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

by Greg Merritt

  Shortly before the wedding ceremony, one of the guests, producer Roland West, gave Arbuckle a most unique present: a contract worth $100,000 to direct ten two-reel comedies. The press made much of the gesture, but it was essentially a continuation of his current occupation, directing low-budget shorts in an age of features. He had already made thirteen for Reel Comedies, the last seven starring Al St. John, including The Iron Mule, a spoof of John Ford’s railroad epic The Iron Horse. His name appeared on none of them.* The new comedies starred either Johnny Arthur or Lupino Lane, former vaudevillians destined for busy but undistinguished celluloid careers. Despite the initial publicity for the contract, when the shorts were released, “William Goodrich” was credited, not Arbuckle.

  It is unknown why Arbuckle chose his father’s first and middle names to direct under. It may have been a tribute—a means of forgiving the man who had died a half-decade prior and had been mostly absent or abusive when Roscoe was young. But it could have been a slander—a way of tying his dad to forgettable flicks, even if only Arbuckle and his family knew. Perhaps it was just a convenient moniker that had no greater meaning. Regardless, “William Goodrich” was destined to become a very prolific director. It was as though Arbuckle had returned to his unglamorous, anonymous movie work of 1909, doing chores for paychecks. As Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton won great acclaim for creating innovative features, Arbuckle saw little benefit to having his name attached to shorts starring second-string talent.

  However, a first-stringer made a cameo. For The Iron Mule, Buster Keaton let Arbuckle use the exact replica of a pioneering steam engine built for Keaton’s feature Our Hospitality, and Keaton also appeared in the short as an Indian, uncredited and virtually unrecognizable. The roles were reversed a few months later when Arbuckle appeared in drag in Keaton’s 1925 feature Go West. As Keaton’s character tries to control a cattle stampede through Los Angeles, Arbuckle plays a frightened mother in a department store; the rotund actress Babe London is his daughter. Neither role was credited, and it was easy for audiences to miss Fatty in drag. But the cameo was more than just another practical joke for Arbuckle and Keaton. London remembered, “It was their way of thumbing their noses at the people who had decreed that Roscoe could not appear on the screen.”

  Keaton wasn’t the only industry friend who stuck by Arbuckle. The Masquers, an all-male social club of mostly actors, was born in May 1925 as sort of a West Coast version of the Friars Club. Arbuckle was made an official member on October 7 of that year. Other early members included Keaton, Joseph Schenck, Tom Mix, and Lionel Barrymore.* It was a little over four years since the Los Angeles Athletic Club voted Arbuckle out, so being voted by his peers into another exclusive club—while still blacklisted as an actor by Hollywood—was a satisfying triumph.

  But he soon found out how little some things had changed. On October 16 the Masquers were set to give a comedy revue at Hollywood High School, but after receiving protests, the school demanded Arbuckle be dropped from the cast. The Masquers stood by their newest member, canceled the high school show, and instead rented the Philharmonic Auditorium, where the revue played to a packed house full of movie professionals. Arbuckle’s appearance in the first skit elicited a long ovation, and when it faded and some hisses were heard, the ovation began again.

  In December 1925 Hollywood heavyweights Cecil B. DeMille, Charlie Chaplin, and every studio head were among the six hundred who gathered for a banquet in honor of Sid Grauman. Maybe, as he sat at a table with wife Doris Deane and his friends, Roscoe Arbuckle was remembering those teenage days long ago when he worked for the Graumans: singing illustrated songs on a vaudeville bill at the Unique in San Jose and then soloing at the Portola Café in San Francisco, back when the Hotel St. Francis was going up, back when he could walk the streets and no one recognized him, and strangers neither loved nor loathed him.

  Writer Rupert Hughes, the master of ceremonies, introduced some of the notables at the banquet. When he came to Arbuckle, he asked him to stand. “Here is the sad spectacle of a man being punished by so-called democracy!” Hughes shouted. Arbuckle’s head bowed. “A man who was acquitted of a trumped-up charge by three American juries! But our militant good people arose to crucify, to persecute an innocent man! They dragged him down from the topmost pinnacle of being the clean and funny comedian that he was and made of him the world’s most tragic figure!” The applause thundered. It was much louder for Roscoe Arbuckle than anyone else. Hollywood showered with love the man blacklisted by Hollywood.

