Fatty Arbuckle, Funny Man Brought Down by Scandal

Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle was one of the biggest stars in the early Hollywood community with over a hundred screen credits to his name as an actor, writer and director. Fatty was a jolly, rotund man - amazingly nimble and acrobatic despite his weight. Fatty also had an active social life; he enjoyed hard partying and paid for it. He threw a weekend-long party at the San Francisco Hotel on September 5, and by the 17th he was arraigned for the rape and murder of 30-year-old aspiring actress Virginia Rapp.

Rapp became ill after carousing with Arbuckle at the party. She checked into a hospital two days later, and her cause of death was determined to be a ruptured bladder. It was well known that Virginia Rapp was a heavy drinker, so it was believed that her sickness was the result of intoxication, hence the slowness to check into a hospital sooner. A party witness named Maude Delmont thought otherwise. She told police that Arbuckle raped Rappe, and they concluded that his overweight body was the cause of the ruptured bladder. Delmont made later attempts to hype the crime to the police in order to extort money from Arbuckle. The story spun out of control when he was accused of raping Rappe with ice and/or a champagne bottle.

The San Francisco District Attorney, Mathew Brady, determined to get a high profile conviction as he was planning to run for governor, made public statements of Fatty's guilt, also pressuring witnesses to falsely accuse him. Ditto, William Randolph Hearst's nationwide newspaper chain followed the story from the beginning to its sorry conclusion, making attacks against Arbuckle that damaged his career, stoked public outrage, and received record circulation profits. The resulting bad publicity destroyed Arbuckle's career and personal life.

The trials of Fatty Arbuckle

Originally charged with manslaughter in 1921, Fatty's estranged wife, Minta Durfee, testified during the first trial on behalf of his innocence, and model Betty Campbell was preparing to do likewise. This would have dealt Brady's case a heavy blow, so the District Attorney threatened to charge Campbell with perjury if she did not testify against Arbuckle. Arbuckle testified that he discovered Rapp vomiting in a toilet. The prosecution attested that Arbuckle refused to call a doctor after discovering she was ill, arguing that he refused to do so because it presented a perfect opportunity to kill her. The jury returned deadlocked on December 4, 1921, 10-2 not guilty and a mistrial was declared.

After rehashing the same evidence for the second trial, a witnesses, Zey Prevon, testified that the District Attorney had forced her to lie. Some evidence from the first trial was declared invalid; witnesses from trial one were disqualified for various reasons. The jury deadlocked once again with a 10-2 guilty verdict, and another mistrial was declared.

By this time, the newspapers were fanning the scandal, and Fatty's movies had been banned. Tales of Hollywood orgies, murders and sexual perversities filled the newspaper columns daily. Maude Delmon, who made the original accusations against Fatty, toured the country giving paid lectures as "The woman who signed the murder charge against Arbuckle," and warning against the depravity of Hollywood. During the third trial, the star witness, Zey Pevron, fled the country, and a unanimous not-guilty verdict was reached by the jury in six minutes. Experts concluded that Rapp may have died from a ruptured bladder resulting from a back-alley abortion. At the conclusion, Fatty Arbuckle pled guilty to violating the Volstead Act, as the serving of alcohol was illegal in the United States at the time. He owed $700,000 to his lawyers, and his films were banned by Motion Pictures Producers and Distributors of America, because he was seen as an example of poor morals in the industry.

Arbuckle and his wife, Minta Durfee, were formally divorced in 1924, although they remained friends. He married Doris Deane in 1925, and tried returning to movie making, receiving help from friend Buster Keaton. He eventually found work as a film director under the alias "William Goodrich," and experienced some success, but his career as an actor was mostly over.

Comeback in the works

Despite all his travails, Fatty Arbuckle never stopped trying. His efforts paid off when in 1932 Fatty signed a contract with Warner Brothers to star using his own name in a series of two-reel comedies. The day filming the last of the two-reelers on June 28, 1933, Fatty was contracted by Brothers to make a feature-length movie - his professional reputation restored. The greater film community also welcomed him back to the fold.

Fatty Arbuckle was overjoyed and said, This is the best day of my life." The restoration of his good name and career may have been too much for him, because he died that night in his sleep from a heart attack, aged 46. Pal Buster Keaton said "He died of a broken heart."

Fatty Arbuckle remains well known as a Hollywood fixture of the silent era, but is far better know for the scandal and trial than his films. Comedian Chris Farley had expressed interest in starring as Arbuckle in a biography about the famous funny man, but he ironically died before the filming began.