The Mammoth Book of Hollywood Scandals (3 page)

Virginia Rappe was still hysterical; rambling incoherently and sliding on to the floor, so Arbuckle picked her up and placed her back on to the bed. Delmont later lied to police that the actor had been violent towards the woman, and had thrown – not placed – her on to the bed. He denied this, and explained that he was merely trying to calm her down before the doctor arrived.

The hotel management was alerted to the fracas going on in the room and Delmont was first on the scene to greet the assistant manager, H. J. Boyle, with the words, “A woman is hysterical here and is tearing her clothes off. You had better do something about it.” The manager entered the room and found Rappe on the bed, almost nude except for a hastily placed bathrobe, and by this time going in and out of consciousness. The room was full of partygoers, and they all told the manager that the woman had become hysterical after having two or three drinks. “I took it for granted that there was nothing more serious than a drinking party,” he later told reporters.

Maude Delmont told the manager that she wanted to take Rappe to another room to recuperate and he then left room 1219 to organize it. Then guest Alice Blake and another, unnamed girl decided to place Virginia into a tub of cold water in a bid to relieve her hysterics. Not surprisingly, this did not help the situation one bit and so guest Fred Fischbach carried her back into the bedroom and placed her on the bed. Even being picked up was painful for Virginia at this point, and she complained that the man had hurt her in his attempts to get her from the tub back into bed. Unfortunately, this statement would be taken down and used in evidence against Roscoe, and twisted to make it look as though he had hurt her during an unprovoked attack, which was simply not the case.

Finally the nearby room was ready and Roscoe helped move the woman into it, and a doctor was called. Arriving a short time later, the physician could find no physical injuries on the girl and told Roscoe that it looked as though the problem was an overindulgence with alcohol.

“The doctor and I thought it was nothing more serious than a case of indigestion,” Arbuckle later told reporters. “He said a little bicarbonate of soda probably would straighten her out.”

Meanwhile, back in room 1219, Rappe’s agent, Al Seminacher took it upon himself to gather up the woman’s torn clothes and place all but two of the garments in a neat pile. The others he took down to his car in order, firstly to dust his vehicle, and secondly to tease Virginia about the state in which she had left her garments when she finally recovered from her episode.

Back upstairs, seeing that he had done as much as he could for the woman, and still presuming that the problem was not in any way serious, Arbuckle asked Lowell Sherman to clear the rooms of guests, before then leaving to go sightseeing around San Francisco with Mrs Taube. He later returned to the hotel, where he and his friends – including Seminacher – dined in his room, before he left to go dancing downstairs. The next morning he and his friends left the city and headed back to Los Angeles by boat. Later one of the party, Lowell Sherman, told the court: “I did not see Miss Rappe after that and never inquired about her because I did not take any of it seriously. I never asked Arbuckle what he thought was the matter with the girl. He seemed to have the same opinion as everyone else – that the girl had a bun on and was ill.” He then went on to express that Roscoe did not seem upset about the episode, any more than anybody else at the party, and concluded, “I never heard Miss Rappe express an opinion as to what was the matter with her.”

Unfortunately, while Roscoe and his friends were heading home, Virginia Rappe’s condition grew worse and after several days of suffering in the hotel, the doctor was called once again. He was sufficiently worried to order the woman to hospital where she was examined by a series of specialists, all citing her condition as acute abdominal pain with a fever. It was then decided that these symptoms were most likely caused by some kind of internal injury – perhaps an organ that had ruptured – which had caused peritonitis. They were right, as it was later announced that the actress’s bladder had burst, causing infection, deliriousness, acute pain and, ultimately, death.

The odd thing about Virginia’s trip to hospital was that instead of being taken to a general clinic where she could undergo emergency treatment, she was actually taken to a maternity unit instead. This strange occurrence would seem to go hand-in-hand with the fact that Delmont apparently brought her own doctor to look at Rappe – the same doctor who had performed the abortion just days before. Was Virginia taken to the maternity hospital as a result of complications from the abortion? It would seem possible. To add further fuel to this conjecture, when the actress passed away at the hospital on 9 September 1921, an unofficial autopsy was performed, allegedly by the doctor who had attended her, and all of her female internal organs – uterus, fallopian tubes and ovaries – were apparently removed before her body was taken back to Los Angeles. It would seem highly likely that this move was a deliberate attempt to hide the fact that she had undergone an illegal and dangerous abortion in the days before her death.