  * Pedestrian trivia example: Doris Deane, a minor actress who would play a major role in Arbuckle’s life, was featured in a March 1922 item for rescuing her mother’s orange trees from “Jack Frost” by lighting dozens of smudge pots.

  * The house is today a Catholic rectory.

  * It was later reported that his index and middle fingers on his right hand were permanently paralyzed. This was untrue.

  * It is arguably not feature length. Keaton recut it after poor previews, shrinking it to forty-five minutes.

  * William Goodrich was the given name of Arbuckle’s father, so it is likely this was Arbuckle’s first choice for a nom de plume and the Will B. Good pun followed. In the November 18, 1923 letter to Durfee, Arbuckle wrote: “I am taking my father’s name to direct by and from now on to the screen I will be known as William Goodrich. Ain’t that the cat’s nuts. Sounds like a tire.” However, the Will B. Good pseudonym was told to the press, who reported it in January 1924.

  * The still-stunning car is displayed today in the Nethercutt Museum in Sylmar, California.

  * In a parallel to Arbuckle’s life, in 1929 Alexander Pantages would be accused of raping a seventeen-year-old aspiring actress. He claimed it was a setup but was convicted and sentenced to fifty years imprisonment. On appeal, the conviction was overturned. Pantages was financially devastated by court costs and the Depression before his death in 1936.

  * The minister asked for “written evidence of Christian life and fruitage during the three years that have elapsed since your tragic ordeal.” Arbuckle responded: “I did not know it was customary to get a written receipt from God when you decided to follow Him. Furthermore, I am not asking you for salvation. I have already received that. However, if you must have a written recommendation, get in touch with Rev. Brougher of Los Angeles. I have taken God into my heart, but did not know that it was necessary to advertise it, but since I have decided to go straight with God I have learned to turn the other cheek. God bless you.” The evidence of Arbuckle’s supposed turn to a Christian lifestyle is limited to his embracing it during censorship battles, for then he did find it necessary to advertise.

  * By this point, Anger had nothing to do with managing Arbuckle’s career and had formed his own production company. After Schenck became president of United Artists in 1927, he hired Anger. In 1933 Schenck helped found 20th Century Pictures, which merged with ailing Fox two years later. Schenck went on to become chairman and then head of production at 20th Century-Fox, and Anger worked in management at the studio.

  * The first six were uncredited, the next four were credited to Al St. John, and the final three were credited to Grover Jones, a prolific screenwriter.

  * Among the many legends who later joined: Frank Sinatra, Henry Fonda, Humphrey Bogart, Sir Laurence Olivier, and Johnny Carson.

  {20}

  ENDURANCE: 1926-32

  Have you ever realized that actors are mere public toys, playthings for the people to handle and grow tired of, toys that amuse for a time, toys that lure with the brightness of their paint, to be patronized just so long as the paint is new and bright and attractive, dropped and forgotten when it is worn off and the toy is broken and old? Dead, never to be resurrected; discarded and thrown aside for a toy more amply shaded with varnish and crimson, forgotten for a new face, a newer, larger smile, a greater capacity for tears.

  —MOVIE STAR JOHN BUNNY, ONE MONTH BEFORE HIS DEATH IN 1915

  We can never know how frequently or
how fully Roscoe Arbuckle was capable of forgetting the event that, above all others, came to define his life. But there were many good times. A front-page article in February 1926 entitled “‘Fatty’ Arbuckle Does Comeback!” portrayed a happily married man, making $2,000 weekly as a director, living in a “palatial home in Beverly Hills, with two servants to make his life easy for him.” An accompanying photograph captured him and wife Doris Deane and their St. Bernard (Luke had recently died). The article noted that he had paid off $50,000 of $182,000 in debts and planned to have the remainder erased in three years. “With my wife and my new work I have found happiness,” he said.

