UCLA Students Take Over Building in Protest of Fee Increase Vote
Jason Segel Sings His Phone Number at the Swell Season Last Night
BART Cop Murder Trial to Move to Downtown L.A., Lawyer Predicts More L.A. Riots
-thumb-110x110-459458.jpg)
Bouchon Amuses Our Bouches
John Kerry's Daughter Arrested in Hollywood for DUI
Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle had the dubious distinction of being the movie business' first scandal. Born in Kansas in 1887, Roscoe Arbuckle (who only used the name "Fatty" professionally, and otherwise detested it) was catapulted to fame in Mack Sennett's Keystone Cops movies. He made famous the "pie in the face" gag so familiar to many of us. For a larger gentleman, he was an astonishingly graceful tumbler, and was said to have a lovely singing voice. Opera singer Enrico Caruso told him, "with training you could become the second greatest singer in the world." The first, presumably, being himself. He mentored both Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton.
Though he married, he was known about town as a man of huge appetites, in booze, partying and women. Nonetheless, he managed to, at the height of his career, scandalize the nation by being involved in the death of a young actress (and we use the word "actress" here loosely) named Virginia Rappe. It was Labor Day weekend 1921, Arbuckle was to be found partying down and living it up in San Fransisco's St. Francis Hotel. The young woman was known to be sickly, and have a number of issues when using alcohol. When she was found moaning and barely conscious, she was hospitalized, dying shortly thereafter from a ruptured bladder.
A rumor was started that Arbuckle had crushed her while trying to rape her. (In fact it's thought that she was suffering from a botched abortion.) The Hearst papers ran with the sensational story. The DA, Matthew Brady, wanted to run for governor off this case. He pressured witnesses to perjure themselves. The case was tried three times, the first two resulted in a mistrial. By the time they reached the third, most of the prosecution's witnesses had recanted their statements. The jury returned a not-guilty verdict and a written apology to Arbuckle.
The damage had been done, not only to Arbuckle's career but to the motion picture industry itself. In the wake of the wild success the Hearst papers had with the story, they did more exposes on Hollywood. Most were on rumors of drugs and orgies, but also on another couple of scandals. Trying to shore up the damage meant rejecting Roscoe Arbuckle. He was reduced to directing under the pseudonym William Goodrich (his father's name).
In 1932, there was talk of a comeback. Arbuckle made some comedy shorts for Warner Brothers. They were successful. On June 28th, 1932, Warners signed him for a full length feature. That night, he died of a heart attack. He was 46. He was cremated and scattered over the Pacific Ocean.
Arbuckle's story is one of the dangers of excess, whether the pleasures of the flesh and drink, or ambition and greed. As much as he was a perpetrator of many, he was the victim of others. Now we have whole industries dedicated to following the famous around, waiting for the least little fallibility. We've become more interested in their lives than the strength of the creative projects they contribute to, to the detriment of both them and ourselves. We should think on Arbuckle the next time a scandal threatens to pull us in. Despite his turning of a new page, Buster Keaton, his lifelong friend said that Roscoe Arbuckle died of a broken heart.
Photos from Wikipedia.
LAistory is our series that takes us on a journey to what came before to help us understand where we are today.
Check out our other entries in the series:
Val Verde
Thelma Todd's Roadside Cafe
An eclectic house in Beverly Hills
Echo Park's Bonnie Brae House
Marineland of the Pacific
Grand Central Air Terminal
LA's Own Wrigley Field
How LA got its name
The wreck of the Dominator
The 1925 "Hollywood Subway."
The Pink Lady of Malibu
Lions Drag Strip
Disneyland...when it was cheap to get in
The ugliest building in the city
Union Station
Union Station's Fred Harvey Room
A Smelly Mystery at another train station
The Egyptian Theatre
Pilgrimage Bridge
The "It" Girl, Clara Bow
Elias J. "Lucky" Baldwin
Get Involved!
Houdini's House
Spanish Kitchen
Chutes Park
add to stumble upon
add to reddit
tweet this
post to facebook
Very nicely done.
One note, though: that's Matthew-with-two-Ts Brady, the San Francisco DA, who prosecuted Arbuckle.
Mathew-with-one-T Brady is the famous Civil War-era photographer.
[And, just to be completist, Matthew Brady the San Francisco DA should also not be confused with Matthew Harrison Brady, the (fictional) prosecuting attorney in Lawrence & Lee's Inherit The Wind, a character based on William Jennings Bryan in the so-called Scopes Monkey Trial.]
Thanks, LA Map Nerd! My source material had it misspelled. I remember making note of it. I'll make the change.
Ah. William Randolph Hearst. The Faux Snooze of the his day. No career was safe, no story too far-fetched, no lie unprintable. His only aim to sell papers no matter whose reputation he had to destroy to do it.
A true man of honor.
I have seen a number of his movies, he was indeed a very funny fellow. This fellow could flip a pancake and make rolls dance. He did a couple of shorts which a Charlie Chaplin (with Fatty getting top billing) that were pretty funny. One they end up drunk and passed out in a boat in Echo Park Lake. They are worth checking out.
The botched abortion was put out there by the defense, physicians testified that there had been no such event at the time, and it's time their 80-year-old smears against the victim were put to rest.
A modern researcher (online name "Frederica") talks about what we really know about what happened here:
http://www.nitrateville.com/viewtopic.php?p=9135#9135
Great article! Part of my master's thesis is about the Hays Code in Hollywood, which resulted partially from the Fatty Arbuckle scandal (as well as a few others in the late 20s/early 30s). Definitely something I'm interested in!