by Greg Merritt
He continued decorating the house in a manner he deemed befitting West Adams and its titans of industry. He imported an intricately carved front door from Spain (cost: $12,000) and bought and bought and bought: ornate mahogany paneling, gold-leafed bathtubs, crystal chandeliers, Oriental rugs, marble counters, fine-art paintings, antique china. The red lacquer dining room table with golden-clawed feet was from China. The lanai featured a Hawaiian royal chair. There was a Japanese bridge over the pond. Forever fascinated by technical gadgetry, Arbuckle had his closets and dressers wired with lights that came on when a door or drawer was opened.
As ostentatious as his house’s interior was, it was overshadowed by his new car. In 1919 he’d had the mammoth skeleton and innards of a Pierce-Arrow delivered to Don Lee Coach & Body Works in Los Angeles. There twenty-five-year-old Harley Earl* performed $28,000 worth of coachwork to the luxurious $6,000 original, reshaping the hood and cowl and adding such features as a backseat mahogany cabinet, headlamps like silver soup pots, and a radiator cap monogrammed with an A. In April 1920 Earl completed his work, and for the next week more than ten thousand awed observers crowded into Don Lee’s showroom to marvel at the $34,000 machine. The Los Angeles Times stated that it would take “a special squad of police” to clear traffic of stunned witnesses whenever Arbuckle’s Pierce-Arrow appeared on a street.
Arbuckle continued to throw frequent house parties, ever so slowly depleting his cellar stockpile while the jazz played. There were stag parties, lawn parties, dinner parties, early morning parties. He staged a party around a dog wedding, at which Luke was the best man, so to speak. His favorite Venice and Vernon haunts had gone dry, so some weekends he journeyed to San Francisco or Tijuana. He was among the Hollywood celebrities who spent Halloween of 1920 at Tijuana’s Sunset Inn. A news story said that “a ‘spirited’ program is assured in the Mexican village.”
More than nine months into Prohibition, the quotation marks bracketing “spirited” were a knowing wink.
The painted poster features Arbuckle in a ten-gallon hat (properly sized), a leather vest, and a blue shirt. A red kerchief adorns his neck, a six-shooter is strapped to his waist, his arms are crossed, and his eyes gaze wistfully into the distance. His name is as big as the title, The Round Up, but “Fatty” is parenthesized and squeezed between the much larger “ROSCOE” and “ARBUCKLE,” as if a mere whisper. Although Arbuckle’s first feature film includes his signature bit of rolling a cigarette with one hand and a few other minor gags (one featuring Keaton, uncredited, as a blackface Indian), it is otherwise void of comedy. It’s a western romance with too many plots. Variety wrote, “It is evident that Fatty Arbuckle of the mammoth breeches and slapstick funnies has given away to Roscoe Arbuckle in a regular hero role, serious in personation with but a modicum of comedy for relief as behooves his corpulent build. The change has not been for the better.”
It may have alienated fans of slapstick, but The Round Up accomplished its goal. A box office success, it established its star’s bona fides as a feature film actor. The story remains tedious, but Arbuckle brings a surprising pathos to the part of Sheriff “Slim” Hoover, the role that gave him his signature line. In the end, unable to get the girl, he forlornly rests his head on a fence post, and the final intertitle reads, “Nobody loves a fat man.”
Passport application of Roscoe Arbuckle:
November 16, 1920.
Object of visit: business
Father: dead
William Goodrich Arbuckle had only recently died from cancer at age seventy-one. Roscoe paid his father’s final medical bills, but it’s unknown whether he ever saw the man again after leaving their unhappy Santa Clara home at seventeen. (His bitter stepmother claimed he “abandoned” his stepfamily when he became successful.) He did not attend the funeral.
Instead, he was in New York City, planning to board an ocean liner bound for France with friend Fred Ward, a former actor. As they awaited its departure, a rumor surfaced in Variety that Arbuckle would soon be marrying a former Ziegfeld Follies showgirl. Never mind that he was still married to Minta Durfee; even the showbiz press had forgotten. In Jazz Age Manhattan, Arbuckle partied so much that he literally missed the boat, and he and Ward had to take another ship five days later. Never mind that Prohibition had been the law of the land for eleven months. Addressing the marriage rumor, Arbuckle joked that he might return from France with a French wife. Never mind that he was still married; perhaps even he could forget.
