by Greg Merritt
“I told Mr. U’Ren that I didn’t remember Virginia saying anything of the kind, but that if he said that she had said it, it was all right.”
District Attorney Brady asked the court to declare Prevost a hostile witness so the state could impeach her. Motion denied. The next day, the New York Times led with: “The case against Roscoe (‘Fatty’) Arbuckle seemingly went to pieces today during the examination of Miss Zey Prevost, a show girl, who had been one of the State’s star witnesses.” Rumors that Brady would drop the case in the wake of Prevost’s testimony were denied. Instead, two days after Prevost’s testimony, the state called to the stand the clerk who took Prevost’s original statement. The defense objected. Sustained.
SECOND ARBUCKLE SHOW FALLS FLAT; NOT SO WITH ACTOR The Roscoe Arbuckle manslaughter trial was rapidly losing its punch. Instead of the “thrill-a-minute” biggest show on earth affair which the first trial was, the big comedian’s second appearance before the superior court degenerated into a heated, uninteresting battle of lawyers.
Even the introduction of Virginia Rappe’s riding habit Saturday failed to create interest. The crowd looked at it expectantly but seemed to recall that at the preliminary examination it didn’t stop at the natty hat and trim dress, but paraded more thrilling things before the jury’s and courtroom’s eyes.
—MILLWAUKEE JOURNAL, JANUARY 22, 1922, FRONT PAGE
When Heinrich returned with the hallway door to room 1219 and explained the science of fingerprints, McNab again jabbed him for referencing himself as “Sherlock Holmes” and got him to admit fingerprints could be faked. Still, Heinrich insisted, “Any competent observer can tell the difference between forged and genuine prints.”
Warden Woolard, the Los Angeles Times reporter who broke the news of Rappe’s death to Arbuckle, testified that the actor denied having hurt Rappe but admitted he “pushed her down on the bed to keep her quiet” when she was in pain. Because of contradictions between Woolard’s account of what Arbuckle said on September 9 (claiming he was never alone with Rappe) and Arbuckle’s testimony at the first trial (claiming he assisted Rappe when they were alone together), the state had Arbuckle’s entire testimony read into the record. This triggered the defense to announce it no longer needed to call Arbuckle to the stand.
The defense opened. In contrast to the first trial, in which they were unable to contradict Heinrich’s testimony, this time the defense brought forth two experts: Adolph Juel and Milton Carlson. Again, the state challenged their credentials. Wrangling over Juel’s expertise dragged on for an hour, despite the fact that he was employed as a fingerprint expert by the San Francisco Police Department and had testified as an expert witness in prior cases for the same district attorney’s office that was now objecting to him. Eventually, both Juel and Carlson took the stand, expressing doubts that the prints on 1219’s door were those of Arbuckle and Rappe.
Fred Fishback returned as a defense witness, and in cross-examination, he failed to remember certain answers he had previously given. An employee of Henry Lehrman’s studio disputed Jesse Norgaard’s contention that Arbuckle tried to get a key to Rappe’s dressing room. Dr. Rosenberg’s statement about treating Rappe in Chicago was again read, and other doctors testified that distended bladders could spontaneously rupture. As in the first trial, the defense tried unsuccessfully to get the St. Francis house detective’s recollection of a conversation with Rappe into the record.
When elderly maid Kate Brennan returned to speak about thoroughly cleaning the room before Heinrich’s inspections, she grew embroiled in a new legal subplot. The state petitioned to have her testimony stricken by presenting evidence that she spent 1909 to 1920 locked in an asylum because of mental illness and was never cured. The judge denied this request, but it allowed for future arguments about Brennan’s mental faculties.
The defense claimed it wanted to call Irene Morgan, famous for her alleged poisoning, but had failed to locate her after three weeks of searching. It did recall Florence Bates, who retold tales of an agonized Rappe violently disrobing in a Chicago department store in 1913. New witnesses spoke of Rappe’s painful past:
Eugene Presbrey, screenwriter, said Rappe went into convulsions in the Hollywood Hotel in March 1917 after drinking two glasses of wine.
J. M. Covington, café owner, said that Rappe and Henry Lehrman argued in his establishment in May 1918 and that after drinking liquor, the actress went outside “tearing her clothes and shrieking in pain.”
