Room 1219: Fatty Arbuckle, the Mysterious Death of Virginia Rappe, and the Scandal That Changed Hollywood (21 page)

*
In a conglomeration that seems to sum up the weaknesses and strengths of America at the time,
The Birth of a Nation
is a racist paean to the Confederacy, an epic propaganda piece, a work of inventiveness that rewrote the language of cinema, and a monumental business gamble that struck it rich like no motion picture before and few since. Made independent of the studios for a record-smashing $112,000 and initially commanding a ticket price of two dollars when most admissions were no more than fifteen cents, estimates of its unprecedented box office gross vary from $18 million to $60 million (a span of about $400 million to $1.4 billion in today’s dollars).

*
The first American movie palace was the Strand Theatre on Broadway in New York City. Constructed for over $1 million, it had a seating capacity near three thousand when it opened in 1914.

†
Two different colorization techniques were employed: tinting (coloring the entire frame) and toning (coloring just the black areas). Tinting and toning were even used simultaneously for a two-color effect. At its peak in 1920, colorization would be used in 80 to 90 percent of all movies.

‡
Lawrence acted in approximately three hundred films and also invented the automobile turn signal and brake signal (both in 1914; neither was patented). She committed suicide in 1938.

*
In what seems an odd dichotomy today, in addition to its gossip pages and celebrity profiles,
Photoplay,
which sported the subtitle “The Aristocrat of Motion Picture Magazines,” set high standards for film criticism and scholarship during the silent era. It published work by the likes of Robert E. Sherwood and H. L. Mencken, and in 1920, it launched the first significant annual movie award.

*
Wanting in on the greater prestige and higher ticket prices of feature-length films, Sennett sold partners Kessel and Baumann on the expensive and risky proposition by promising to land a Broadway star as the lead.
Tillie’s Punctured Romance
was a success, launching Dressler’s big-screen career and propelling Chaplin to his Essanay paydays. But when Dressler successfully sued the studio over her promised share of profits, Keystone’s planned second feature was scrapped. The studio never made another feature-length film.

*
After a few supporting roles at Keystone, Lloyd left to headline in comedy shorts for Hal Roach’s new studio, a Keystone rival. In the 1920s Lloyd starred in such classic features as
Safety Last!
and
The Freshman.

*
Hartman subsequently directed a few movies (most starring Al St. John), but attempts to resurrect his theatrical career proved unsuccessful. In 1931, at age seventy, he starved to death in a San Francisco hotel room.

*
At the end of that contract, he would sign to make eight movies with First National Pictures Inc. for $1 million and a $75,000 signing bonus.

*
Loew subsequently owned a vast empire of movie palaces as well as a major Hollywood studio, MGM. Nicholas Schenck became Loew’s chief lieutenant in 1919 and, following Loew’s death in 1927, rose to president of MGM and ran the studio during its glory years (1927-55).

*
Schenck paid Hart $20,000 to release Arbuckle from his contract.

†
Sennett himself gave up all rights to the Keystone brand name and its movies in June 1917 in exchange for ownership of the facilities and the contractual obligations of most of the remaining stars. Only a few additional “Keystone” comedies were produced, and they were pale imitations. Sennett formed the Mack Sennett Comedies Corporation and continued producing comedy shorts at the same pace and of the same sort he always had.

P
LAN TO
S
END
A
RBUCKLE TO
D
EATH ON
G
ALLOWS

—L
os A
NGELES
T
IMES,
S
EPTEMBER
12, 1921, F
RONT
P
AGE

W
hen on Monday morning, September 12, 1921, reporters entered cell 12 of the San Francisco City Jail, they found Arbuckle seated at a table eating breakfast with his new friend Fred Martin. The movie star was nattily attired; his cellmate was dressed in the “rough clothes of a laborer.” The boiled eggs, toast with marmalade, and coffee had again been delivered from a local restaurant. Other prisoners had congregated to watch the celebrity and his envied cellmate eat, but guards ordered them away. Now the newsmen tried to score a juicy quote from Arbuckle.

“Nothing I could say now would do any good,” Arbuckle replied. “My attorneys have asked me to remain silent at present. What I have to say will be said in my own defense later. Everything I have said in the past while I was on my way up here seems to have been distorted and made to appear against me. I am not as black as I have been painted, and when I go into court the public will have a different opinion of me. You can easily see that a man in my position should remain silent at this time, because words are liable to be twisted into a meaning other than you intended.”

The jail’s barber had shaved him the day before, but after breakfast Arbuckle sent for a presumably more skilled razor-and-shears technician
from outside the jail. That man shaved both the movie star and his cellmate. Arbuckle got a massage. Just after nine o’clock, the inmates lined up for roll call.

“Roscoe Arbuckle, murder,” a jailer shouted.

