Room 1219: Fatty Arbuckle, the Mysterious Death of Virginia Rappe, and the Scandal That Changed Hollywood (78 page)

Kramer, Peter. “‘Clean, Dependable Slapstick’: Comedy Violence and the Emergence of Classical Hollywood Cinema.” In
Violence and American Cinema,
edited by David J. Slocum. New York: Routledge, 2001.

Lahue, Kalton C., and Terry Brewer.
Kops and Custards: The Legend of Keystone Films.
Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1968.

Landis, Bill.
Anger: The Unauthorized Biography of Kenneth Anger.
New York: HarperCollins, 1995.

Lasky, Jesse L., with Don Weldon.
I Blow My Own Horn.
Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1957.

Leff, Leonard J., and Jerold L. Simmons.
The Dame in the Kimono: Hollywood, Censorship, and the Production Code.
2nd ed. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2001.

Leicester, Rob.
Red Ink, White Lies: The Rise and Fall of Los Angeles Newspapers 1920-1962.
Upland, CA: Dragonflyer Press, 2000.

Lewis, Philip C.
Trouping: How the Show Came to Town.
New York: Harper & Row, 1973.

Literary Digest.
“‘Fatty’ Arbuckle off the Screen.” July 14, 1917, 40-42.

Louvish, Simon.
Keystone: The Life and Clowns of Mack Sennett.
New York: Faber and Faber, 2003.

Meade, Marion.
Buster Keaton: Cut to the Chase.
New York: HarperCollins, 1995.

Neibaur, James L.
Arbuckle and Keaton: Their 14 Film Collaborations.
Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2007.

_______.
Early Charlie Chaplin: The Artist as Apprentice at Keystone Studios.
Lanham, MD: Scarecrow, 2011.

Oderman, Stuart.
Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle: A Biography of the Silent Film Comedian, 1887-1933.
Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1994.

Okrent, Daniel.
Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition.
New York: Scribner, 2010.

Okuda, Ted, and David Maska.
Charlie Chaplin at Keystone and Essanay: Dawn of the Tramp.
Lincoln, NE: iUniverse, 2005.

Pearson, David B. “Playing Detective: Possible Solutions to the Production Mysteries of
Sherlock Jr.
” In
Buster Keaton’s Sherlock Jr.
, edited by Andrew Horton. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.

Purdy, Dennis.
Kiss ‘Em Goodbye: An ESPN Treasury of Failed, Forgotten, and Departed Teams.
New York: ESPN, 2010.

Ramsland, Katherine. “He Made Mute Evidence Speak: Edward O. Heinrich.”
Forensic Examiner,
fall 2007, 62—64.

Rapf, Joanna E. “Both Sides of the Camera: Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle’s Evolution at Keystone.” In
Slapstick Comedy,
edited by Tom Paulus and Rob King. New York: Routledge, 2010.

Reeder, Thomas. “And He That Strives to Touch the Stars: Henry Lehrman and the Fledgling Film Industry.”
Galitzianer,
November 2009, 16—24.

Rex, Wil. “Behind the Scenes with Fatty and Mabel,”
Picture-Play,
April 1916, 46—53.

Roberts, Ed (“A Hollywood Newspaper Man”).
The Sins of Hollywood: An Expose of Movie Vice.
Los Angeles: Hollywood Publishing, 1922. Reprinted in
Taylorology
30 (June 1995):
www.public.asu.edu/~ialong/Taylor30.txt
.

Robinson, David.
From Peep Show to Palace: The Birth of American Film.
New York: Columbia University Press, 1996.

Sellers, Alvin V., ed.
Classics of the Bar: Stories of the World’s Greatest Legal Trials and a Compilation of Forensic Masterpieces.
Vol. 8. Washington, DC: Washington Law Book, 1942.

Sennett, Mack, with Cameron Shipp.
King of Comedy.
Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1954.

Sherman, William Thomas.
Mabel Normand: A Source Book to Her Life and Films.
6th ed.
Scribd.com
, 2012.

Siefkin, David.
Meet Me at the St. Francis: The First Seventy-Five Years of a Great San Francisco Hotel.
San Francisco: St. Francis Hotel Corp., 1979.

Sklar, Robert.
Movie-Made America: A Cultural History of American Movies.
New York: Vintage, 1975.

Slide, Anthony.
Inside the Hollywood Fan Magazine: A History of Star Makers, Fabricators, and Gossip Mongers.
Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2010.

St. Johns, Adela Rogers.
Love, Laughter and Tears: My Hollywood Story.
Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1978.

Stoloff, Sam. “Fatty Arbuckle and the Black Sox: The Paranoid Style of American Popular Culture, 1919-1922.” In
Headline Hollywood: A Century of Film Scandal,
edited by Adrienne L. McLean and David A. Cook. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2001.

———. “Normalizing Stars: Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle and Hollywood Consolidation.” In
American Silent Film: Discovering Marginalized Voices,
edited by Gregg Bachman and Thomas J. Slater. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2002.

Sweeney, Kevin W., ed.
Buster Keaton: Interviews.
Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2007.

Ulaby, Neda. “Roscoe Arbuckle and the Scandal of Fatness.” In
Bodies Out of Bounds: Fatness and Transgression,
edited by Jana Evans Braziel and Kathleen LeBesco. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001.

Wagner, Walter.
You Must Remember This.
New York: Putnam, 1975.

Walker, Brent E.
Mack Sennett’s Fun Factory.
Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2009.

Weissman, Stephen.
Chaplin: A Life.
New York: Arcade, 2008.

White, William L.
Slaying the Dragon: The History of Addiction Treatment and Recovery in America.
Bloomington, IL: Chestnut Health Systems, 1998.

Williams, Gregory Paul.
The Story of Hollywood: An Illustrated History.
Los Angeles: BL Press, 2006.

Yallop, David. A.
The Day the Laughter Stopped: The True Story of Fatty Arbuckle.
New York: St. Martin’s, 1976.

Young, Robert, Jr.
Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle: A Bio-Bibliography.
Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1994.

I
N 1921 , ON E OF T H E BIGGEST MOVIE STARS IN THE WORLD WAS ACCUSED OF KILLING A WOMAN.
What followed was an unprecedented avalanche of press coverage, the original “trial of the century,” and a wave of censorship that altered the course of Hollywood filmmaking.

It began on Labor Day, when comic actor Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle, then at the pinnacle of his fame and fortune, hosted a party in San Francisco’s best hotel. As the party raged, he was alone in room 1219 with Virginia Rappe, a little-known actress. Four days later, she died, and he was charged with her murder.

Room 1219
tells the story of Arbuckle’s improbable rise and stunning fall—from one of Hollywood’s first true superstars to its first pariah.

It explores how the earliest silent film experiments evolved into a studiobased system capable of making and, ultimately, breaking a beloved superstar. Simultaneously, it presents the sensational crime story from the day of the “orgy” through Arbuckle’s three trials. Relying on a careful examination of documents, the book finally reveals, after almost a century of wild speculation, what most likely occurred in room 1219.

GREG MERRITT
is the author of
Film Production: The Complete Uncensored Guide to Independent Filmmaking
and
Celluloid Mavericks: A History of American Independent Film
. He is a senior writer for American Media Inc. and has written hundreds of feature articles for numerous magazines. He has an MFA from the American Film Institute.

Jacket design: Natalya Balnova

Front cover photos: Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle, George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress; Virginia Rappe, New York World-Telegram and the Sun Newspaper Photograph Collection, Library of Congress; Hotel St. Francis, Ed Brodzinsky, photographer Author photo: Kevin Horton

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA