Room 1219: Fatty Arbuckle, the Mysterious Death of Virginia Rappe, and the Scandal That Changed Hollywood (20 page)

But before Arbuckle could make the move, fate intervened in the short, portly personage of Lou Anger. Touring with his songstress wife, Anger had been a minor vaudeville comedian for a decade. As late as February 1916, he was performing onstage at a military benefit in New York City, but he was searching for a career change, and he had a connection to the film industry he was eager to exploit. Promising a better deal than Hart’s, Anger enticed Arbuckle to attend a clandestine meeting in Atlantic City. There the Keystone star met thirty-seven-year-old Joseph Schenck.

Born in Russia in 1878, Schenck was fourteen when he immigrated to New York City with his family. He and his younger brother Nicholas operated a beer concession stand in an amusement park, offering free vaudeville performances to keep their thirsty patrons near the suds. In 1910 they purchased controlling interest in the Palisades Amusement Park in New Jersey, a small, crude dump that the Schenck brothers popularized by adding better attractions. The man who advanced their financing was Marcus Loew, then the owner of a chain of vaudeville theaters and nickelodeons. Consequently, when their park began turning a profit, the brothers also invested in the fledgling movie business, buying and operating nickelodeons in partnership with Loew and financing low-budget movies, some of which were distributed by Paramount.
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By 1916 Joseph Schenck was looking for a route to the Hollywood big time.

Founded in 1914, Paramount Pictures was the first nationwide distributor of feature films. Previously, features were leased to regions or screened in rented theaters, but Paramount cultivated its own coast-to-coast theater network. Of the production companies whose movies were distributed by Paramount, the most prominent were Famous Players Film Company, run by Adolph Zukor, and the Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company, run by its namesake. In May 1916 half of Paramount’s stock was acquired by Zukor and Lasky. Lasky became Paramount’s vice president and primary creative force, and in 1917 Zukor would take over as president and begin to consolidate production, distribution, and exhibition into one increasingly powerful entity.

From the studio’s earliest days, when Lasky’s company raided Broadway talent, Paramount was noted for its prestige feature films (many directed by Cecil B. DeMille), and it launched a protracted quest to lock up Hollywood’s major stars. The first to sign was Mary Pickford, in 1914. Zukor and Lasky tried to entice Chaplin, but his price was bid up too high. In the summer of 1916, they turned to the second-biggest comedy star: Roscoe Arbuckle.

Schenck proposed that a company be formed to produce Arbuckle’s movies, which would then be distributed by Paramount. Arbuckle would get script and cast control and a salary of $5,000 weekly plus 10 percent of profits. Schenck would head the company and pocket 20 percent of Arbuckle’s take, plus a share of the company’s profits. Lou Anger would function as Arbuckle’s agent and pocket 10 percent of Arbuckle’s remaining $4,000 weekly take. Therefore, Arbuckle’s annual base salary, minus Schenck and Anger’s shares, would be $187,200—over seven times what he was making at Keystone and, with profits, potentially much more lucrative than the Metro deal Max Hart had negotiated for him. It was an enticing mix for an actor: the big money, the autonomy of his own production company, the prestige of Paramount’s distribution. He accepted, reneging on his deal with Hart.
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The signing bonus was a Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost touring car.