“Yes, sir.”

“Step out of line.”

With his hands in his trouser pockets, Arbuckle slouched over to the line of inmates awaiting their turns in court.

F
ATTY
M
ARSHALS
I
NFLUENCE AND
W
EALTH IN
D
EFENSE AS
B
ITTER
S
TRUGGLE
I
MPENDS

—D
ENVER
P
OST,>
S
EPTEMBER
12, 1921, F
RONT
P
AGE

The district attorney of San Francisco had been out of town the weekend the Arbuckle case broke, but on the following Monday, Matthew Brady took the reins from his underlings. Born in San Francisco in 1875, Brady had been a lawyer in private practice there before securing appointments to the Civil Service Commission and then the police court bench. He narrowly defeated a scandal-tainted incumbent to become the city’s DA, taking office in January 1920 and positioning himself as a reformer, eager to resuscitate his office’s reputation. It was speculated that he craved the San Francisco mayoralty or California governorship.

The forty-six-year-old, silver-haired Brady assessed the quality of his case. Though there were sworn affidavits from Alice Blake, Zey Prevost, Maude Delmont, and nurse Vera Cumberland, the first two were showgirls who had willingly come to a booze party held by men they had only just met, and the last had only secondhand knowledge of the events in Arbuckle’s suite. Brady decided that Maude Delmont, the apparently selfless woman who had befriended Rappe in her final days, was his strongest witness.

Delmont alleged that Arbuckle had lured a cautious Rappe to the party with the promise of “something big” for her film career, only to
have Rappe reject his “proposition.” Newspapers made much of her allegation that Arbuckle “dragged” Rappe into 1219. But her less incendiary affidavit read as follows:

Miss Rappe went into the bathroom off Room 1219, leaving the rest of the party in Room 1220, and when she came out Arbuckle took hold of her and said, “I have been trying to get you for five years.” After he took hold of her and made this remark he then closed and locked the door of Room 1219, leading into Room 1220, leaving the rest of the party in Room 1220.

I felt anxious about Miss Rappe. When she did not return to our party I became very anxious about her. I called to her several times [but received] no answer, then kicked against the door with the heel of my shoe at least a dozen times during the next hour. When I told her what I had done afterwards she said she must have been unconscious immediately after he locked the door, otherwise she must have heard me.

After an hour’s wait, I became alarmed, took down the receiver to the telephone and called for help from the office. Mr. Boyle, the assistant manager, came up. When Arbuckle heard our conversation he opened the door, standing in his pajamas, wet with perspiration, and had Miss Rappe’s Panama hat on his head.

The bed where she lay was saturated wet and she was semiconscious and tearing her clothes. She tore the cuffs off her white silk [shirt]waist and threw them on the floor, screaming: “He did it, I know he did it. I have been hurt, I am dying.” This was said in the presence of Arbuckle.

She further told of Rappe’s pains in her neck, left leg, and, especially, abdomen, and of “monkey bites” on Rappe’s neck and big marks on her right arm and left leg. Early on Tuesday morning, the severely pained Rappe allegedly told her: “Maude, Roscoe should be at my bedside every minute and see how I am suffering from what he did to me.” But Delmont’s affidavit was riddled with crucial falsehoods. For example, she did
not see Arbuckle and Rappe go into 1219, and they were not in the room for anything remotely as long as an hour.

Riding the courthouse elevator on the morning of September 12, Delmont begged, “Oh, please don’t make me face Arbuckle. I don’t ever want to lay eyes on him again.” But she subsequently steeled herself: “If I have to do it, I will. I will try to nerve myself to the ordeal, but it will be terrible.” The defendant was not in the courtroom shortly after 11
AM
when Delmont stood beside DA Brady and swore under oath to the accuracy of her previously transcribed account. After the short formality, she nearly fainted to the floor. Hysterical, she was led from the courtroom.

When a dejected Arbuckle appeared in court with his attorneys at 11:30 A
M,
he was greeted by an explosion of camera flashes and chatter from the mostly male observers who packed the gallery, standing and clamoring for a better view. Accused men awaiting their turns in court pressed against the steel grating of the prisoner’s dock. Called to the bench, Arbuckle approached, hands clasped, face twitching. Grimly, he heard a clerk read Delmont’s complaint.

Subsequently, Brady told the press, “I desire to state that I will spare no effort to punish the perpetrator of this atrocious crime, although I know I will be opposed by the cleverest lawyers and the greatest influence which money can purchase.”

A
RBUCKLE
D
ANCES
W
HILE
G
IRL
I
S
D
YING,
J
OYOUS
F
ROLIC
A
MID
D
EATH
T
RAGEDY

—S
AN
F
RANCISCO
C
ALL AND
P
OST,
S
EPTEMBER
12, 1921,
FRONT
PAGE