Helen Barrie testified to being at a party for “the eclipse of the moon” on April 22, 1921, at the house of a film director, and that after a few drinks “Miss Rappe threw herself down on a divan and tore at her clothing.”
Annie Portwell, resident of the Selma ranch where Semnacher, Delmont, and Rappe stopped on their journey to San Francisco, testified, “We were out riding in my car when Miss Rappe said, ‘Please stop the car if you do not want me to die.’ She left the car all doubled up and drank a quantity of dark-colored liquor from a gin bottle. She said it was herb tea.” The bottle was introduced into evidence.
The defense called as its final witness the state’s leading attack dog, Assistant DA Milton U’Ren, but the questions and answers pertained only to what U’Ren knew about the fingerprints on room 1219’s door.
ARBUCKLE’S ACQUITTAL IS FREELY PREDICTED
That Roscoe (Fatty) Arbuckle will be acquitted of the manslaughter charge on which he is being tried for the second time is taken almost as a forgone conclusion in San Francisco…. In the opinion of most observers, the bottom fell out of the state’s case when its three most important witnesses, Zey Prevost and Alice Blake, show girls, and Al Semnacher, manager of Miss Rappe, failed to remember many important details of Fatty’s “gin jollification,” despite the fact that they gave such testimony at the time of the first trial.
—PITTSBURGH PRESS, JANUARY 27, 1922, PAGE 14
The state began calling rebuttal witnesses. Two fingerprint experts affirmed that the prints on 1219’s door belonged to Arbuckle and Rappe. The asylum superintendent confirmed that Kate Brennan had been an inmate. A doctor claimed that Rappe’s bladder rupturing may have been unrelated to any previous condition. Kate Hardebeck said the brown liquid in the bottle was indeed tea, and she reaffirmed Rappe’s “excellence of health”—a contention harmed when the defense got her to admit to Rappe’s treatment by a doctor. Catherine Fox again testified to young Rappe’s good health in Chicago, and five additional witnesses from Los Angeles spoke of Rappe’s apparent vigor. The state called the assistant manager of Chicago’s Mandel Brothers department store, who presented employment records showing that Florence Bates and Virginia Rappe were no longer working at the store when Rappe supposedly disrobed there in 1913. Recalled to the stand, Bates denied a 1910 employment application signature was hers, but the state countered with a handwriting expert who said it was.
Thus the second Arbuckle manslaughter trial sputtered to a close with wrangling over a twelve-year-old signature on a department store employment form. Even before then there were empty seats in the courtroom for a rerun of what had previously been the toughest ticket in town. The Women’s Vigilant Committee was again vigilant, but in lesser numbers than before. On the final Saturday, Judge Louderback delayed the trial to conduct a wedding.
Part of the malaise was because the promise of greater scandal had dissipated. No longer did it seem likely you could hear fresh details—shocking evidence that would lead to a superstar’s imprisonment. Newspapers highlighted weaknesses in the prosecution’s case and predicted Arbuckle’s acquittal. The defense seemed in a rush to its victory lap. It offered no counter to the state’s rebuttal testimony, and, as in the first trial, it offered to present the case to the jury without any closing arguments. Again the prosecution declined, and four hours were assigned to each side for arguments.
Even if the machinations of the second Arbuckle trial had sometimes slipped off front pages, newspapers still needed to feed the public’s newly stoked app
etite for Hollywood scandal. On the final weekend before the case went to the jury, a large story appeared with the ungrammatical title NERO’S ORGIES RIVALED ON COAST FOLK. After first saying that the “madness” at the St. Francis party resulted in Rappe’s death, it purported to tell “some of the things discovered first-hand by a recent visitor in Hollywood,” including a two-day booze and gambling revel costing $10,000, “snow parties” (cocaine parties), and the following, presented under the subheading “When ‘Fatty’ Played Host”:
One night, some months ago, was called “Arbuckle Night” at the inn [Sunset Inn in Santa Monica, formerly Cafe Nat Goodwin]. As the Peruvian rum for which Arbuckle’s cellars are famous warmed the crowd, a game of “strip” poker was called between “Fatty” and one of the men in the party. The star played a losing game from the first. His party screamed wildly when he bet his shirt on a hand and lost. Another chorus of screams went up when its removal revealed the star wearing a corset cover elaborately trimmed in lace and pink ribbons. There was another round of drinks. He lost. Then “Fatty” nonchalantly wagered his trousers. Just then the two policeman crowded in at the door and arrested him.
