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

by Greg Merritt

  And it was the best of times. Eight hundred fifty-four feature films were produced by Hollywood studios in 1921, more than in any other year before or since; by 1922 nearly 40 percent of Americans would go to the movies every week. They saw The Kid, Charlie Chaplin’s first feature; The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, a box office smash that launched a tango craze and Rudolph Valentino’s career; Mary Pickford playing the titular boy (and his mother) in Little Lord Fauntleroy; Douglas Fairbanks at his swashbuckling best in The Three Musketeers; Lillian Gish in D. W. Griffith’s last major commercial success, Orphans of the Storm; and a whopping five feature films from Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle, a tally that would have been even greater if not for a Labor Day spent in San Francisco.

  The movies were where Americans went to dream together, to forget their tenement flats and bleak employment prospects. They laughed when the Little Tramp and the kid were chased by a giant policeman. They cheered when the impoverished American boy (played by a woman) learned he was to be an English lord, or when the dueling musketeer did an astonishing one-handed handspring. And they grinned when Fatty was bequeathed $5 million—with a catch.

  And when they left the theater, many of them bought the latest issue of Photoplay or one of the other movie magazines populating newsstands. The dream continued, page by page, by the light of an oil lamp or an incandescent bulb. They were comforted by the knowledge that their favorite stars were living lives of opulence in the perpetual summertime of Southern California—the lavish paydays and parties and mansions and servants, the charity balls, high fashion, international trips, practical jokes, the blissful days of pretending. Movie stars were America’s royalty, and Americans watched their royalty with rapt attention.

  In late September 1921, during the depths of Arbuckle’s revilement, New York society columnist O. O. McIntyre would remember a day earlier in the year when the superstar was returning from an East Coast promotional tour. The reminiscence provided a rare, PR-free portrait of Arbuckle at the apex of his fame and fortune:

  Last March I traveled on the same train with Arbuckle from New York to Los Angeles. I had never met him before. There were only about 20 people aboard and of course the comedian was the center of attention. He took a special fancy to my dog and would have the chef especially prepare pork chops for him. He struck me as a bewildered boy. Success had come too quickly. He appears more youthful than the photographs show. His type in our town used to live in the unpainted houses along the railroad tracks, their mothers eternally hidden away in damp kitchens. His clothes were gaudy and he wolfed his food like a starving beast.

  When the train stopped and we stretched our cramped limbs in the small towns of Kansas, Colorado and Arizona crowds gaped at Arbuckle, but he seemed quite unconscious of it. The most of his time was spent organizing crap games among the Negro waiters in the dining car.

  Arbuckle did like his flashy suits, and he may indeed have been bewildered by his great success, though that would seem difficult for a new acquaintance to perceive. (McIntyre may have assumed it because he himself was bewildered by the immense fame and fortune of movie stars.) Still, the anecdote leaves the distinct impression of a down-to-earth celebrity who cared more about a dog and the train’s waiters than the attention his fame brought. Twelve years later, McIntyre would recall that trip again, and the time he spent, silently, alone with Arbuckle on the train’s observation platform while crossing an Arizona desert painted iridescent: “Under the prismatic spell of the dying splendor he sat rigid until the landscape was eclipsed by dusk. The train lights came on. He was wiping away a tear hurriedly, clumsily…. He loved the sunset.”

  While most of us are struggling to lay a few dollars on a shelf for a rainy day, along comes a fellow who suddenly receives a gift of a million dollars. No sooner has he recovered from the shock of that surprise than another interested party offers him five million if he will spend the other kind gentleman’s donation within a year and is broke at the end of that time.

  —FROM A NOTICE FOR BREWSTER’s MILLIONS

  FOR HIS UNCLE SAMUEL, HE WORKED FOR A DOLLAR BUT SH-H-H! FATTY’S A DETECK-ATIV!

  —NEWSPAPER ADVERTISEMENT FOR THE DOLLAR-A-YEAR MAN

  Did you ever hear of slapstick drama? Neither did we until Roscoe Arbuckle introduced it, and most successfully in his recent vehicles. He has opened up a field particularly well suited to his talent, and should win over many who have scorned his custard-pie offerings of the past.

