Room 1219: Fatty Arbuckle, the Mysterious Death of Virginia Rappe, and the Scandal That Changed Hollywood

by Greg Merritt

  That last sentence reads as if it were penned by a group, born nine months earlier, that regularly railed against the dangers facing the women of San Francisco. In the first hours of Thanksgiving Day 1920, a gang of at least eight young men drugged and sexually assaulted two teenage girls in a shack on Howard Street. The case was huge news in the Bay Area, perpetuated when three additional young women made other gang rape charges. Understandably, headlines like GIRL, 20, SOBS RECITAL OF ATTACK BY 19 fostered outrage and fueled a fear that the streets of the city were teeming with packs of rampaging males. On December 13, 1920, more than seventy-five San Francisco women’s clubs sent representatives to a meeting, and the Women’s Vigilant Committee was formed. The name drew purposeful parallels to the male vigilante groups of the 1850s that meted out frontier justice in San Francisco to ward off Gold Rush criminality.

  Curbing vice was one stated goal of the WVC. Another was the support of females—victims, witnesses, and family members—at trials. On the Wednesday that the grand jury’s indictment and the recommendation of the coroner’s inquest were handed down, the WVC held a meeting about the Arbuckle case. It was attended by two hundred members and appointed a committee of twenty women to bolster female witnesses. Club president Dr. Mariana Bertola (a physician at an Oakland women’s college) said the Arbuckle case “is no better than the Howard Street gangsters case in many of its particulars. Nor should the ones responsible for it be shown here leniency.” Another WVC member said, “We are not going to stand for these orgies with their inevitably terrible results, whether their scene be a shack on Howard Street or a gilded caravansary in rich man’s row.”

  Women’s clubs had blossomed in the early twentieth century, and many had worked to pass the Eighteenth (Prohibition) and Nineteenth (women’s suffrage) Amendments. The latter was ratified on August 18, 1920, four months before the Women’s Vigilant Committee was formed, and politicians were then eagerly courting the large new bloc of female voters. On Thursday Bertola met with District Attorney Brady and made arrangements for WVC members to monitor Arbuckle court proceedings. The WVC was the most prominent of several women’s clubs to side with the prosecution and encourage a hard line from Brady, whose employment depended on the vagaries of voters. The front-page subheading of the Los Angeles Times article about the Bertola/Brady meeting read “Women After Arbuckle.”

  While Arbuckle was locked behind iron bars in cell 12 of the city jail, his $34,000 customized, purple-blue Pierce-Arrow was parked in an alley behind the Hall of Justice. Visited daily by throngs of curious viewers, it was the city’s newest tourist attraction. (Prohibition officials were threatening to seize it, if they could prove it had been used to transport alcohol.) In Los Angeles, residents came to gaze at Arbuckle’s West Adams mansion.

  Arbuckle’s net worth at the time was estimated at between $500,000 and $1 million. The press made much of his extravagant free-spending ways, estimating he had spent $100,000 on automobiles (approximately $1.3 million in today’s dollars) and thousands more on just “having a good time.” The amount he could obtain via liquid assets was around $200,000.

  On Monday a furniture company had filed a lien, claiming Arbuckle owed $6,500 for twenty-five pieces of furniture. On Wednesday an interior decorator filed an attachment against all known Arbuckle property, claiming the jailed actor owed $11,400 for decorating his house and grounds. The superstar had made purchases on credit because retailers and contractors offered him such deals to win his implied endorsement, but now that his name hurt their reputations more than it helped, they were calling in the debts. He had managed his money unwisely. The man with the million-dollar contract had much less than he should have, and his outrageously expensive legal team was quickly depleting it.

  Try as it might, that legal team could not spring Arbuckle out of jail. The grand jury’s manslaughter indictment was presented on Thursday, bail was set at $5,000, and Arbuckle’s team handed over a cashier’s check in exchange for their client’s freedom. But their client spent another night in jail, awaiting a hearing on the murder charge in police court on Friday morning. It seemed a mere formality that it would be dismissed in favor of the manslaughter charge endorsed by both the grand jury and the coroner’s inquest. The defense team was so confident of their client’s imminent release, they booked a car for him on the Saturday train to Los Angeles.