Arbuckle paid his fine, slipped two bottles of Scotch whiskey into the policeman’s pocket and carried his party off to Mountain Inn, a resort in Laurel Canyon, which the sheriff has since closed, to finish the night.
Some said afterward that Arbuckle had staged the whole affair by way of entertainment, the arrest providing the thrill movie folks are constantly looking for.
In just a few days, those craving Hollywood scandal greater than PG-rated strip poker would get their wish.
Every seat in the courtroom filled as U’Ren began the state’s closing argument. He attacked Arbuckle’s testimony from the first trial. Of Blake and Prevost, he said, “The defense charges that they were processed by the district attorney. From their attitude on the stand, they were certainly well prepared by the defense.” He cut to the essence of what occurred behind the locked door to room 1219: “The ailment which the defense says resulted in Miss Virginia Rappe’s death was of years’ standing. It is strange that it should have reached its fatal climax while she was alone in a locked room with Arbuckle. The prosecution has blasted part of the truth out of the lips of Zey Prevost and Alice Blake. What the whole truth is, it is for you to determine. Virginia Rappe entered Arbuckle’s room a well and vigorous girl. A few minutes later she was in a death agony.”
U’Ren’s ninety-six-minute argument was followed by a fifteen-minute recess, during which the defense team conferred. “Whatever you do is all right,” Arbuckle said, rolling a cigarette as he walked away from his attorneys. The court was gaveled back into session. The defense team whispered with Arbuckle again before McNab rose and addressed the judge: “If the court please, we have decided that it is unnecessary for us to make an argument. We feel that the case is so simple that argument on it would but weary the jurors. We therefore submit it without argument.”
Shocked murmurs.
The unusual strategy had the effect of cutting off the state’s concluding rebuttal, for which it had surely saved its strongest arguments (and the state still had nearly two and a half hours on the clock), but it also rendered the defense mute aside from McNab’s brief affirmation of confidence.
After instructions from Judge Louderback, the case went to the jury at 3:42 PM on Wednesday, February 1. Durfee sobbed as the jurors strode out. Two hours later, the jury returned to the courtroom, and participants and observers rushed back in, anticipating a verdict. Instead, the testimony of eavesdropping maid Josephine Keza was reread. At 9:30 PM the jury returned again, having requested that the judge reread his instructions to them.
“This is the end. No matter what this jury does, this is final. I’m through with this case for good,” Brady told the press that evening.
The jury deliberated until 11 PM before retiring for the night. The front-page headline in the next day’s Chicago Tribune announced, JURY QUITS FOR NIGHT, 11 TO I FOR ARBUCKLE.
William Desmond Taylor lay on his back on his living room floor, his left leg beneath a chair. At 7:30 AM on February 2, Henry Peavey, Taylor’s African American valet/cook, arrived as usual at the house, one of eight two-story domiciles crowded around a courtyard in a fashionable district near downtown Los Angeles. Upon finding the lifeless body on the floor, Peavey shrieked, backed out of the house, and yelled for the landlord. The landlord and neighbors rushed in. When the police arrived, they failed to disperse the crowd, which obliterated evidence. A mysterious man who identified himself as a doctor but whose name remains unknown claimed without examining the body that death was due to natural causes. The general manager of Paramount removed letters and other personal items and later destroyed them. It wasn’t until the coroner’s deputies moved the body that a pool of blood was discovered beneath it. The postmortem tracked the deadly bullet’s unusual path: entering the left, lower side of Taylor’s back and traveling upward to lodge at the base of his neck on the right.
After abandoning his wife and daughter in New York City, William Desmond Taylor (an assumed name) had acted in his first film in Los Angeles in 1912 at age forty. Within a year, Taylor was directing, and he helmed approximately fifty films before enlisting in the army of his native Britain near the end of World War I. Upon returning to Los Angeles, the Englishman revived his directing career, signing with Paramount and serving as president of the Motion Picture Directors Association.
