The Mammoth Book of Hollywood Scandals (2 page)

When I first began writing this book, it became clear very early on that there was a huge amount of information to get through, and many areas to cover. With that in mind I decided that, rather than zip through every scandal with just an ounce of information, I really wanted to delve into the archives to bring out many facts about each and every story I wrote. With that in mind, each chapter is a story in itself – an investigation into the lives of the stars and the underbelly of Hollywood society – and it is my belief that no other book has been written which covers not only almost a hundred years of Hollywood scandals, but also in such an in-depth manner.

It has been an absolute pleasure to write this book; I have been introduced to many extraordinary stars and situations, and have really learned a great deal. In that regard I very much hope that you enjoy reading the finished book as much as I have enjoyed writing it.

Michelle Morgan

Hollywood has seen hundreds – maybe thousands – of scandals during the course of the past hundred years, but the first and probably most memorable one was the Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle scandal, which brought Hollywood to its knees in the early 1920s.

Roscoe Conkling Arbuckle was born on 24 March 1887, in Kansas, to Mollie and William Goodrich Arbuckle. The saying goes that he weighed somewhere between fourteen and sixteen pounds at birth and his brother was so traumatized by the sight of him that he actually fled from the room. This was not the most positive of entrances to the world, and was made worse when his father wondered if such a huge child could possibly be his own. The birth – not surprisingly – was so horrific that Roscoe’s mother never fully recovered and the health problems she encountered afterwards were said to be contributory factors when she passed away twelve short years later.

But long before death came to the Arbuckle family, they moved to Santa Ana, California, where Roscoe developed a strong interest in the theatre. His mother tried desperately to encourage her child to develop what seemed to be a very natural talent, but this did not sit well with his father, who took to telling the child that he would go nowhere in life; especially in “the show business”. The frustrated Mollie complained bitterly that her husband was being too hard on the boy, but showing a strength of character that would do him good in the years to come, Roscoe carried on with his dream regardless and gained a job with the Frank Bacon stock company when he was just eight years old.

Shortly afterwards the child’s embittered father decided to leave the family and move to Watsonville, California, saying he was going to look for gold. Devastation later hit when Mollie passed away and it was decided that Roscoe should go to live with his father, since by this time he was the only child who was still living at home. The child did not find much comfort in the thought of living with the man who had laughed at his dreams and abandoned him completely, but he went to Watsonville anyway, anxious to discover if his father had changed in any way since he had last seen him. Unfortunately for Roscoe, however, on hearing that the child would be moving to his new home town, the neglectful father fled once again. By the time the child arrived at the train station, he was well and truly on his own.

With no choice but to raise and support himself, it was not long before Roscoe found his way into show business once again, singing songs in local theatres and, by 1904, working for entrepreneur Sid Grauman, firstly as a ticket taker and then as an entertainer at the Unique Theater in San Francisco. Thus began a theatre career which saw Roscoe touring not only the United States but China and Japan too, where his funny routines, clowning and singing were a huge hit with the vaudeville audience and he loved the attention he received.

By August 1908 Arbuckle was in Long Beach where he met a seventeen-year-old woman called Minta Durfee. Short and petite, she told him she was not interested in men of his size, but he soon won her over with his personality and together they set up a comedy duo and married several months later. After that, both their careers began to take off and they often acted together in early Hollywood comedies, the first being
Fatty’s Day Off
in 1913. But while things were going well in his life at last, there was still part of Roscoe Arbuckle that never got over the early death of his mother and abandonment by his father, as witnessed by Minta on many occasions during their marriage.

“He always said he would never live to be 50,” she told reporters. “We were married when we were just kids and he used to drive me to distraction when he said this.”

