Room 1219: Fatty Arbuckle, the Mysterious Death of Virginia Rappe, and the Scandal That Changed Hollywood (47 page)

On January 11, 1922, jury selection for the second trial began in Judge Louderback’s courtroom, while in a courtroom nearby, a remnant from the first trial was discarded. The perjury case against defense witness Minnie Neighbors had crept along for a month before a judge dismissed it.

Voir dire proved more difficult for the second manslaughter trial, because so many San Francisco residents had formed an opinion based on the overwhelming coverage of the initial trial. Seventy-nine potential jurors were questioned before both the defense and prosecution agreed on a panel of eleven men and one woman and two alternates (one man, one woman). The jury would again be sequestered in a hotel.

District Attorney Brady predicated the second trial on the grand jury’s manslaughter indictment rather than the police court charge sworn to by Maude Delmont, hoping to sidestep criticism for not calling the avenger to the stand. The state began its case. Such familiar faces as Al Semnacher, Harry Boyle, Jesse Norgaard, Josephine Keza, Dr. W. Francis Wakefield, and Dr. Arthur Beardslee testified, reconstructing crucial events before, during, and after Labor Day.

The state’s star witnesses remained showgirls Alice Blake and Zey Prevost, but neither had been a strong attestant in the first trial, and both proved hollow this time. The very definition of a reluctant witness, Blake spoke so softly in a morning session that all of her testimony was reread in the afternoon session. She recollected seeing Rappe and then Arbuckle go into 1219, Delmont demanding entrance, and Rappe saying, “He hurt me, he hurt me. I am dying,” but on the imperative point of Arbuckle being in the room when Rappe made the assertion, Blake could not remember. “I don’t recall” was her common, barely audible reply to numerous questions she had answered previously. A photo of her appeared in print under the heading H
ER
M
EMORY
G
ONE
with the caption “This is Alice Blake, who now, on the second trial of Fatty Arbuckle, forgets everything that happened at the famous party.”

On cross-examination, McNab focused on Blake’s time in protective custody, using the terms “incarcerated” and “impounded.” “When did you escape?” McNab asked Blake, and, when laughter filled the courtroom, Judge Louderback ordered the bailiff to eject those responsible. “Well, what can you do when the lawyers furnish the comedy?” the bailiff replied.

Prevost was even less of an asset for the prosecution. On a day so cold in a building so poorly heated that the jurors were brought overcoats and a recess was granted because the court reporter’s frigid fingers were stiff, the showgirl recanted her testimony from the first trial (as well as the grand jury and police court pretrial hearings) by stating she never heard Rappe say “He hurt me.” When Assistant DA Friedman pressed her on her previous statements under oath, she answered, “I did not remember. I’m telling the truth now.” To McNab, she explained that Brady’s team wanted her to sign an affidavit stating that Rappe said, “I’m dying. He killed me,” and when she refused she was placed in a cell and threatened with jail time before she finally signed, “He hurt me.”

“I told Mr. U’Ren that I didn’t remember Virginia saying anything of the kind, but that if he said that she had said it, it was all right.”

District Attorney Brady asked the court to declare Prevost a hostile witness so the state could impeach her. Motion denied. The next day,
the
New York Times
led with: “The case against Roscoe (‘Fatty’) Arbuckle seemingly went to pieces today during the examination of Miss Zey Prevost, a show girl, who had been one of the State’s star witnesses.” Rumors that Brady would drop the case in the wake of Prevost’s testimony were denied. Instead, two days after Prevost’s testimony, the state called to the stand the clerk who took Prevost’s original statement. The defense objected. Sustained.

S
ECOND
A
RBUCKLE
S
HOW
F
ALLS
F
LAT;
N
OT
S
O
W
ITH
A
CTOR
The Roscoe Arbuckle manslaughter trial was rapidly losing its punch. Instead of the “thrill-a-minute” biggest show on earth affair which the first trial was, the big comedian’s second appearance before the superior court degenerated into a heated, uninteresting battle of lawyers.

Even the introduction of Virginia Rappe’s riding habit Saturday failed to create interest. The crowd looked at it expectantly but seemed to recall that at the preliminary examination it didn’t stop at the natty hat and trim dress, but paraded more thrilling things before the jury’s and courtroom’s eyes.

—M
ILLWAUKEE
J
OURNAL,
J
ANUARY
22, 1922,
FRONT
PAGE

When Heinrich returned with the hallway door to room 1219 and explained the science of fingerprints, McNab again jabbed him for referencing himself as “Sherlock Holmes” and got him to admit fingerprints could be faked. Still, Heinrich insisted, “Any competent observer can tell the difference between forged and genuine prints.”

Warden Woolard, the
Los Angeles Times
reporter who broke the news of Rappe’s death to Arbuckle, testified that the actor denied having hurt Rappe but admitted he “pushed her down on the bed to keep her quiet” when she was in pain. Because of contradictions between Woolard’s account of what Arbuckle said on September 9 (claiming he was never alone with Rappe) and Arbuckle’s testimony at the first trial (claiming he assisted Rappe when they were alone together), the state had Arbuckle’s entire testimony read into the record. This triggered
the defense to announce it no longer needed to call Arbuckle to the stand.

