Room 1219: Fatty Arbuckle, the Mysterious Death of Virginia Rappe, and the Scandal That Changed Hollywood (44 page)

The movies were where Americans went to dream together, to forget their tenement flats and bleak employment prospects. They laughed when the Little Tramp and the kid were chased by a giant policeman. They cheered when the impoverished American boy (played by a woman) learned he was to be an English lord, or when the dueling musketeer did an astonishing one-handed handspring. And they grinned when Fatty was bequeathed $5 million—with a catch.

And when they left the theater, many of them bought the latest issue of
Photoplay
or one of the other movie magazines populating newsstands. The dream continued, page by page, by the light of an oil lamp or an incandescent bulb. They were comforted by the knowledge that their favorite stars were living lives of opulence in the perpetual summertime of Southern California—the lavish paydays and parties and mansions and servants, the charity balls, high fashion, international trips, practical jokes, the blissful days of pretending. Movie stars were America’s royalty, and Americans watched their royalty with rapt attention.

In late September 1921, during the depths of Arbuckle’s revilement, New York society columnist O. O. McIntyre would remember a day earlier in the year when the superstar was returning from an East Coast promotional tour. The reminiscence provided a rare, PR-free portrait of Arbuckle at the apex of his fame and fortune:

Last March I traveled on the same train with Arbuckle from New York to Los Angeles. I had never met him before. There were only about 20 people aboard and of course the comedian was the center of attention. He took a special fancy to my dog and would have the chef especially prepare pork chops for him. He struck me as a bewildered boy. Success had come too quickly. He appears more
youthful than the photographs show. His type in our town used to live in the unpainted houses along the railroad tracks, their mothers eternally hidden away in damp kitchens. His clothes were gaudy and he wolfed his food like a starving beast.

When the train stopped and we stretched our cramped limbs in the small towns of Kansas, Colorado and Arizona crowds gaped at Arbuckle, but he seemed quite unconscious of it. The most of his time was spent organizing crap games among the Negro waiters in the dining car.

Arbuckle did like his flashy suits, and he may indeed have been bewildered by his great success, though that would seem difficult for a new acquaintance to perceive. (McIntyre may have assumed it because he himself was bewildered by the immense fame and fortune of movie stars.) Still, the anecdote leaves the distinct impression of a down-to-earth celebrity who cared more about a dog and the train’s waiters than the attention his fame brought. Twelve years later, McIntyre would recall that trip again, and the time he spent, silently, alone with Arbuckle on the train’s observation platform while crossing an Arizona desert painted iridescent: “Under the prismatic spell of the dying splendor he sat rigid until the landscape was eclipsed by dusk. The train lights came on. He was wiping away a tear hurriedly, clumsily…. He loved the sunset.”

While most of us are struggling to lay a few dollars on a shelf for a rainy day, along comes a fellow who suddenly receives a gift of a million dollars. No sooner has he recovered from the shock of that surprise than another interested party offers him five million if he will spend the other kind gentleman’s donation within a year and is broke at the end of that time.

—F
ROM A
N
OTICE FOR
BREWSTER
’s M
ILLIONS

F
OR
H
IS
U
NCLE
S
AMUEL,
H
E
W
ORKED FOR A
D
OLLAR
B
UT
S
H-H-H!
F
ATTY’S A
D
ETECK-ATIV!

—N
EWSPAPER
A
DVERTISEMENT
F
OR
THE
D
OLLAR-A-YEAR
M
AN

Did you ever hear of slapstick drama? Neither did we until Roscoe Arbuckle introduced it, and most successfully in his recent vehicles. He has opened up a field particularly well suited to his talent, and should win over many who have scorned his custard-pie offerings of the past.

—F
ROM A
REVIEW OF
T
HE
T
RAVELING
S
ALESMAN

Arbuckle made four features in the first eight months of 1921. It is oft said the last three were shot without a break, and thus he was in great need of a vacation by Labor Day weekend, but this is a falsehood perpetuated by his supporters.
*
Brewster’s Millions, The Dollar-a-Year Man,
and
The Traveling Salesman
were shot in 1920 with overlapping schedules and released in 1921. The four features produced in 1921—
Crazy to Marry, Gasoline Gus, Skirt Shy,
and
Freight Prepaid
—each had at least a three-week break between one production ending and another beginning, and three weeks had elapsed since wrapping
Freight Prepaid
when Arbuckle headed to San Francisco.

That’s not to say that acting in nine five-reel feature films over twenty-one months was not an arduous schedule. It was. Chaplin made one six-reel feature and one two-reel short during the same period. But Arbuckle was neither writer nor director on any of the nine features, so his Paramount schedule was not as grueling as his workloads at Comique or Keystone when he was director, star, and (usually) writer or cowriter. “I can’t sleep nights when I’m making one,” he said of his previous experience directing films. “No, I’m going to let the other fellow [Chaplin] have the trouble of directing, and devote my time to thinking up original comedy touches.”