  In March, he, Buster Keaton, and their wives drove to Yosemite National Park in Arbuckle’s new convertible Lincoln Phaeton and, perhaps with movie stars’ sense of entitlement, disregarded orders not to use an automobile entrance still under construction. In retaliation, the road was blocked, preventing their exit from the park. So with movie stars’ money, they hired a train to ship themselves and the Phaeton out. It seemed like a plot from one of their Comique shorts—the merry pranksters one-upping the humorless officials. Front-page headline: MOVIE STARS ESCAPE FROM PARK PRISON.

  Other times it was Lew Cody who accompanied Arbuckle on his adventures—especially the sort that involved alcohol. At 3 AM on September 17, 1926, Cody married Mabel Normand, supposedly on a drunken dare.*

  Arbuckle’s first attempt at directing a feature, Sherlock Jr., had failed. His second opportunity came in 1926, courtesy of an unlikely source: newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst, who had sold many editions five years prior with screaming FATTY headlines. Though he never divorced the wife he married in 1903, Hearst lived openly with his mistress, actress Marion Davies, thirty-four years his junior. Through his own Cosmopolitan Productions, he cast Davies as the star of comedies and costume dramas, churning through a pool of directors in the process. Working as “William Goodrich,” Arbuckle was merely another.

  A romantic comedy based on a musical play, The Red Mill was shot in California but set in rural Holland. From the beginning, the tyrannical Hearst was anxious about getting his desired results from Arbuckle, so he assigned MGM director King Vidor to oversee the production. Actress Colleen Moore remembered, “The intrigues on the set of The Red Mill would have made a good thriller. Everyone was aware that they were being watched. Arbuckle watched Marion, Vidor watched Arbuckle, and Mr. Hearst watched all three of them. Roscoe had a nice way of making everyone on the set feel relaxed. He was very workmanlike and had no problems communicating what he wanted his cast to do.”

  Released by MGM, The Red Mill was a box office flop, leading Hearst to again hire a new director for Davies’s next vanity project. Nevertheless, the visually rich film may have encouraged Arbuckle’s old home of Paramount to give him another shot, for they hired him to helm Special Delivery, a comedy feature starring theater legend Eddie Cantor, whose vocal talents were lost in silent cinema. Mailman Cantor is pitted against a suave con man (then-little-known William Powell) for the affections of a young woman. Another down-on-his-luck comedy legend, Larry Semon, was Arbuckle’s assistant director.* The final chase is especially well-staged, both funny and exciting, proving “William Goodrich’s” directing acumen. Special Delivery’s advertising sometimes touted the former star behind the name: “Directed by Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle, alias William Goodrich.”

  Unfortunately, the public was no more interested in a mailman comedy starring a silenced singer than they were a Dutch comedy starring William Hearst’s girlfriend. Arbuckle never again worked for Paramount.

  From a January 4, 1927 gossip column item regarding a film industry dinner dance:

  In the gathering sitting obscurely and dancing only occasionally was Fatty Arbuckle who is rounding out what is left of his career as a director under the name Will B. Good.† There is a noticeable hurt, stricken look in his eyes. He is a cloistered clown paying scandal’s terrible price. He probably does not need my pity but I pitied him just the same.

  Arbuckle returned to front pages on March 15, 1927, when he reportedly signed a deal worth $2.5 million over five years to direct and perform in feature films financed by Abe Carlos, formerly with Fox.* At last, six years after his arrest, Arbuckle would again star on the big screen. Doris Deane was to act opposite her husband in the films, and the first production was to begin in Germany on October 1.

  In the meantime, Arbuckle set out on what was billed as his final vaudeville tour, a farewell to the stage before going back in front of the camera. A Los Angeles review noted the large ovations for him before and after his set but wished that his act of “quips and wisecracks” had focused less on his “various misfortunes” and “hard luck.”

  After the spring tour, Arbuckle starred in a Broadway revival of the farce Baby Mine. Humphrey Bogart had a supporting role. Arbuckle’s opening-night ovations were rousing, but he appeared awkward. “Mr. Arbuckle is not much of an actor,” noted one review. It didn’t aid the play when between acts, its star broke character to speak to the audience about his troubled attempts to return to cinema and his impending comeback. Baby Mine closed after only twelve performances. One more “misfortune.”