  —FROM A REVIEW OF THE TRAVELING SALESMAN

  Arbuckle made four features in the first eight months of 1921. It is oft said the last three were shot without a break, and thus he was in great need of a vacation by Labor Day weekend, but this is a falsehood perpetuated by his supporters.* Brewster’s Millions, The Dollar-a-Year Man, and The Traveling Salesman were shot in 1920 with overlapping schedules and released in 1921. The four features produced in 1921—Crazy to Marry, Gasoline Gus, Skirt Shy, and Freight Prepaid—each had at least a three-week break between one production ending and another beginning, and three weeks had elapsed since wrapping Freight Prepaid when Arbuckle headed to San Francisco.

  That’s not to say that acting in nine five-reel feature films over twenty-one months was not an arduous schedule. It was. Chaplin made one six-reel feature and one two-reel short during the same period. But Arbuckle was neither writer nor director on any of the nine features, so his Paramount schedule was not as grueling as his workloads at Comique or Keystone when he was director, star, and (usually) writer or cowriter. “I can’t sleep nights when I’m making one,” he said of his previous experience directing films. “No, I’m going to let the other fellow [Chaplin] have the trouble of directing, and devote my time to thinking up original comedy touches.”

  Five of the final six features were directed by James Cruze; the lapsed Mormon and former snake oil salesman had launched a prolific acting and directing career in 1911. Paramount no doubt preferred the greater output that Arbuckle, its prized attraction, generated by mostly focusing on his acting (he still consulted on writing, directing, and editing decisions). The studio was so flush with Fatty movies that The Traveling Salesman was not released until eleven months after production wrapped.

  Though they were commercially successful, Arbuckle’s features are not nearly as entertaining as his Comique shorts. Unlike Chaplin, he never found the right balance of drama and comedy to flesh out longer stories, but also unlike Chaplin, he was now dependent on the writing and directing of others. The feature-length comedy was just taking form, and thus it’s likely the plotting of Arbuckle’s efforts would have improved as the genre matured in the mid-1920s. He may even have made features comparable to the classics of Chaplin and Keaton—if he had gotten the chance.

  So movie-mad was the public and so eager were the papers to report on the bigger-than-life Fatty that in April alone there were stories about his appearing at a Knights of Columbus charity benefit; about his merely posing for an acrobatic photo with Buster Keaton, Alice Lake, and Viola Dana; and about his writing a ten-word telegram to an actress jailed for speeding. The latter was part of a publicity coup like none before.

  Reports of Arbuckle’s recurrent speeding stops were a running joke in local newspapers. His luxurious automobiles weren’t just for show; he drove them fast, especially on the then—sparsely traveled streets of Santa Monica. (Frequently, the policemen—astonished by his customized cars and his fame—let him go without even a warning.) But it was his friend Bebe Daniels who turned a lead foot into a cause célèbre. Though only twenty, Daniels was a film veteran. Previously the on-screen and (very young) offscreen romantic interest of Harold Lloyd, she was a fast-rising star at Paramount in 1921 when she was arrested in leisurely Orange County, California, for driving 56.5 miles per hour at a time when that was considered outrageously fast. Before the trial, Daniels taunted the judge by singing “Judge Cox Blues” at a benefit. For the March 28 jury trial, more than fifteen hundred spectators crowded the courthouse to catch a gli
mpse of the celebrity, who arrived in a limousine and wore a fur coat and veiled hat. She lost when Judge John Cox sentenced her to ten days in jail, but she won via the windfall of publicity.

  On April 15 Daniels arrived at jail with a phalanx of luggage. The next day, a furniture store delivered a bedroom suite to her cell. Someone provided a Victrola and 150 records. Local musicians serenaded her. And guests arrived, 792 over the ten days, including numerous Hollywood celebrities (themselves earning publicity) and one new celeb, Judge Cox. Roscoe Arbuckle sent her a telegram, written for public amusement: “Dear Bebe, Houdini is in town. Can we help? Love.”* Upon release, she began her next film, The Speed Girl, a comedic account of her ordeal. Six months before Arbuckle’s arrest, the young Bebe Daniels showed how to use a trial and incarceration to her great advantage.† It was a lesson unique to her crime, though it did demonstrate how hungry the public was to view their favorite stars in three dimensions and actual size, as they were when they took an oath and testified.