Eight years after his trip across the Pacific, this was Arbuckle’s maiden journey across the Atlantic. In Europe, he learned just how great his fame had grown. Motion pictures were a major American export—even more so after World War I decimated the European movie industry.
“Paris went wild over Fatty Arbuckle,” Photoplay noted. “From the time he landed until he sailed for home, he was dined and wined and feted, for the French took him in portly person as readily as they take to his pictures.” Four thousand Parisians crowded on a street just to glimpse him. Hundreds of fans and dozens of reporters followed his chauffeured car wherever he went. There were banquets and dinners and dances. Much of the official thanks given Arbuckle was for the comfort his movies had provided the French during four years of bloody conflict. He reciprocated when, at the Arc de Triomphe, he laid a bouquet on the spot where the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier would appear a few weeks later.
His trip’s final nine days were in London. There, while staying at the luxurious Hotel Savoy, he hosted a dinner attended by 150 British notables. For a movie star of his magnitude, simply being in the right public places while cameras clicked and delivering ready-made quips to the swarming reporters was a function of his occupation. Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle’s product was himself, and every day in every place was an opportunity to sell. He returned to New York City on December 22 and again spent Christmas in Manhattan with his wife, even if all had forgotten he was married.
The Round Up was the first of five feature films Arbuckle acted in in 1920, though with their greater postproduction and publicity schedules, they weren’t making it to screens nearly as fast as his slapstick shorts had. Only one other was released that year. In it Arbuckle plays an unsuccessful attorney who runs for political office. In an unfortunate subplot, a woman tries to entrap Fatty and spawn a ruinous scandal. Originally released in December 1920, it was still playing in theaters ten months later when a ruinous scandal engulfed its leading man, conferring a morose irony on its title: The Life of the Party.
Roscoe Arbuckle and Charlie Chaplin as two drunks in a sinking row-boat at the end of The Rounders (1914).
Luke the dog, Arbuckle, and Mabel Normand in Fatty and Mabel Adrift (1916).
Left to right: Buster Keaton, Arbuckle, and Al St. John in a publicity photo for Back Stage (1919). Arbuckle is dressed in his best-known costume: flannel shirt, suspenders, baggy pants worn too high, undersized bowler.
Poster for The Round Up (1920), Arbuckle’s first feature.
Virginia Rappe.
Rappe modeling an outfit of her own design, circa 1915.
The Hotel St. Francis. Arbuckle’s suite is visible on the top floor of the leftmost wing. At the upper left corner of the facade is one window of room 1220; to its right are two windows of room 1221. Room 1219 is out of view on the left side of the building. San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library
Arbuckle’s mug shots after being arrested for the murder of Virginia Rappe, just before midnight on September 10, 1921.
The preliminary hearing. Seated at the table, left to right: defense attorney Frank Dominguez, Assistant DA Milton U’Ren, and District Attorney Matthew Brady. Arbuckle is seated behind the lawyers, between U’Ren and Brady.
Arbuckle and wife Minta Durfee in court on September 28, 1921, the final day of the preliminary hearing, when the judge announced that Arbuckle would be tried for manslaughter.
Arbuckle and his defense team on November 18, 1921, the opening day of the first trial. Left to right
: Nat Schmulowitz, Milton Cohen, Gavin McNab (standing), Arbuckle, Charles Brennan (standing), Joseph McInerney. Library of Congress
Will Hays, the man charged with cleaning up Hollywood in the aftermath of the Arbuckle scandal. Library of Congress
Arbuckle’s second wife, Doris Deane, in 1925. Los Angeles Public Library Photo Collection
Arbuckle directing, circa 1931.
Arbuckle with his third wife, Addie McPhail, in 1932. Los Angeles Public Library Photo Collection
* In fact, the contract paid Arbuckle $3 million for twenty-four movies. In addition, Lou Anger and Comique president Joseph Schenck took their shares of Arbuckle’s pay.