  There were others. When he made an appearance on a New York vaudeville stage, the National Educational Association protested. A lien was placed against him for failure to pay all of his 1926 taxes. Alerted by the tax figures, Minta Durfee sued him for $25,000, later settling for $16,500.† Arbuckle offered no public comment regarding the suit or the settlement. By now the reported October start date of his new film had come and gone.

  Arbuckle’s theatrical appearances continued into 1928, in what was still being advertised as “his last vaudeville tour prior to re-entering the movies.” Delegations of ministers in Clarksburg, West Virginia, protested Arbuckle’s appearance at a theater there. He was banned from stages in Minneapolis because he “might corrupt public morals.” And a performance in Waterloo, Iowa, was canceled after protests. The career-resuscitating, financially lucrative movie deal never materialized.

  These negatives tended to drown out the positives, such as a Kansas City, Missouri, theater showing a Keystone Fatty comedy in April 1928 in “defiance of the Hays organization.” The movie morality czar was now so tarnished by the Teapot Dome scandal that Senator James A. Reed quipped in a presidential campaign speech, “I have never paraded as a reformer, but I propose that the motion picture industry remove Will Hays and put back Fatty Arbuckle.” The crowd roared in agreement.

  A French crowd had a different reaction. Arbuckle traveled first to Cherbourg and then to Paris to perform his comedy at the prestigious Empire music hall. “Some of my old films have been shown abroad successfully and on my trip here some years ago I met with every courtesy,” he said in an article entitled “‘Fatty’ Arbuckle Goes to Paris to Regain Esteem.” This time the crowd was so hostile toward his act that a riot call was made to the police and the stage manager turned off the lights for eight minutes “hoping the audience would cool off.” News of the disastrous “riot” spread throughout America.

  His love life fared no better. In May 1928 Arbuckle—who had spent the previous twelve months in hotels and on trains and steamships—returned to Los Angeles and moved into the Hollywood Hotel, where Virginia Rappe, Buster Keaton, and many other cinematic hopefuls had lived. After three years of marriage, he and Deane had separated. “We haven’t got along happily for some time, and if I’ve got to be lonesome I might as well be lonesome here,” the forty-one-year-old said of the popular hotel.

  When Deane filed for divorce in August 1928, she set off an explosive charge: the couple had attended a party in April 1926 at the home of a “prominent resident” of Hollywood where, she claimed, Arbuckle became “terribly intoxicated” and forcibly attempted to get physical with a female guest. Allegedly, the screaming woman was rescued by Deane and others. The accusation was never brought to court, and other than a smattering of headlines such as ‘NOTHER WILD PARTY FOR FATTY ARBUCKLE, t
he press showed scant interest. Made public more than two years after the alleged event, the unsubstantiated charge was likely an attempt by Deane to paint her husband in the worst possible light. She sought $750 monthly in alimony and also claimed her husband had been “vicious, cruel, morose and nagging.” The divorce was delayed; the marriage continued, unhappily.

  Viola Dana remembered Arbuckle as occasionally verbally abusive to Deane (as he sometimes was to Keaton and Alice Lake as well): “You know, Roscoe was an easy man to like, if you let him be in charge. After that third trial, he believed everyone was going to let bygones be bygones. But that isn’t the way things work in the movie industry, even if you’re liked. He took all of his frustrations, personal and professional, out on poor Doris until she couldn’t take it anymore.”

  Maybe it was a way to start the party again, a way for a middle-aged has-been to return to those glorious days before Prohibition when nights were filled with dancing and drinking, eating and laughing in Vernon and Venice and Hollywood. The world then had been a blur of practical jokes and pretty starlets, boxing matches and poker games, steaks, clams, and—always—drinking. There were famous friends, whole packs of them, but none more famous than him. Everyone knew him. Everyone wanted to be his pal. Going back seems the sort of thing he would dream up in the lobby of the Hollywood Hotel. The acting, the money, the prestige—the best part of it all then was those nights when, as Buster Keaton said, “the world was ours.”