  In England, Arbuckle appeared in the movie-themed comic book The Kinema Comic, in his own weekly strip, “The Playful Pranks of Fatty Arbuckle.” Strip titles hint at their slapstick plots: “A Whacking Good Stunt!” “Good ‘Buoy’!” “He Felt Board!” They gave the distinctly American Fatty a stereotypically British accent. For example, in “A ‘Neck’-straordinary Stunt!” after getting men to make stairs out of themselves and the sandwich boards they were wearing so he can sneak his girlfriend out of a second-floor window, Fatty says, “That’s the style, my lads! That’s the caper! Now, then, come along, Clara! Come forth! Trip down your sandwich-boards, and all shall be well. Cheerio!”

  At home, Arbuckle continued his lavish spending; high-end consumerism was an addiction as comforting to him as mashed potatoes or gin. In addition to his tricked-out Pierce-Arrow, he filled his West Adams mansion’s six-car garage with the best automobiles on the market: a Locomobile, a Rolls-Royce, a Cadillac, a Hudson, a Renault. They were painted in attention-grabbing colors. He bought more imported suits and shoes than could fit in his closets and more artwork than could hang on his many walls. He lavished expensive jewelry, perfume, and designer clothing on women. He threw extravagant parties. He bought on extended credit from merchants eager to say they’d sold to Fatty Arbuckle, a practice that later proved imprudent, and he made risky investments, which later devastated his financial security. He could never spend the money faster than it arrived, and it seemed it would arrive forever.

  “Since he had made his fortune,” his sister Nora said, “he had always been generous to his own people. He has done many kind things for me and my family and for my brother [Harry] in Fresno.” Minta Durfee elaborated:

  I know of many cases: men who have persuaded him to give them money, girls with whom he was friendly who have actually made him a joke because it was so easy to get money away from him…. Ever since he was a boy—and he practically grew up with our family—Mr. Arbuckle has been careless with money. He never considered expense. Money simply meant the means of getting what he wanted, of enjoying himself, of helping other people. Incidentally, helping other people is the way a great deal of his money has gone. He has been most generous with me, ever since our separation. He has supported relatives. He has always been ready to help anyone who needed it. He has half a dozen pensioners about whom nobody but his own people know.

  In public, he willingly played the clown, as was expected of him. At an American Society of Cinematographers ball, called “THE social event of the season,” he stole the show. A Photoplay column noted:

  Roscoe Arbuckle helped lead the orchestra part of the evening and did very well, but his prize performance of the night, to my way of thinking, was the last dance, which he had with a lovely little Follies girl. The rotund comedian had had a hard day, apparently, the evening had been long—and rather wet—and Roscoe went to sleep on the floor, resting his head gently against his partner’s rosy cheek and continuing to move his feet occasionally to the music.

  On July 3 he was the biggest of the Hollywood stars at a charity rodeo on the expansive grounds of Pauline Frederick’s Beverly Hills mansion (the same grounds he and Keaton had threatened to tear up for a practical joke). Keaton and his new bride, Natalie Talmadge, were there, as was the notorious vamp Alla Nazimova. Will Rogers and Tom Mix rode horses. Photoplay noted, “Roscoe Arbuckle—not being much of a horseman—nevertheless did his bit in a clever way by pretending to get caught in the middle of the ring. It took him some time to make his way out past the horses and he had the grandstand in convulsions by the time he arrived in his seat.” He was forever the life of the party.

  “‘FATTY” NOT AT PARTY IN ROADHOUSE, read the July 13 headline in the Los Angeles Times, with “road-” standing in for “whore-” and Arbuckle connected with said party via his absence. The subhead read, “Lew [sic] Anger Says Arbuckle Did Not Go to Frolic That Caused Scandal.” That scandal would, of course, be eclipsed two months later by a much greater one, but in mid-July the long-suppressed story of the Mishawum Manor “chicken and champagne orgy” of four years and four months earlier splashed onto front pages.

