. But the public wanted Fatty! Gasoline Gus was making money!
Zukor silenced the arguments. The industry could not be seen as pandering to the public’s lowest common denominator—the only explanation the moralists could give for the thousands who were flocking to see Gasoline Gus and demanding more Arbuckle pictures. That would leave them vulnerable to threats far greater than any temporary loss of income. The headlines about the Taylor murder had only recently died down. If they didn’t move to stop Arbuckle’s comeback, they’d be mired in controversy for months to come—controversy that could only encourage the government to move against them.
Zukor knew what was needed: a statement banishing Arbuckle from the screen. He turned to the new man in the room, the man they’d chosen to protect the industry.
Hays blanched.
This was not why he had been hired. He had frequently insisted that he would not be put in the position “of being a judge of the morals of those who are in the industry.” As a Christian, Hays recoiled at the idea of passing judgment, of casting stones. Arbuckle had been found innocent in a court of law, he argued. Who was Will Hays to second-guess that? The poor soul was also “well-nigh bankrupt,” Hays had heard. How could he “stand in the man’s way of earning a living in the only business he knew”?
Hays wanted nothing to do with such a plan. If such a ban was going to be issued, Hays believed, the man to do it was Zukor, on behalf of Paramount.
Zukor could have done it. Technically, in fact, he alone—not Hays—had the po
wer to ban Arbuckle’s films. But then Zukor would have had to face the wrath, and potentially the lawsuits, of those who held the ten thousand Arbuckle contracts. Even worse, a Zukor-imposed ban would have damaged the credibility of the MPPDA. If anyone other than Hays made the decision to ban Arbuckle, Zukor argued, the movie czar would be exposed as a puppet—a charge some had already leveled, and one Hays deeply resented. If he didn’t take the lead on this issue, Zukor told Hays, the moralists were ready to emasculate him. And a castrated leader would have zero power to effect any of the other industry changes they all wanted.
Against such reasoning, Hays had no argument.
The press coverage would say it was Hays who had “prevailed upon” Zukor and Schenck to ban Arbuckle. How Hays must have cringed to read the stories. Years later, in his memoirs, he’d say that Zukor’s decision to ban Arbuckle had been noble: he had put the good of the entire industry ahead of the potential profits he might make from the comedian’s pictures—and paid the price for it, as stock in Famous Players dropped precipitously the day the ban was announced.
But that was hogwash. One of Zukor’s core beliefs was that the market should decide everything. If audiences nationwide flocked to Arbuckle’s pictures the way they had in Los Angeles, he (and Hays) could have told their critics, “That’s the American way.” Yet faced with threats of boycotts and regulation and the possibility of undermining the power of the MPPDA, Zukor had abandoned one of his most cherished business tenets. Hays did his best to make that decision seem honorable. But he also made clear to posterity that it was not he who made it.
At the time, however, Hays had no choice. On a blank Famous Players–Lasky interoffice memorandum, he scrawled a draft of what Zukor wanted him to say. “After consultation at length with Mr. Nicholas Schenck, representing Mr. Joseph Schenck, the producers, and Mr. Adolph Zukor and Mr. Jesse Lasky, of the Famous Players–Lasky Corporation, the distributors, I will state that at my request they have canceled all showings and all bookings of the Arbuckle films. They do this that the whole matter may have the consideration that its importance warrants, and the action is taken notwithstanding the fact that they had nearly ten thousand contracts in force for the Arbuckle pictures.”
Hays then made the short walk back to his office, memo in hand. So this was what his job would be: a glorified secretary to Adolph Zukor, rubber-stamping Famous Players policy. The pundits were right: it hadn’t taken Zukor very long to flex his muscles, exposing Hays’s leadership as an industry ruse. Just two months after taking office, Hays had been forced to deny his better nature and obey his overlord’s bidding.
After instructing his assistant to type up the draft and send it out, Hays tried to slip away unseen. But a group of newsmen caught him, “hat and coat in hand,” and started pummeling him with questions. How did he justify this ban, given Arbuckle’s acquittal and the jury’s statement condemning the injustice against him? What happened to Hays’s insistence that he was no censor?
Turning to face his pursuers, Hays tried quoting the MPPDA’s mission statement, blathering about “moral and artistic standards.” But his words were hollow. His heart wasn’t in them. “Beyond that,” Hays muttered, “I cannot say anything just now.”
He hurried away.
Zukor made no statement. This was Hays’s moment, as he had intended it to be.
The press spun the ban as the “first move in the announced campaign to ‘clean up’ the industry,” just as Zukor had hoped. That would please the moralists. That should convince them—for a while, anyway—that Hays held moral authority over all of them.
In Hollywood, the ban came as a great surprise to everyone, including the man himself. When reporters banged on his door to give him the news, Arbuckle’s face dropped. “Gosh,” he said. “I thought I was well-started on my comeback.”
So had Will Hays. In his office the next day, the film czar sent off a letter to friends. He was “very homesick for you all,” he wrote. Heartsick too, no doubt.