* In 2011 an Arbuckle 1919 baseball card sold at auction for $5,288.
* The Tigers won the PCL title again in 1920, without controversy. But without Arbuckle and without alcohol (Prohibition had begun), attendance plummeted. Before the 1926 season, the team was sold, moved to San Francisco, and renamed the Mission Reds.
† A former vaudeville dancer, Coogan had a truncated film acting career before going into producing. His son, also known as Jackie Coogan, achieved greater fame, first as an actor (he played the titular role in Chaplin’s The Kid), then as the namesake of the Coogan Bill, which financially protects child actors. The junior Coogan fondly remembered playing with Arbuckle in the summer of 1919.
* Keaton repeated this dangerous gag in his first short without Arbuckle, One Week, and, famously, in his feature Sherlock Jr.
† During this time, Arbuckle interacted with Virginia Rappe, as she was at Lehrman’s studio filming A Twilight Baby.
* Arbuckle turned thirty-two in 1919.
* After making his name customizing Arbuckle’s car and the autos of others among Hollywood’s elite, Earl designed numerous now-legendary automobiles while at General Motors from 1927 to 1959.
{14}
FIRST TRIAL
That’s what Fatty Arbuckle said, and you know what they did to him.
—HUNTER S. THOMPSON, FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS
Three weeks and three days after the death of Virginia Rappe, on October 3, 1921, the Los Angeles Times published a letter that began:
Now that the wave of insanity, for it was nothing less (nor more) in regard to the Arbuckle case has passed over, it would seem that disappointment is to be the daily portion of those who, blind to the fact that no evidence is forthcoming, merely hoped for the downfall of Roscoe Arbuckle for no reason but that he was a successful screen star.
This was the sentiment of the minority, but it was growing fastest in Los Angeles, which depended so profoundly on the likes of Arbuckle for its image and a principal industry. That industry’s defensive strategy is best exemplified by an October 1 editorial in Moving Picture World: “Enclosed in the following space is our idea what should be said by everybody in the motion picture business about the Arbuckle Case from now forth until the entire matter is settled.” The remainder of the page was blank.
Arbuckle himself was no longer generating any industry. So complete was the banishment that one of his movies was pulled from a screening in Sing Sing prison and future Fatty films were banned there. The warden’s reason was “the same which kept scrupulous theater men everywhere from putting on the films.”
From a letter by Roscoe Arbuckle to Joseph Schenck, October 1, 1921:
I want you to have explicit faith and confidence in me and tell Mr. Zukor to have the same. I have done no wrong, my heart is clean and my conscience is clear and when it is over I have the guts to come back and I will come back and make good…. I know what they [Paramount executives] have tied up in me at present and irrespective of whether we ever due [sic] business together again I will come out of this affair clean and vindicated so that they can realize on their tremendous investment. I am not asking for sympathy or forgiveness. I have done no wrong but I do want you and the ones financially as well as personally interested to know that I am innocent, a victim of circumstance, the only one of prominence in the party and therefore I had to be the goat.
San Francisco detectives tailed Arbuckle in Los Angeles, but they must have studied every branch and every brick on West Adams Street, for the accused who formerly rarely spent an evening in his mansion now rarely left it. “A palatial residence was to be our home for nearly a year on West Adams in the beautiful and exclusive part of Los Angeles, where we were to be veritable prisoners,” Durfee later wrote. Patrolled by his own newly hired security force, Arbuckle’s home was his bunker, fortified against a world that had largely turned against him. At all hours, people slowed outside to honk or hurl insults and sometimes stones.
And for the first time his wife of thirteen years was living there with him. “We slept in separate bedrooms, I think because Roscoe was self-conscious,” Durfee remembered. “Neither of us wanted to speak about what actually happened in that suite at the St. Francis. And yet we both knew we couldn’t avoid the issue. It was what had brought us both together and had allowed me to come home with him. We had to live together for the sake of the public. We had to show everyone that we were a loving man and wife, even though there was that long separation.”