Roscoe’s career went off like a bullet when producer Mack Sennett took a shine to him and decided to offer him a contract. The producer was especially pleased at how agile the actor was, particularly given his huge size, and was impressed by the amount of acrobatic moves he could make for comedy value: back flips, somersaults, tumbles . . . he could do them all. The joy went both ways, as given the opportunity of signing with a studio, Roscoe was able to meet and work with Hollywood star Mabel Normand, as well as later mentoring future stars such as Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. Arbuckle’s status as a comedic genius was now set in stone, and his future looked bright.

It wasn’t long before other studios started to develop a keen interest in the actor and a bidding war began which saw Paramount sign Roscoe on an unheard-of-million dollar contract in 1914. Sadly, the marriage between Minta and Roscoe was beginning to break down and they became estranged around the time the Paramount contract was drawn up. Some say the breakdown in the marriage came as a result of a clause in Arbuckle’s contract which forbade him to be married, which seems a little extreme but could nonetheless be true. However, the cause was more likely the fact that the couple had been through various personal tragedies in the recent past, including miscarriage and an inability to have children, and this most certainly would have added to their marital problems.

Talking about the end of the marriage some years later, Minta told reporters:

When we were married I was 17 and my husband was 21. That was back in 1908. Five years ago we agreed to disagree and I received a separate maintenance. Unfortunately – or perhaps fortunately, as you please, there are no children. We were not bitter against each other. We simply decided that we would remain good friends. Mr Arbuckle has been very generous in his treatment of me financially – I have not had to work during these years and last February he made me a present of a fine automobile.

As his marriage was breaking down, so too was the state of Roscoe’s health. He began drinking heavily, and after suffering from an infection in his leg in 1916, he became addicted to morphine. He was also developing a big distaste for his nickname, “Fatty”, which he had endured since childhood and was quickly overtaking his real name in terms of popularity. The characters he played were often also called “Fatty” and this was certainly the name by which the media and fans knew him, but it was something he wanted to get away from. He began encouraging everyone to call him Roscoe, and anyone caught calling him Fatty to his face would be met by the stern reply, “I’ve got a name you know!”

After a brief stint running his own film company, “Comique”, the actor went on to sign another lucrative contract with Paramount, this time for $3 million to make up to eighteen feature films. To say this was a scoop for Roscoe would be an understatement; $1 million was a fortune, but three? He was on top of the world. Unfortunately, his new-found position as a top earner in Hollywood left him wide open for trouble and in September 1921 Roscoe Arbuckle found out that the higher you climb, the further you fall, when all hell broke loose at a party he hosted during Labor Day weekend.

On Saturday, 3 September, the actor drove to San Francisco with friends Lowell Sherman and Fred Fischbach (who Americanized his surname to Fishback). Once there the three men checked into the St Francis Hotel, where they occupied adjoining rooms 1219, 1220 and 1221; numbers 1219 and 1221 being used to sleep, and 1220 as a reception/living room located between the two. The weekend started slowly and quietly with the three men being joined by two male friends for dinner, and then the next day some relaxation on the beach, before they later enjoyed a spot of dancing.

Then on Monday, 5 September, Roscoe slept late and at around 1 p.m. was still dressed in his pyjamas, robe and slippers, about to have breakfast in room 1219. Another friend arrived at the suite of rooms and told Roscoe and Fischbach that he had just seen an actress in the hotel, who said she knew the men currently staying in the suite of rooms. On hearing the name of the woman, both Fischbach and Roscoe agreed that they were indeed acquainted and after telephoning downstairs, they invited her over. The woman in question was aspiring actress Virginia Rappe, who had been working on the fringes of Hollywood for some time, and who had known Roscoe for approximately six years. She was also accompanied by her agent Alfred Seminacher and friend Maude Delmont, a notorious, hard-faced troublemaker, known to the police for extortion, blackmail, bigamy and much, much more.

Delmont and Rappe were known to be a pretty wild pair, and Virginia had a reputation for an overindulgence with alcohol which caused her to embarrass herself at parties by tearing her clothes every time she became drunk. The reason for this would seem that she suffered greatly with cystitis and the alcohol brought about various stomach problems every time she partook. Added to that, shortly before the weekend of 5 September 1921 she had apparently undergone one of several recent backstreet abortions and was still very much recovering, though obviously not eager to advertise this fact to the other members of the party.