  District Attorney Brady held a long, private conference on Thursday with Police Chief O’Brien and Captain of Detectives Matheson. In addition to pressure from the women’s clubs, Brady received a telegram from Henry Lehrman, released to the public:

  For the sake of God and justice to men, don’t let justice be cheated. It brought tears of rage to my eyes when I read your speech that influence and wealth are brought into play to bar justice. I cried because you told the truth in spite of the pressure of gold to stifle it. You are convinced from the facts and I from knowledge that Arbuckle killed Virginia Rappe. Now, don’t let them cheat justice, for God’s sake, for he is guilty. I held court with the facts in my conscience and convicted him.

  An enormous crowd overwhelmed the Hall of Justice on Friday morning in hopes of viewing Arbuckle’s arraignment. Thousands thronged before the building’s entrance and on both sides of the street. A so-called “army of special police” was enlisted to keep order in and out of the building. Per an agreement between Brady and the women’s clubs, the event was held in a women’s court; such venues forbade male spectators so women could more openly testify in rape and other emotionally sensitive cases. (The restriction did not apply to court personnel, attorney staffs, or reporters.) The 156 seats reserved for spectators were occupied by vigilant women, most dressed in mournful black, including a cadre from the WVC. Fortified with sandwiches, they were seated hours before proceedings began while the courtroom’s doors were locked against the throngs outside.

  To the disappointment of those crowding the halls, Arbuckle was brought from his cell to Police Judge Sylvain Lazarus’s chamber via an inside corridor. He remained there with his attorneys and Lou Anger as other cases were adjudicated, one of which featured Joyce “Dollie” Clark, a showgirl who pleaded guilty to obtaining goods under false pretenses for charging a hat purchase to another woman. In an odd coincidence, Clark had been a guest at the Labor Day party but arrived after Rappe fell ill.

  The clerk read, “The next case is number five on the continued list, your honor: the State of California against Roscoe Arbuckle, murder.” And the courtroom fell into a hushed silence. Vigilant women craned their necks as the accused strode into the room and stood before the judge, shifting nervously and never acknowledging the female spectators.

  With Brady’s confident pronouncement—”The people are ready to proceed on the murder charges”—a hum of gasps and murmurs spread and rose. Arbuckle glared at the floor and bit his lip.

  In a decision that, according to him, came just before Friday’s arraignment, Brady ignored the grand jury’s manslaughter complaint and the manslaughter recommendation from the coroner’s inquest and instead proceeded on the original murder charge. Whether because of pressure from the voting public (especially the new women’s bloc), fealty to Rappe’s honor, his own competitive pride, or some combination thereof, Brady would not be moved. Arbuckle was stunned, as was his defense team. The DA was ready to begin the preliminary hearing without delay.

  Defense attorney Dominguez asked for a continuance of twelve days. Brady countered with six. Judge Lazarus decided on the latter, setting a court date for the following Thursday, September 22, at 1 PM. At the conclusion of the give-and-take between Dominguez and Brady, the DA said, “We want to be courteous to everyone, even if they do come from Los Angeles.” Feminine observers applauded the barbed witticism.

  Afterward, Brady issued a written statement:

  The District Attorney’s office, from the time that the facts became known, has always been firmly of the opinion that the correct charge involved in the Arbuckle case was murder…. It is the sole pro
vince of the trial jury to determine, after the evidence has been taken, in the event it should find the defendant guilty, whether the verdict should be one of murder, manslaughter or any other crime comprehended in the charge, and also to fix the degree thereof.

  And thus Arbuckle remained a resident of the San Francisco City Jail. Deflated, he was ushered away from the photographers and the vigilant women and back into the judge’s chamber. There he nervously smoked a cigarette and spoke with his attorneys before guards accompanied him again to cell 12, where he was to stay, indefinitely.

  “On the beautiful face there is a peaceful expression and the lips are smiling with unearthly knowledge.” So read a newspaper account, describing Virginia Rappe, lying in repose in a parlor in the Halsted & Company funeral home in San Francisco. As thousands of mourners (virtually all of whom knew her only from recent newspaper accounts) milled past on Thursday, September 15, she was dressed in “slumbering robes” of silver cloth and cream-colored silks and “veilings that a bride could wear.” The room was infused with the aroma of roses, chrysanthemums, and funeral wreaths—some compliments of Rappe’s old friend Sidi Spreckels, most from strangers, many with cards identifying the sender as a sympathetic mother. Maude Delmont attended and collapsed in anguish.