The defense opened. In contrast to the first trial, in which they were unable to contradict Heinrich’s testimony, this time the defense brought forth two experts: Adolph Juel and Milton Carlson. Again, the state challenged their credentials. Wrangling over Juel’s expertise dragged on for an hour, despite the fact that he was employed as a fingerprint expert by the San Francisco Police Department and had testified as an expert witness in prior cases for the same district attorney’s office that was now objecting to him. Eventually, both Juel and Carlson took the stand, expressing doubts that the prints on 1219’s door were those of Arbuckle and Rappe.

Fred Fishback returned as a defense witness, and in cross-examination, he failed to remember certain answers he had previously given. An employee of Henry Lehrman’s studio disputed Jesse Norgaard’s contention that Arbuckle tried to get a key to Rappe’s dressing room. Dr. Rosenberg’s statement about treating Rappe in Chicago was again read, and other doctors testified that distended bladders could spontaneously rupture. As in the first trial, the defense tried unsuccessfully to get the St. Francis house detective’s recollection of a conversation with Rappe into the record.

When elderly maid Kate Brennan returned to speak about thoroughly cleaning the room before Heinrich’s inspections, she grew embroiled in a new legal subplot. The state petitioned to have her testimony stricken by presenting evidence that she spent 1909 to 1920 locked in an asylum because of mental illness and was never cured. The judge denied this request, but it allowed for future arguments about Brennan’s mental faculties.

The defense claimed it wanted to call Irene Morgan, famous for her alleged poisoning, but had failed to locate her after three weeks of searching. It did recall Florence Bates, who retold tales of an agonized Rappe violently disrobing in a Chicago department store in 1913. New witnesses spoke of Rappe’s painful past:

• Eugene Presbrey, screenwriter, said Rappe went into convulsions in the Hollywood Hotel in March 1917 after drinking two glasses of wine.
  
• J. M. Covington, café owner, said that Rappe and Henry Lehrman argued in his establishment in May 1918 and that after drinking liquor, the actress went outside “tearing her clothes and shrieking in pain.”
  
• Helen Barrie testified to being at a party for “the eclipse of the moon” on April 22, 1921, at the house of a film director, and that after a few drinks “Miss Rappe threw herself down on a divan and tore at her clothing.”
  
• Annie Portwell, resident of the Selma ranch where Semnacher, Delmont, and Rappe stopped on their journey to San Francisco, testified, “We were out riding in my car when Miss Rappe said, ‘Please stop the car if you do not want me to die.’ She left the car all doubled up and drank a quantity of dark-colored liquor from a gin bottle. She said it was herb tea.” The bottle was introduced into evidence.
  

The defense called as its final witness the state’s leading attack dog, Assistant DA Milton U’Ren, but the questions and answers pertained only to what U’Ren knew about the fingerprints on room 1219’s door.

A
RBUCKLE’S
A
CQUITTAL
IS
F
REELY
P
REDICTED

That Roscoe (Fatty) Arbuckle will be acquitted of the manslaughter charge on which he is being tried for the second time is taken almost as a forgone conclusion in San Francisco…. In the opinion of most observers, the bottom fell out of the state’s case when its three most important witnesses, Zey Prevost and Alice Blake, show girls, and Al Semnacher, manager of Miss Rappe, failed to remember many important details of Fatty’s “gin jollification,” despite the fact that they gave such testimony at the time of the first trial.

—P
ITTSBURGH
P
RESS,
J
ANUARY
27, 1922,
PAGE
14

The state began calling rebuttal witnesses. Two fingerprint experts affirmed that the prints on 1219’s door belonged to Arbuckle and Rappe. The asylum
superintendent confirmed that Kate Brennan had been an inmate. A doctor claimed that Rappe’s bladder rupturing may have been unrelated to any previous condition. Kate Hardebeck said the brown liquid in the bottle was indeed tea, and she reaffirmed Rappe’s “excellence of health”—a contention harmed when the defense got her to admit to Rappe’s treatment by a doctor. Catherine Fox again testified to young Rappe’s good health in Chicago, and five additional witnesses from Los Angeles spoke of Rappe’s apparent vigor. The state called the assistant manager of Chicago’s Mandel Brothers department store, who presented employment records showing that Florence Bates and Virginia Rappe were no longer working at the store when Rappe supposedly disrobed there in 1913. Recalled to the stand, Bates denied a 1910 employment application signature was hers, but the state countered with a handwriting expert who said it was.

Thus the second Arbuckle manslaughter trial sputtered to a close with wrangling over a twelve-year-old signature on a department store employment form. Even before then there were empty seats in the courtroom for a rerun of what had previously been the toughest ticket in town. The Women’s Vigilant Committee was again vigilant, but in lesser numbers than before. On the final Saturday, Judge Louderback delayed the trial to conduct a wedding.

Part of the malaise was because the promise of greater scandal had dissipated. No longer did it seem likely you could hear fresh details—shocking evidence that would lead to a superstar’s imprisonment. Newspapers highlighted weaknesses in the prosecution’s case and predicted Arbuckle’s acquittal. The defense seemed in a rush to its victory lap. It offered no counter to the state’s rebuttal testimony, and, as in the first trial, it offered to present the case to the jury without any closing arguments. Again the prosecution declined, and four hours were assigned to each side for arguments.