The men invited Rappe and her friends into the room, gave them breakfast and relaxed in their company. However, it was not long before somebody began serving bootleg alcohol and the quiet get-together was soon turning into an afternoon party, complete with Roscoe, his friends, Rappe and various other hangers-on. It is fair to say that Arbuckle had not planned the party and was not particularly keen to host it, and it would seem that he did not have that much to do with Rappe or her friends, other than being in the same room at the same time. He later made it clear to his attorney that he had not intended to invite either of the women into his rooms, and that the only people he did plan to ask over were a friend called Mrs Taube and one other, unnamed woman.

“They all kept stringing in,” he later said of the people who arrived that afternoon. “I didn’t know who they were then. I didn’t invite them.”

Virginia Rappe asked for there to be music in the room, and several of the party guests – including Arbuckle himself – danced for some time during the afternoon, though it has been said that the actress herself did not dance much and instead chose to watch from a nearby chair. However, while Roscoe was obviously enjoying the dancing to some degree, the party wasn’t enough to convince him to change his plans for sightseeing with Mrs Taube, and by 3 p.m. he decided to go next door and dress.

Several minutes earlier, Roscoe had seen Virginia Rappe heading next door into room 1221, but unfortunately for him, by the time he had arrived in his own room – 1219 – she had found her way into his bathroom where she was on the floor; sick, hysterical and somewhat blocking the entrance. He later told the court of his first sighting of the woman in his room:

I entered 1219 to dress, closed and locked the door. I went into the bathroom. Miss Rappe was sitting in there, holding her stomach and vomiting. I bumped her with the door when I entered. I picked her up and she vomited again. I was holding her head and wiped her face. She was still holding her stomach. I asked her if I could do anything. She asked for a drink of water and then for another drink of water.

It was at this point that some authors claim that Virginia confessed to the actor that she was having pains in her chest and had recently had an abortion. Having lost an unborn child with his wife, the actor was apparently upset to hear this revelation, but even so, he did not leave the woman to suffer alone. Instead, he placed her on the bed in order for her to rest, gave her a glass of water as requested, then went back into the bathroom in an effort to shave and change his clothes. While Roscoe was in the bathroom, however, Rappe managed to fall out of his bed and crash on to the floor, and on returning to the room, he began to get concerned.

“I found her rolling on the floor between the two beds, holding her stomach. I tried to pick her back up and couldn’t.”

Arbuckle eventually managed to help the woman back on to the bed, and headed into the next room to alert his party guests to the drama next door. Until this time, Maude Delmont had been with one of Roscoe’s friends in the bathroom of room 1221, but she soon appeared on the scene, drunk and – true to her reputation – seemingly looking for an opportunity for trouble. Roscoe told both her and another guest about the sick woman and together they went back into the room to find Miss Rappe sitting on the edge of the bed, tearing her clothes from her body and frothing at the mouth.

“I pulled her dress down and she tore her stockings and a black lace garter. She was tearing on the sleeve of her dress,” the actor later told the courtroom.

Roscoe left the room for a moment and at this point Delmont decided that she was going to take full charge of the situation. By the time he returned, she had completely undressed Virginia Rappe and was rubbing ice on her body. When Arbuckle tried to object, the bold woman ordered him out of the room, to which he replied that if she didn’t shut up he would “throw her out of the window”. Roscoe Arbuckle was no fan of Maude Delmont. She had already caused uproar earlier in the day by dressing up in a pair of pyjamas, drinking and partying so wildly that Arbuckle had demanded she leave the party. She had refused, but his disgust at her behaviour had left her fizzing, and she was not a woman to forgive and forget easily. In fact, the decision by Arbuckle to stand up to the woman was to have grave implications for the actor in the moments to come.