Five of the final six features were directed by James Cruze; the lapsed Mormon and former snake oil salesman had launched a prolific acting and directing career in 1911. Paramount no doubt preferred the greater
output that Arbuckle, its prized attraction, generated by mostly focusing on his acting (he still consulted on writing, directing, and editing decisions). The studio was so flush with Fatty movies that
The Traveling Salesman
was not released until eleven months after production wrapped.

Though they were commercially successful, Arbuckle’s features are not nearly as entertaining as his Comique shorts. Unlike Chaplin, he never found the right balance of drama and comedy to flesh out longer stories, but also unlike Chaplin, he was now dependent on the writing and directing of others. The feature-length comedy was just taking form, and thus it’s likely the plotting of Arbuckle’s efforts would have improved as the genre matured in the mid-1920s. He may even have made features comparable to the classics of Chaplin and Keaton—if he had gotten the chance.

So movie-mad was the public and so eager were the papers to report on the bigger-than-life Fatty that in April alone there were stories about his appearing at a Knights of Columbus charity benefit; about his merely posing for an acrobatic photo with Buster Keaton, Alice Lake, and Viola Dana; and about his writing a ten-word telegram to an actress jailed for speeding. The latter was part of a publicity coup like none before.

Reports of Arbuckle’s recurrent speeding stops were a running joke in local newspapers. His luxurious automobiles weren’t just for show; he drove them fast, especially on the then—sparsely traveled streets of Santa Monica. (Frequently, the policemen—astonished by his customized cars and his fame—let him go without even a warning.) But it was his friend Bebe Daniels who turned a lead foot into a cause célèbre. Though only twenty, Daniels was a film veteran. Previously the on-screen and (very young) offscreen romantic interest of Harold Lloyd, she was a fast-rising star at Paramount in 1921 when she was arrested in leisurely Orange County, California, for driving 56.5 miles per hour at a time when that was considered outrageously fast. Before the trial, Daniels taunted the judge by singing “Judge Cox Blues” at a benefit. For the March 28 jury trial, more than fifteen hundred spectators crowded the courthouse to
catch a glimpse of the celebrity, who arrived in a limousine and wore a fur coat and veiled hat. She lost when Judge John Cox sentenced her to ten days in jail, but she won via the windfall of publicity.

On April 15 Daniels arrived at jail with a phalanx of luggage. The next day, a furniture store delivered a bedroom suite to her cell. Someone provided a Victrola and 150 records. Local musicians serenaded her. And guests arrived, 792 over the ten days, including numerous Hollywood celebrities (themselves earning publicity) and one new celeb, Judge Cox. Roscoe Arbuckle sent her a telegram, written for public amusement: “Dear Bebe, Houdini is in town. Can we help? Love.”
*
Upon release, she began her next film,
The Speed Girl,
a comedic account of her ordeal. Six months before Arbuckle’s arrest, the young Bebe Daniels showed how to use a trial and incarceration to her great advantage.
^†
It was a lesson unique to her crime, though it did demonstrate how hungry the public was to view their favorite stars in three dimensions and actual size, as they were when they took an oath and testified.

In England, Arbuckle appeared in the movie-themed comic book
The Kinema Comic,
in his own weekly strip, “The Playful Pranks of Fatty Arbuckle.” Strip titles hint at their slapstick plots: “A Whacking Good Stunt!” “Good ‘Buoy’!” “He Felt Board!” They gave the distinctly American Fatty a stereotypically British accent. For example, in “A ‘Neck’-straordinary Stunt!” after getting men to make stairs out of themselves and the sandwich boards they were wearing so he can sneak his girlfriend out of a second-floor window, Fatty says, “That’s the style, my lads! That’s the caper! Now, then, come along, Clara! Come forth! Trip down your sandwich-boards, and all shall be well. Cheerio!”

At home, Arbuckle continued his lavish spending; high-end consumerism was an addiction as comforting to him as mashed potatoes or gin. In addition to his tricked-out Pierce-Arrow, he filled his West Adams mansion’s six-car garage with the best automobiles on the market: a Locomobile, a Rolls-Royce, a Cadillac, a Hudson, a Renault. They were painted in attention-grabbing colors. He bought more imported suits and shoes than could fit in his closets and more artwork than could hang on his many walls. He lavished expensive jewelry, perfume, and designer clothing on women. He threw extravagant parties. He bought on extended credit from merchants eager to say they’d sold to Fatty Arbuckle, a practice that later proved imprudent, and he made risky investments, which later devastated his financial security. He could never spend the money faster than it arrived, and it seemed it would arrive forever.

“Since he had made his fortune,” his sister Nora said, “he had always been generous to his own people. He has done many kind things for me and my family and for my brother [Harry] in Fresno.” Minta Durfee elaborated:

I know of many cases: men who have persuaded him to give them money, girls with whom he was friendly who have actually made him a joke because it was so easy to get money away from him…. Ever since he was a boy—and he practically grew up with our family—Mr. Arbuckle has been careless with money. He never considered expense. Money simply meant the means of getting what he wanted, of enjoying himself, of helping other people. Incidentally, helping other people is the way a great deal of his money has gone. He has been most generous with me, ever since our separation. He has supported relatives. He has always been ready to help anyone who needed it. He has half a dozen pensioners about whom nobody but his own people know.