  March 6, 1917, marked the last stop on the Paramount publicity tour celebrating Arbuckle’s signing with the studio. After the dinner banquet at Boston’s best hotel, where Arbuckle was the guest of honor, fifteen prominent attendees—including Jesse Lasky, Adolph Zukor, and Hiram Abrams—journeyed eleven miles north to the Mishawum Manor, a stately residence that had been converted into an upscale bordello. As he was traveling with his wife (shortly before their separation), Arbuckle declined the invitation. Joseph Schenck also avoided the affair. The party was arranged by Abrams, Paramount’s president, and overseen by Lillian Kingston, a madam who went by the name Brownie Kennedy, and it included fried chicken, fifty-two bottles of champagne (all allegedly consumed), and sixteen women (euphemistically called “actresses”). The Providence News reported, “The orgy was described as a drunken debauch, with much transpiring which is unfit to print.” It began at midnight on March 7, and some men didn’t leave until daylight. Abrams paid the bill of $1,050.

  Two months later, Kingston was tried and convicted for keeping “a liquor nuisance” and a “house of ill fame,” after the ill-famed house’s female piano player and one of its prostitutes testified against her. She was fined one hundred dollars and sentenced to six months in prison; she appealed. Names of Paramount executives who’d attended the party appeared in Boston papers, and a story was mailed to the wife of one such exec. But that was merely the first, faint thunderclap of a potentially devastating storm. The husbands of two female participants and the father of another (a minor) hired lawyers to bring civil complaints against the film executives and press county DA Nathan Tufts to file criminal charges. Abrams hired Boston lawyer Daniel Coakley, who met with Tufts to steer the execs clear of the storm. This was accomplished via $100,000 in Paramount hush money and some company stock. Coakley made payments of between $7,000 and $16,500 to potential complainants in exchange for signed agreements stating they would not pursue the Paramount executives legally.* No charges were made, criminally or civilly, and the drunken debauch remained a New England story, quickly forgotten.†

  And so it remained for four years and four months. Then, on July 11, 1921, the long-dormant tale exploded when a hearing was held in Boston to remove Tufts from office. Though none of the hush money was traced to him, that may have merely proved he was adept at covering the trail. Tufts was found in dereliction of his duty in not fully investigating potential crimes at the “orgy” and for conspiring with Coakley and with Kingston’s attorney to extort the Paramount executives under the threat of indictments.* On October 1, 1921, three days after Arbuckle was released from jail on bail, the Massachusetts Supreme Court would release a ruling that removed Tufts from office.

  The hush money kept Zukor, Lasky, and Abrams out of court in 1917, but in July 1921 it placed them at the heart of a widely reported legal scandal. This had three effects on the
fate of Roscoe Arbuckle.

  First, it primed Paramount to sever ties with him. In September 1921 Abrams was the managing director of United Artists, but Zukor and Lasky were the top executives at Paramount. The prior negative publicity resulting from their involvement in an “orgy” in a “roadhouse” compounded their distress when Paramount’s biggest star was arrested for an “orgy” gone deadly. They left it to Schenck to support Arbuckle publicly while those at Paramount made no comment but suspended his contract and recast his planned movies. They wanted ticket buyers to stop associating Fatty with their studio. When the Tufts/Mishawum story broke, the press repeatedly referred to “Paramount executives.” Two months later, mercifully from Zukor and Lasky’s perspective, the press rarely referred to the arrested Arbuckle and Paramount together. Zukor and Lasky wanted that disassociation to continue.

  Second, the story of motion picture heavyweights at an “orgy” in a “house of ill repute” whetted the public’s appetite for more such tales. Hence September’s orgy of orgy stories.

  Finally, though the press was careful not to place Arbuckle at Mishawum Manor, the March 1917 affair was frequently described as a party in his honor. As the impeachment of Tufts stretched into October, Arbuckle was linked to two sex scandals simultaneously. What’s more, the Mishawum Manor “orgy” narrative portrayed crass, outrageously wealthy visitors from Hollywood or Manhattan preying on poor, vulnerable women and then enlisting lawyers to buy their way out of trouble. As reported, it seemed as if the movie industry big shots didn’t think criminal laws or common morality applied to them, and this laid a treacherous foundation for the trials of Roscoe Arbuckle.