  The impressive display of one thousand pink lilies was from Henry Lehrman. Gold letters said, To MY BRAVE SWEETHEART, FROM HENRY. Lehrman was assuming the bills, and via telegram he told the undertaker to whisper “Henry loves you” in Rappe’s ear before closing the casket lid. Per Lehrman’s wired instructions, late on Friday night, Virginia Rappe, encased in her metal casket, was loaded onto a Southern Pacific train bound from San Francisco to Los Angeles. She would travel the same journey she made five years earlier, then in search of fame and fortune in Hollywood.

  * Sadie Reiss, a.k.a. Zey Prevost, also answered to Zey Prevon, an earlier stage name. In either case, the press frequently butchered it. There were more than two dozen unique misspellings of her name in print.

  * Neither in her available memoir manuscript pages nor in her many interviews did Durfee ever allege her husband was physically abusive.

  * A haunting snippet of newsreel footage features three promising movie actresses seated together. Presumably, they were friends. On one side is Olive Thomas; on the other is Edna Purviance (Charlie Chaplin’s leading lady). In the middle is Virginia Rappe, who died exactly one year after Thomas’s fatal poisoning.

  * Her age was invariably given as twenty-five. She was thirty on September 5, 1921, just four years younger than Arbuckle.

  * Semnacher claimed Delmont said, “I am still holding the bag,” to which he replied, “The only bag you are holding is that little bag in your hand.” Commence swinging.

  * One dissenting juror, Ben Boas, wrote the following: “I, the undersigned juror, find that the said Virginia Rappe came to her death from peritonitis caused by a ruptured bladder. Said rupture was caused by the application of some force, and from the evidence submitted I am unable to determine who was responsible for the application of said force.”

  {11}

  GLORY: 1917-18

  To come upon the Hollywood of those days is like taking off for the moon, landing there and finding it inhabited by all the people we always thought and hoped people would be.

  —ADELA ROGERS ST. JOHNS, LOVE, LAUGHTER AND TEARS

  Paramount had a plan for promoting its newest star. The studio would put him on a train in a private car and send him from the Pacific to the Atlantic on a twenty-three-stop tour, meeting with local exhibitors at banquets and heralding his future with Paramount Pictures. There were problems. When the February 17, 1917, departure date arrived, Arbuckle’s left leg was still debilitated, and he loped about with a cane. He still battled pain with painkillers. And having lost eighty pounds during his convalescence, the recovering morphine addict beloved as Fatty remained notably undersized.

  The shill must go on. The sendoff party was held on a Friday evening at the Hotel Alexandria in downtown Los Angeles and attended by Hollywood’s elite. Seated on the dais were Paramount execs Jesse Lasky and Adolph Zukor. The Los Angeles district attorney served as toastmaster. A giant red banner shouted in yellow letters: HE’S WORTH HIS WEIGHT IN LAUGHS. When the guest of honor entered—illuminated by a spotlight, serenaded by an orchestra, exalted by a standing ovation—he was supported by his wife, Minta Durfee, on one side and his manager, Lou Anger, on the other. By then they were the two primary and competing influences in his life.

  Durfee was Arbuckle’s motherly nurturer. After his later arrest, many of her references to him would infantilize him (“Roscoe Arbuckle is just a great big, lovable, pleasure-loving, overgrown boy”), as if to say such a naive innocent could never have done what he was accused of. Because Durfee was more careful about money matters, she’d often served as his de facto business manager as well—until Lou Anger came along. Anger was six years older than Arbuckle, a fellow comedian, and they shared vaudeville pasts and a love of baseball. He positioned himself as Arbuckle’s jocular compatriot and confidant—a big brother. This trip would determine which influence—mother or brother—won out.