On October 7 Arbuckle was arraigned for manslaughter. Defense attorney Frank Dominguez was not present; the official story was that he had quit as chief counsel because the trial would require too much time and Arbuckle would be better served by a San Francisco attorney. However, the decision was likely made by Schenck and Zukor, who were displeased with Dominguez’s strategy in the preliminary hearing, especially his failure to call Arbuckle and Maude Delmont to the stand. They felt their money-minting superstar should have been cleared and his movies returned to big screens. So Dominguez was out.
Gavin McNab was in. Not only was McNab a San Francisco native and longtime political powerhouse, but the balding, gray eminence also had experience with celebrities, having successfully represented Mary Pickford (divorce) and boxer Jack Dempsey (draft evasion) the year before. McNab brought to the case one of his law partners, Nat Schmulowitz, and another local lawyer, Joseph McInerney, was also enlisted. The dream team of five also included two holdovers from the preliminaries: Arbuckle’s regular attorney from Los Angeles, Milton Cohen, and his original San Francisco lawyer, Charles Brennan. Later, Assistant DA U’Ren called them “a million-dollar array of counsel.”
The same day McNab took over the case, a story emerged from Chicago that Rappe had left a daughter there. Supposedly, the father vanished before the girl was born, and Rappe moved away soon thereafter, leaving her daughter with foster parents but sending money. The story’s one source should have set off alarm bells: a Chicago-based traveling salesman named John Bates, who had written to officials in Los Angeles and San Francisco to determine the value of Rappe’s estate.* He estimated the daughter was eight or nine, and he claimed not to know her whereabouts but was confident he could locate her. “If [Rappe’s] estate is of any value I intend to see that her daughter receives the benefit of it,” Bates said. No such daughter was ever located. The abandoned daughter story was a harbinger, however; others in Chicago had more sensational tales about Rappe’s teen years and young adulthood. Eager to listen, defense attorney Brennan boarded a train heading east.
Meanwhile, the state was following leads of its own. Matthew Brady journeyed to Los Angeles twice in October on fact-finding tours of Hollywood’s underbelly. As the second such trip ended, the home team Los Angeles Times lambasted the San Francisco prosecutor with an article entitled “Ho, Hum, ‘Wild Parties’ Tame,” which chided that the parties “where hypodermic needles were passed around pasty-face guests on a tray have resolved themselves into knitting bees. Where, oh where (in a loud despairing wail) is the reputed wickedness of Los Angeles?”
DEAD MOVIE MAN IN ARBUCKLE CASE, read a headline on October 11. Al Stein, an assistant director to Fred Fishback, died at twenty-six after a night of drinking. News coverage played up notes found in Stein’s Los Angeles apartment that were made by Fishback and pertained to the
Arbuckle case. In death, Stein became a potential witness and possible murder victim. But he succumbed to alcohol poisoning, a common malady during Prohibition.
The investigation of Prohibition violations at the Labor Day party continued in parallel with the inquiries in the manslaughter case. Arbuckle’s was the most high-profile flaunting of the Volstead Act, and the feds were determined that it not go unpunished. On September 30 Gobey’s Grill, the restaurant that had provided the alcohol for the party, was raided. The manager and three other employees were arrested, but the cellar shelves where $40,000 in liquid refreshment was supposedly housed were empty. Gobey’s had been tipped off. Jack Lawrence, the deliveryman who had brought the alcohol from the restaurant to the party, had vanished but was eventually located in Oregon and returned to San Francisco. He pleaded guilty to transporting alcohol and was fined $250. After being arraigned for manslaughter, Arbuckle was arrested for violation of the Volstead Act and posted $500 bail. The hearing was superseded by his manslaughter trial.
What the microscope reveals of mute testimony from the floor and furnishings of Room 1219, the chamber where the film actress was in an hour transformed from a jovial guest to an hysterical woman with the touch of death upon her may prove as potent as the tale of any witness. Edward O. Heinrich, noted criminologist and microscopist, has for weeks been subjecting that room to the minutest expert scrutiny, and his findings, says the prosecution, will constitute the outstanding new development of the trial.