Both before and after Virginia passed away, Maude Delmont took great delight in telling anyone who would listen her own sordid version of what had happened on the afternoon of the party. Still angry from Roscoe’s treatment of her, she placed the blame for her friend’s death squarely on his shoulders and made sure everybody knew about it. According to her, this huge man had crushed her petite friend when forcing her to have sex, thus rupturing her bladder in the process. Since then other stories have been put forward which claim that Roscoe violated Rappe with some kind of foreign object – usually a coke bottle – and her bladder had burst as a result.

These stories are not only ludicrous but also come without any evidence whatsoever. Just how heavy would a person have to be to cause a bladder to rupture by lying on them? It is true that Roscoe was a big man, but he would surely have to have been considerably larger to rupture an internal organ. What’s more, the bursting of Rappe’s bladder, if it had been caused by a heavy weight, would likely not have been an isolated injury; the crushing would have led to other organs being damaged and possibly even bones breaking in the process. As for the coke-bottle story, there was no coke being served at the party that day. As there is no evidence whatsoever that a bottle of this nature was anywhere near the suite of rooms at that time, it too can effectively be ruled out.

While Delmont had been in the bathroom of room 1221 and could not have possibly heard anything when Virginia first collapsed in room 1219, this did not stop the police from believing the woman when she described how she had heard screams coming from Roscoe’s bedroom. Perhaps the most outrageous thing about the Arbuckle scandal is that while Delmont had been known to police as a liar who had committed a variety of crimes, everyone suddenly sat up and took notice when she started spouting lies and innuendo about Arbuckle and Rappe.

It is interesting to note, however, that while her friends all stuck by her and agreed with her findings, the other guests denied that any of her stories and innuendo had the remotest bearing on the truth. Arbuckle himself later told police that she had made up the stories because “she is simply sore at me”, and then told the tale of her becoming so wild at the party that he had tried to throw her out of the suite of rooms.

The fact that everyone in any kind of authority seemed to believe Delmont was incredible given her history, and yet it was true; in spite of there being not a scrap of hard evidence against Roscoe Arbuckle and no witnesses to any crime, the police decided that he was indeed to blame for the death of Virginia Rappe, and charged the poor man with murder.

“No man, whether he be Fatty Arbuckle or anyone else, can come into this city and commit that kind of an offence,” Captain of Detectives Duncan Matheson told waiting reporters. “The evidence showed that there was an attack made on the girl.” Except, of course, that there was no real evidence to show any kind of attack at all; and in fact doctors treating the woman had believed she was ill as a result of “natural causes”. Had there been an injury, they surely would have seen it at that time.

Roscoe’s arrest seems to be mainly as a result of finger-pointing from Delmont and a comment by a nurse, Mrs Jameson, who had attended to Virginia Rappe before she died. According to Jameson, the actress told her several stories: the first was that after a few drinks she could remember nothing at all about the party. “She did not remember whether Arbuckle asked or pulled her into his room,” the nurse told police. The second story Rappe apparently told her was that Arbuckle was to blame for her illness; that he had attacked her. Then later she changed her mind once again and claimed that, no, she did not remember anything about what had happened that day.

The reason for Rappe’s differing comments was very simple: as a result of high fever and infection, the actress was delirious and could not remember what had happened after she had become ill. However, while alone with the patient, Maude Delmont took the opportunity to feed the woman information of her own sordid account of what happened that afternoon, thus causing many false and misleading memories in the process. This would explain why Rappe’s story kept changing, and why she had such confusion about whether or not she remembered anything that had happened at all.