The Arbuckle ban was a game-changer. No one was safe. “The action is regarded by high officials in the industry,” the New York Times observed, “to mean that other characters who have figured in so-called Hollywood scandals would be driven out as objectionable to the public.” Who was next, then? Mabel? Mary?
They all now lived in fear of Will Hays.
CHAPTER 50
A QUESTION OF MOTIVES
The man Jesse Winn had just brought in for questioning was handsome, slender, dark, and very nervous. Sitting opposite him in the interrogation room, Eddie King doubted very strongly that this latest suspect in the Taylor case had anything to do with the crime. He was starting to get a sense of who the killer might be, and it was not this man.
Still, as the DA’s lead investigator on the case, King had a job to do, so he went through the motions of interrogating the trembling figure sitting across from him. His name was Honore Connette. Well-dressed and erudite, Connette was thirty-nine years old, unmarried, and a newspaper scribe, working at various times for the Los Angeles Times and the Long Beach Press. Most recently, however, he’d been writing for the Hilo Tribune in Hawaii. While in the island territory, Connette had drawn attention to himself by telling some outrageous stories about William Desmond Taylor. To a fellow reporter, Connette had insisted that Taylor’s murderer was not a woman, as so many papers were implying. When asked how he could be so sure, Connette had implied that he knew a lot of people in the film colony—and their secrets.
Connette had been an actor before going into journalism. The Indiana native had toured the country in The Poor Little Rich Girl, playing the “first society man.” After the show’s run, he had settled down in Los Angeles, along with one of his castmates, James Bryson, who had played the “second society man.” Bryson went on to become part of Don Osborn’s clique, writing bad checks and carrying on with Rose Putnam—until, of course, Osborn put a stop to that.
Connette had done better for himself than his old friend, landing his newspaper gigs as well as some bit parts in movies. At one point he had worked as an extra for William Desmond Taylor. The two had shared a conversation about books, Connette told King.
Somehow, Connette seemed to have picked up some knowledge of Taylor’s death—and for a while he blabbed about it to anyone who would listen. For the Hilo Tribune he wrote articles suggesting that Taylor’s killer was planning to disappear into the Orient. Finally, when his talk raised too much suspicion, Connette’s editors turned him over to the police. Jesse Winn had met his ship in San Francisco, and in searching the traveler’s bags he had found something very interesting.
A .38-caliber revolver, the same kind of gun used to kill Taylor. And one bullet was missing.
King sat staring into the man’s dark eyes. Revolver notwithstanding, he was still convinced that Connette had nothing to do with the case. What possible motive would Honore Connette, a newspaper reporter who’d barely known Taylor, have had to commit murder?
And for King, motive was everything.
Three months after the murder, investigators still had no solid leads. 7000 HOLLYWOOD RUMORS DISSOLVE AS POLICE FLOP IN TAYLOR CASE, Variety charged. But King intended to debunk that headline. He believed he was close to figuring out the case.
His early dismissal of Edward Sands as the culprit was now accepted by most—though not all—of the other investigators. The detectives had received a police report that a sailor fitting Sands’s description, going by the name of Snyder—Sands’s real name—had signed up for the revenue cutter Bear the previous November, which certainly fit the pattern of Sands’s life. The report also said that the same man had been spotted in the municipal woodyard in Oakland, California, on February 1—which, if true, would discredit Earl Tiffany’s wife’s claim that she had seen Sands that same day in Los Angeles. It would also exonerate Sands of Taylor’s murder. As far as King was concerned, the testimony of the Oakland police carried more weight than that of Mrs. Earl Tiffany.
Only one person
had the motive to kill Taylor, in the detective’s opinion. It wasn’t Edward Sands. And it sure as heck wasn’t Honore Connette.
Still, King was obliged to investigate Connette as thoroughly as he could. The actor Gareth Hughes, a friend of Connette’s, was called into the DA’s office. Hughes revealed that the newspaperman had been very depressed following the death of his mother the previous January, and had started drinking heavily. He’d also become addicted to Veronal, a barbiturate sleeping aid. Connette’s talk about Taylor could only have been a fever dream, a fantasy, Hughes believed. King chalked him up as just one more crackpot obsessed with the Taylor case.
By this time, Connette was trying frantically to walk back all the tales he’d told about the murder. In “a moment of levity,” the frightened newspaper reporter now claimed, he’d tried to impress a newspaper rival in Hilo. “I suppose I drank a bit,” he told investigators, “and said things while under the influence of liquor upon which the preposterous situation in which I now find myself could have been built.”
Just to be sure, Connette was hustled into a police car and driven over to Alvarado Court, where he was presented to Faith MacLean. The weary woman took a long look at him and concluded that, no, he was not the man she had seen. And presumably a test of the bullets in Connette’s gun revealed that they did not match the one that had killed Taylor.
The newspaper writer was released. No further tabs were kept on him.
King was tired of such foolishness. It was time, he believed, that they arrest the real killer. But first, he knew, he was going to need proof.
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