After at least 122 films over three years, Arbuckle’s career at Keystone was over. Mack Sennett’s immediate reaction is unknown, but in his 1954 autobiography he gave his onetime superstar the cold shoulder. He mentions the “notorious” Arbuckle’s arrival at Keystone and, twenty pages later, the “scandal” that harmed the film industry five years after “Roscoe had left me,” but the man who was the focus of that scandal is relegated to barely more than 1 of 284 pages. In contrast, Chaplin, who bolted after one year and thirty-six films, gets a chapter entitled “Poetry in Slapstick,” and the book is nearly a paean to Normand. The best Sennett could do in Arbuckle’s defense was “It is hard to believe that Roscoe Arbuckle, the butt of our jokes and comedies at the studio, was as evil as some people say he was.” Three years after leaving Keystone, Arbuckle grumbled, “To this day, I guess [Sennett] doesn’t think I’m funny.”
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Minta Durfee was dismayed by her husband’s Paramount deal, which he did not tell her about until he returned to Santa Monica in August.
He had kept her in the dark regarding the biggest decision of his—and her—career. Fifty-three years later, she said: “I was greatly upset at how quickly Roscoe had succumbed to the ruthlessness of a Joe Schenck. Joe was all about money, and Roscoe suddenly was all about money to the extent that in cutting ties with Max Hart, he was ruining Al’s [Al St. John’s] chance and my chance of earning a living.” Arbuckle told her he would get her something, meaning a studio deal, of which Durfee recalls: “But I knew there wouldn’t be
something.
I knew it was the beginning of the end of us.”

The press in 1916 covered the stories the studios wanted covered when the studios wanted them covered. News of Arbuckle’s leaving Keystone didn’t break until September, and it was subsequently reported that the name of his production company would be the Comique Film Corporation.
(Comique
is French for “comic.” Arbuckle pronounced it “Cumeeky.”) There was no mention of Paramount. On December 13 a Santa Monica city commission meeting addressed the establishment of Arbuckle’s “moving picture concern” there. It was never built.

In the weeks after he returned to Santa Monica, a skin infection near Arbuckle’s left knee had grown inflamed. It likely began as an insect bite scratched repeatedly, but by Labor Day weekend it was much more than an annoyance. His knee was severely swollen, and he could barely walk because of the extreme pain. Durfee called neighbor Hobart Bosworth, a pioneering film actor and director. Despite his condition, Arbuckle vetoed a hospital visit, for fear it would engender negative publicity and jeopardize his new contract. Durfee and Bosworth telephoned doctors and eventually spoke to a hospital intern who agreed to make a discreet house call.

Diagnosis: a carbuncle from
Staphylococcus aureus
was endangering his leg, and if it spread through his bloodstream, it could be fatal. The intern injected Arbuckle with morphine and incised the carbuncle. The incision was kept open to further drain the pus, and Arbuckle was given a morphine prescription to offset the pain. And thus one of the movie industry’s first superstars became one of its first drug addicts.

In the last decades of the nineteenth century and first decade and a half of the twentieth, morphine was sold as an over-the-counter pain reliever, as was its related opiate, heroin, and as was cocaine. Reputable pharmaceutical companies sold kits that contained vials of drugs and hypodermic syringes and needles, allowing customers to self-administer their fixes, and doctors and pharmacists recommended such drugs for even minor ailments. It was estimated in 1911 that one in every four hundred Americans was addicted to an opiate. In 1915 a federal law restricted the sale of opiates and cocaine, effectively making them illegal to sell or buy without a prescription. Doctors, however, still readily prescribed the kits. Old habits died hard.

The intern gave Arbuckle subsequent morphine injections when he returned to inspect the open wound and lengthen the incision, but because the painkiller was to be administered every few hours, the movie star injected the drug when the intern could not. Arbuckle sat in the living room, dressed in a gown, his legs propped on another plush chair. The needle penetrated his cephalic vein in the crook of his left arm. The plunger retreated, suctioning his blood—a little red cloud—into the clear morphine solution in the glass syringe. This ritual assured him there was nothing between him and it. Then the plunger slid, and the opiates flowed through him.