Rappe was in no fit state to recall any event from the party; if she had been, she would have known that Arbuckle could not possibly have taken or pulled her into the room. There were witnesses in the reception room who had been talking to Roscoe during the time when Rappe disappeared; and since they were sitting just yards away from the bedroom door, it would have been impossible for them not to notice the actor forcibly pushing or pulling anybody into his room.

The whole thing very quickly got out of hand and Arbuckle was horrified that he was now facing the death penalty for a crime he did not commit. He refused to give any kind of statement to the police and instead chose to remain silent, except to say a few words to the reporters who waited with baited breath and their notebooks poised. “Well,” he said with his shoulders sagging, “I guess you have enough for this time.”

“Smile!” shouted photographers snapping his photograph, to which the distraught actor replied, “Not under circumstances like this.” Moments later he was led from the building, en route to the city jail, his request for bail denied.

“It is not pleasant to take action like this,” the Assistant District Attorney told reporters, “but under the evidence it was the only thing we could do.”

Newspapers went wild with accusations against the actor, none more so than papers owned by the Hearst Corporation in San Francisco. It quickly became apparent to them that the Arbuckle story was going to sell countless copies of their rags, and it has been said that they even resorted to faking pictures of the actor – drawing bars across his face to make it look as though they had exclusive access to him in prison. Roscoe’s films were pulled from the cinema; his fans deserted him in droves; and suddenly nobody wanted anything to do with the man who, just a few weeks before, had been known as a gentle comedy clown.

But Roscoe’s friends still believed in him and chose to support their fellow actor through the case. Mabel Normand sent word that she and everyone else she knew all believed her co-star to be innocent; Charlie Chaplin released a statement to say that he had no doubt his friend had nothing to do with the death; while Buster Keaton was so upset that he wanted to give evidence as a character witness. This request was turned down by Arbuckle’s lawyers, however, for fear that any kind of appearance by Keaton would somehow destroy his career too.

Meanwhile Roscoe’s estranged wife Minta flew to California from New York so that she could support her ex-husband in any way she could. Reporters flocked to hear her opinion and she did not disappoint: “Roscoe Arbuckle is just a big lovable pleasure-loving, overgrown boy,” she said, before adding, “His success and prosperity have been a little too much for him, but he is not guilty of the hideous charge made against him in San Francisco. I am going to him because I think it is my duty to be near him – I want to help him in every way I can.”

Asked whether the couple were going to reunite, the woman answered, “A reconciliation? That depends upon whether, when he is acquitted of this charge, I find that my place is with him and whether he finds that he is ready for a return to the life we led when we were married.”

Distraught that he had been unfairly accused of a crime he did not commit, Roscoe wrote to his friend and producer, Joseph Schenck, and told him that he was absolutely innocent of all the accusations being held against him. “I simply tried to help someone in distress, the same as you or anyone else with human instincts would have done in the circumstance,” he said. He also assured his friend that he had done no wrong. “My heart is clean and my conscience is clear.”

The trial of Roscoe Arbuckle began on 14 November 1921, by which time the charge had been changed to manslaughter, much to the relief of everyone involved. Every little detail was reported, from what actually went on during the proceedings, to what the women were wearing, to what the public were gossiping about in the gallery. Arbuckle’s estranged wife arrived at the courthouse to support the comic and people were so incensed by her presence that it has been said she was abused and even shot at while entering the building.

The prosecutor during the trial was a man by the name of Matthew Brady who had great hopes and ambitions to become Governor of California and maybe even President later in his career. With that in mind, he went all out to try and prove that Arbuckle was not the sweet soul everyone thought him to be, but a monster, capable of rape and manslaughter in one foul swoop.

Tellingly, professional finger-pointer Maude Delmont was seen as such an unreliable witness that she did not take to the stand, but those who did made a good argument for Arbuckle’s innocence. A doctor confirmed that Virginia Rappe had never mentioned that Roscoe had attacked her; a chambermaid at the hotel dispelled rumours of there being blood found on the bathroom door, while pathology experts were called to testify that Rappe’s ruptured bladder was not caused by external events at all. In fact, it seemed pretty evident from their reports that it was the result of chronic inflammation coming from inside the body, not outside, which had caused the organ to burst.