30 THENEWYORKER,OCTOBER11, 2021
AMERICAN CHRONICLES
HOLLYWOOD ON TRIAL
Decades before TMZ, the Arbuckle affair spawned the modern celebrity scandal.
BY MICHAELSCHULMAN
A
hundred years ago, on the Satur-
day before Labor Day, Roscoe Ar-
buckle drove his plum-colored Pierce-
Arrow to San Francisco for a weekend
of partying. At two hundred and sixty-
six pounds, Arbuckle, known to movie
audiences as Fatty, was the Chris Far-
ley of silent cinema, beloved for his prat-
falls and for his skill at throwing cus-
tard pies in people’s faces. By September,
1921, he had appeared in more than a
hundred and fifty films, often in his
trademark outfit of baggy pants, sus-
penders, and an undersized bowler hat;
he was earning a million dollars a year
at Paramount. In Los Angeles, he owned
a twenty-room mansion, complete with
servants, Oriental rugs, gold-leaf bath-
tubs, and a cellar full of liquor that he
broke out for jazz-fuelled soirées. The
Pierce-Arrow, his thirty-four-thousand-
dollar “gasoline palace,” was just one of
his fleet of trophy cars, and it likely drew
crowds as it whizzed up the coast. Ev-
erybody knew Fatty. Even his pit bull
terrier was famous: Luke, his co-star in
“Fatty’s Faithful Fido.”
In San Francisco, Arbuckle checked
into the St. Francis, a grand European-
style hotel with its own orchestra and
Turkish baths. He and his entourage
fanned out into three adjoining rooms
on the top floor. Twenty months into
Prohibition, booze wasn’t hard to find,especially if you were Fatty Arbuckle,
and that evening a shipment of gin and
Scotch was delivered from Gobey’s Grill.
Late Monday morning—September 5,
1921—a gown salesman named Ira Fort-
louis was leaving the nearby Palace Hotel
to meet one of Arbuckle’s friends. In
the Palace lobby, he spotted another
group from Los Angeles and asked a
bellboy about the chic young woman
with dark hair. She was, the bellboy said,
“Virginia Rappe, the movie actress.”
Rappe was known to Arbuckle’s group,
and they sent word inviting her for af-
ternoon drinks.
Rappe arrived at around noon. A one-
time fashion model and designer, she
wore a jade skirt and blouse, with a pan-
ama hat trimmed with matching rib-
bon. “I’ll go up there, and if the party is
a bloomer I’ll be back in twenty minutes,”
she had told her companions, the film
publicist Alfred Semnacher and his friend
Maude Delmont. Up in Room 1220, Ar-
buckle was wearing pajamas and a pur-
ple bathrobe, holding court with a small
crowd of wingmen and showgirls. They
ordered up a Victrola and danced to “Ain’t
We Got Fun?” More booze came from
Gobey’s. Rappe, whose friends had joined
the party, drank Orange Blossoms and
chatted with Arbuckle. At some point,
she went to use the bathroom in Room
1221, but Delmont was in there with Ar-
buckle’s actor friend Lowell Sherman.
So she crossed into Arbuckle’s room,- Just before three o’clock, Arbuckle
went in, too, and locked the door.
What happened next was pored over
by three juries, a scandal-mad public,
and a century’s worth of amateur crim-
inologists. In one version of the story,
Arbuckle threw Rappe onto the bed
and mortally crushed her with his bulk.
In another, he found her ill and tended
to her like a gentleman. They were alone
together for either ten minutes or an
hour, depending on whom you believe.
Delmont said that she grew so worried
about Rappe that she kicked the door
and called her name. Arbuckle said that
he opened it unprovoked. Either way,
when the other partyers got into Room
1219 they found Rappe barely conscious,
tearing at her clothes in agony and com-
plaining of a fierce pain in her abdo-
men. They put her in a cold bath, and
then moved her to another room, down
Fatty Arbuckle’s murder charge panicked the studios and incited a media frenzy. the hall, where a hotel doctor deter- GETTY IMAGES