  The morning after the banquet, Arbuckle boarded the private train car along with Anger, Durfee, her sister and her sister’s husband, good friend Joe Bordeaux, a masseur, and a doctor. The train went initially to San Francisco and then wove eastward, stopping in places both small (Milford, Utah) and large (Chicago). An ad in a Salt Lake City newspaper featured a giant cartoon Fatty riding atop a train with people, animals, and the sun cheering him on: “Boys and Girls, join the parade behind the brass band and escort the King of Funmakers to his hotel.” Durfee remembered: “At night, there was always a banquet. Zukor or Joe Schenck or Lasky would make the usual talk about how happy they were to be in whatever town they were in, list some of the upcoming [Paramount] films, and introduce Roscoe. Roscoe would only thank the people for attending, but they laughed as if he had just told them a lot of jokes.”

  Arbuckle told an incredulous Chicago reporter of his recent hospital stay and weight loss, and his short stay in the Windy City provoked a mention of his injury and a reference to his libidinous big-screen reputation:

  Arbuckle had a carbuncle on his knee. The farthest he walked, while in Chicago, was from the train to the street, where an Elgin Six was waiting for him.* Ordinarily, “Fatty” likes the lady admirers, but, in this case, his wife was with him, so he could do nothing else than place his foot on the accelerator and shoot through the dense crowds as fast as the speed ordinance would allow.

  He was “chairman of the reception” at a free screening of Paramount’s Snow White in Pittsburgh one day and guest of honor at a Motion Picture Machine Operators Union ball in Washington, DC, the next. Between a parade for him at the Philadelphia train station and a ritzy banquet that evening, he placed a wreath on the Liberty Bell. As the trip progressed, the daily public luncheons and dinners, during which Fatty was expected to eat heartily, packed the trademark pounds back on.† Boston was the last stop on the tour, where on the evening of March 6, dinner was served at the regal Copley Plaza Hotel. Zukor, Lasky, Marcus Loew, and the Massachusetts attorney general were among the notables in attendance when Arbuckle was enthusiastically received by more than 125 of Paramount’s New England exhibitors.

  That was the official reception party. There was also an unofficial afterparty—and what a party! In the early hours of March 7, several prominent members of the Arbuckle reception attended an event in nearby Woburn, Massachusetts. The location was Mishawum Manor, a brothel. Hush money kept the criminal facts of that late night quiet for over four years. But they would scream out on July 11, 1921, less than two months before Labor Day. Thus, the notorious Mishawum “chicken and champagne orgy” will be addressed when our story turns to the summer of 1921.

  Later on March 7, the Arbuckle entourage took a train to New York City, where the Arbuckles moved back into a suite at the Cumberland Hotel. Arbuckle regained lost leg streng
th. And as he began planning comedy shorts for his new production company that did not include his wife, the bonds of his marriage grew weaker. Durfee would always blame Lou Anger for forcing her out of her husband’s film plans, effectively ending her acting career and severing her marriage beyond repair. She was right on one count: by 1917 the Arbuckles’ marriage, which had begun with a for-profit wedding, had been reduced to principally a business arrangement.

  Lou Anger may have hastened the end of that arrangement, but the romantic relationship had been troubled for years. Arbuckle liked drinking with the guys and wild nights on the town; Durfee liked reading books and quiet nights at home. They argued. In private, fueled by alcohol, his insecurities could boil over into a rage. And by Durfee’s accounts, her pained husband had not been able to perform sexually on the cross-country tour. She recounted one rampage after he failed at sexual intercourse in which he threw dresser drawers and ripped a telephone free of the wall. “I’m a star! I’m not supposed to be married! I can’t be hampered by a wife!” he yelled at her, before kicking a table, cutting his leg. He subsequently locked himself in the bathroom, remorseful and embarrassed. “I never heard a man cry so hard in my life,” Durfee said. “It was terrible.”

  Arbuckle had probably been unfaithful, most likely with Alice Lake and with others as well. He had married young, with little experience in romance, when he was a poor and virtually unknown singer in stage shows. Eight and a half years later he was one of the most famous men in the world, wealthy and soon to be much wealthier, and he was a film director capable of launching the careers of beautiful young actresses. As Durfee, his loyal supporter, recalled him saying, “I’m a star! I’m not supposed to be married!” He wanted to experience all that the movie star lifestyle entailed.