Mabel Normand was one of Taylor’s closest friends and the last known person to see him on the evening of February 1, 1922. Then twenty-eight, she was still starring in romantic comedies, though her popularity had waned. Her alcohol and cocaine use could be problematic, as evidenced by her stay in a New York sanitarium in the autumn of 1920 for a “nervous breakdown.” And yet the always-adventurous Normand was an inquisitive reader, studying literature and philosophy. That fateful February evening she discussed books with Taylor, and he gave her two. She was in Taylor’s house from approximately 7:05 to 7:45 PM, and afterward he walked her to her limo and returned to his home.
Then forty-nine-year-old William Desmond Taylor was murdered. Robbery was ruled out when his pockets were found to contain seventy-eight dollars and various valuables. No suspect was ever arrested. The case remains unsolved, and the endlessly engaging mystery has only grown with time as the multitude of tentacled subplots extended to drug dealers, obscure phone calls, buried pasts excavated, a body in a river, a collection of keys to unknown locks, a woman’s nightgown, homosexual solicitation, coded love letters from the then-seventeen-year-old movie star Mary Miles Minter to her then-forty-seven-year-old boyfriend (and director) Taylor, a woman dressed as a man, the kidnapping of Henry Peavey by reporters, and a bizarre 1964 confession. Over the decades, amateur detectives have pointed to over fifty suspects.* One of the prime suspects, Edward Sands—Taylor’s former valet, who embezzled from him and robbed his house—was never located after Taylor’s murder. Another, Charlotte Shelby—the threateningly overprotective mother of Mary Minter—possessed a rare gun that fired unusual bullets matching the .38 caliber slug found in Taylor. Though Normand had quarreled with Taylor and was implicated by Peavey (himself a suspect), she was cleared by the police. Nevertheless, in addition to her association with Arbuckle, the avalanche of press surrounding the Taylor murder quashed the image of Madcap Mabel and hastened her career’s decline.
The greater effect of the scandalous Taylor murder was to refocus newspaper stories and outraged editorials on depraved and dangerous Hollywood. Calls for censorship increased. Front-page reports throughout February of the ever-widening mystery of Taylor’s demise would entangle it in the public consciousness with the Arbuckle manslaughter trials. The San Francisco Chronicle made the connection overt on its front page on February 3, running the banner headline WOMEN FEATURE FILM MURDER (about Normand and Minter’s relationship to the Taylor murder) above ARBUCKLE JURY STILL OUT, 10 FOR ACQUITTAL, REPORT.
Arbuck
le and Taylor were both employed by Paramount in 1921 and had attended the same social events for years. While the jury deliberated on February 2, Arbuckle, seated at the counsel’s table, was informed by a reporter of Taylor’s violent death. His eyes watered. “Taylor was the best fellow on the [Paramount] lot,” he said. “He was beloved by everybody, and his loss is a shock…. I cannot understand why anyone would wish to murder him as he was the last man in the world to make an enemy.”
Nearly two weeks later, a statement attributed to Arbuckle made a pointed statement about the Taylor case and Arbuckle’s legal ordeal:
The American public is ardent in its hero worship and quite as ruthless in destroying its idols in any walk of life. It elevates a man more quickly than any nation in the world, and casts him down more quickly—quite often on surmise or a mere hunch. It is the general inclination, when trouble happens to strike in film circles, for the thoughtless to whisper, malign and gossip and to speak with that mock sagacity of the times of “the inside dope” and “the low down.” This was brought out quite forcibly in my own case and has been accentuated in the case of William Taylor….
Never in history, perhaps, have men and women been so quickly elevated to prominence as have the successful folk in pictures. That is because of the millions before whom they appear via the screen almost nightly. Their names become household words. Their features widely familiar. They are virtually next door neighbor to everyone in the land. The man and the woman who thus accepts as worthy of esteem this filmland neighbor should do himself or herself the moral honor of refusing to accept tattle and shoulder shrugs in place of fact—as he undoubtedly would in the case of his respected physical neighbor.