Morphine works fast, racing through the bloodstream from the injection site to the brain. Around thirty seconds after injecting it, Arbuckle felt a pleasant rush, a tingly sensation that passed within a couple minutes. His skin may have itched, his cheeks may have flushed. Morphine mimics the effects of endorphins, though in much greater quantities, binding with receptor sites in the brain and central nervous system and blocking the transmission of pain signals. He was soon drowsy, his muscles numbed, his body heavy. The pain dissipated, replaced with a warm, gratifying sensation. As the effect continued, he was stranded on the precipice of slumber, seeming to sleep but capable of hearing and, if he parted his heavy lids to reveal his constricted pupils, seeing. The morphine’s effects peaked at around forty-five to sixty minutes but kept him drowsy and numbed for four to six hours. Even those who were near
seemed distant. His wife was there, and the housekeepers, sometimes the medic, sometimes Hobart Bosworth or Lou Anger. What they said, sometimes directly to him, was lost in the haze. Words tumbled and sank. Images melted away.

Eventually, regrettably, the fog rose. Noises jarred. Light hurt. The pain reasserted itself. He craved the needle and his next fix.

Morphine reduces motility in the intestinal tract, thus severe constipation is a common side effect. Others include a loss of appetite, dry mouth, and respiratory depression. Tolerance grows rapidly, so doses must increase to remain effective. As days blurred, the man known as Fatty shed pounds. He no longer wanted to eat. All he cared about came in a syringe.

His leg was horrid. The open wound was not healing. When the intern determined that amputation was the most prudent course, Durfee contacted Bosworth, who called a friend, Dr. Maurice Kahn. The doctor diagnosed Arbuckle’s morphine addiction and enrolled him in the Kaspare Cohn Hospital near Hollywood. There his leg was saved.

The science of drug addiction was inchoate. Methadone did not yet exist, and weaning addicts onto less addictive drugs was problematic because of the scant research. Morphine had been used for alcohol addiction. Cocaine had been used for morphine addiction. Then came the “nonaddictive” cure-all: heroin. By the time Arbuckle was a morphine addict, the most prudent course was the most daunting: abrupt cessation.

If he was to kick his jones for opiates, he had to do it cold turkey, locked in a padded cell in a hospital. Officially, he was not there. Officially, he was home in Santa Monica, playing with Luke, swimming in the bay, romancing his wife, and drinking—of course. Keystone publicity and the subservient movie industry press had portrayed him as borderline alcoholic, but drugs, though legal without a prescription just two years prior, were viewed as degenerate—a vice of the lowest class.

Within a few hours, the first withdrawal symptoms began: watery eyes, diarrhea, runny nose, perspiration. Whereas the opiates brought on a rush of euphoria, he now suffered its opposite. He was restless, page_113]irritated, sad, anxious, and all the while craving the needle. As the hours crawled, the initial symptoms worsened, joined by involuntary twitching and kicking, hot and cold flashes, muscle and bone aches, and intestinal cramping. He screamed and moaned, maybe for hours on end. He was unable to sleep, unable to eat, unable to ease the revolt of his body and mind. His blood pressure increased, his temperature rose, his breathing labored. He was nauseous.

On the second day, all symptoms worsened until they were seemingly unbearable. His vomiting, diarrhea, and urination were involuntary, and when there was nothing more to eliminate, his twitching flesh kept endeavoring to wring every drop from him. He lay in the fetal position, shaking uncontrollably, racked by pain that permeated every fiber of him. He cried but had no tears. The withdrawal symptoms peaked two to four days after his last morphine injection and—mercifully, finally—subsided in eight to twelve days.

From his first morphine injection to the day he returned home from the hospital, the man known as Fatty lost over eighty pounds, dropping from 275 to 193. His clothes draped him; so did his skin. His eyes seemed to have retreated into his skull, the contours of which were then eerily visible. Unable to walk or even stand on his left leg, he was propelled via wheelchair. He had never been so effectively disguised onstage or on-screen. Even in drag or blackface, he had been more himself than he was without his fat. It was perhaps advantageous that few could have recognized him and inquired why and how. Roscoe Arbuckle was a specter of his former, famous self. Then, uncertain if he would ever again walk with ease, void of the body that brought him celebrity and wealth, he knew how quickly and cruelly it could all end. He thought, then, that he knew the worst of it.