The Fall of Fatty

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It was a puddle of crumpled fabric, jade green silk, the color almost obscenely vivid against the dull grain of the table. The woman was dead. The woman who designed and sewn that fabric, transforming it into an exquisite dress, turning this way and that, in front of a full length mirror, she carefully tucked and pinned, the silk spilling across her skin like liquid, like absent. She didn't know that this would be the last dress she'd ever wear. She was just 30 years old, a beauty. She was a model, a designer and an actress.

Was. Now her body lay cold on a mortuary slab. Now the exquisite dress nearly shredded was evidence. In the chapel of a funeral establishment banked high with floral offerings. The funeral of Virginia Rappe was held at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery. A large part of the movie colony attended. Eight thousand members of the public filed past her coffin, paying their respects or satisfying their curiosity. Scandal always draws more vultures than carrion ever could. And Virginia's death was a scandal, one that would topple a career and change the movie business forever.

I'm dying. Oh, I'm dying. And then they got a small beam of light again. It's. True. Stuff. Roscoe Fatty Arbuckle, the popular motion picture actor, has been arrested on a charge of murdering Virginia Rappe, also a well-known film actress, following a party at Arbuckle's suite at a hotel in San Francisco. Statements concerning the death are contradictory.

The era of silent films was in its last decade when Virginia Rappe died on September 9th, 1921. She wasn't a star like Mary Pickford or Dorothy Gish, but she was a working actress with more than a dozen film credits on her resume. And the future looked promising. And she was engaged to be married. Virginia had come a long way from a chaotic early life in Chicago. Her mother, Mabel, was a showgirl. I never knew my father.

They called Mabel Rappe the queen of Chicago's Chinatown. She was the kind of woman that people back then and now loved to judge. Unwed, they hissed. Unwise, incapable of properly raising a child. And to be fair, Mabel Rappe had gotten into trouble in Chicago. She was involved with a man named Frank Parker, the reckless and feckless son of a wealthy Chicago family. Parker ran with a wild crowd of equally rich black sheep, bad boys, and was eventually busted for check forgery and jailed.

You know how it goes with stories like this, though. Parker was eventually released from jail. Charges were dropped for lack of evidence. And with a big assist from his family's money, Parker managed to slowly work his way back into the good graces of his father and polite society. Things didn't go that smoothly for Mabel, who'd also been arrested for passing the bad checks given to her by Parker. After giving birth to Virginia on July 7th, 1891, Mabel moved with her mother and baby daughter to New York City. There was work there on the vaudeville circuit, and it was a chance to shed the notoriety that came with being Frank Parker's girl.

There are two tales that concern Mabel Rappe. One is that she died from the effects of addiction to drugs. The other is that there were two women by the name of Mabel Rappe. One was a notorious woman, frequenter of the old 22nd Street district and its bright lights and devious ways. The other was the quiet, beautiful artist model mother of Virginia Rappe.

It's a tricky knot to unravel. There are some who say that Mabel posed as her daughter's sister, with her grandmother playing the part of mother to the little girl. However the little household identified, there's no denying that Mabel made a life for all three of them in New York, working as a chorus girl in a number of Broadway productions.

And then mother fell ill, coughing and fever, and then she was spitting up blood. Just four days before Christmas, 1904, mother was taken to St. Luke's Hospital. On January 7th, 1905, Mabel Rappe passed away from tuberculosis and tuberculosis lymphadenitis, which attacks the lymph nodes in the throat. This wasn't the sort of pretty death you might find in a Victorian novel, the heroine all pale with enormous haunted eyes, dying of She was ugly, swelling and bruising on Mabel's face and neck, lesions, draining pus and fluids, horrible and painful. The other name for this is scrofula. They used to call it the king's evil. It's a bad way to go. Virginia was 13 when her mother died. Her grandmother, already like a parent to the girl, cared for her until her own death just three years later.

At 16, Virginia was already obsessed with the idea of going to Hollywood to work in the movies. She was pretty, but lots of girls are pretty. Virginia, though, was the kind of pretty that the camera liked. She began working as a model back when the department stores routinely put on fashion shows, and she was shrewd, changing the spelling of her last name, adding an E to separate herself from her mother's unfortunate reputation in Chicago as a check kiter. Virginia was planning ahead for stardom, hoping to thwart any tabloid reporters who might try to link her back to Mabel. Virginia was 18 when she moved to San Francisco, where she immediately found modeling work and, they say, love. His name was Robert Moscovitz, and he was a dress designer who was tragically killed in a trolley car accident shortly after the couple became engaged, which was probably reason enough for Virginia to pack up and move again, this time to Los Angeles. Virginia auditioned for and won a sizable part in director Fred Bauschhoffer's silent film Paradise Garden. Her co-star was the actor Harold Lockwood.

A story of a young man raised on a secluded estate until he was 21 so he could face the woman with Virginia Rape, a most beautiful woman playing a vampire who cries her utmost to tempt the superb young man to evil, based on the great novel by George Gibbs. Lockwood was a star and the novel was a bestseller, and Virginia Rape was finally on her way to a career in the movies. Just one year later, in 1918, Virginia Rape was named the best-dressed girl in pictures, and it appeared that she'd succeeded in completely reinventing herself. Gone was the fatherless orphan, daughter of the late queen of Chicago's Chinatown.

The Los Angeles Times called her... A society girl. Thank you very much. A society girl who just accepted an offer from one of the big dogs of the silent film era. Henry Lehrman, actor, screenwriter, producer, director, the first ever to direct the legendary Charlie Chaplin. When he met Virginia Rape, he was heading up the Sunshine Comedies Division at Fox Film Corp.

So clever has Virginia proven herself in the art of creating laughter that Mr. Lehrman will probably place her under a long-term contract to appear in important parts in many of his future productions. And then some. Lehrman's film, A Twilight Baby, was released in 1919 and was called by many one of Lehrman's best. To Mr. Lehrman, Virginia Rape represented the ideal of fresh American girlhood, and he consistently refused to take no for an answer. And Miss Rape, in addition to being an heiress in her own right, is the owner of more than 800 acres of the richest oil lands of Texas.

Since her wealth is computed in the millions, it may be gathered that financial considerations had little bearing on her decision to make at least a temporary entry into the field of motion pictures. You know the old saying, believe none of what you hear and half of what you see. Henry Lehrman fell in love with Virginia Rape. He wanted to make her the star she'd always dreamed of becoming. And Virginia fell in love with Henry. The relationship seemed to change her in dramatic ways. She began living a much quieter life, sharing a lovely white bungalow with an old family friend who acted as chaperone and housekeeper.

Virginia had seen life. Her eyes were wide open to its pitfalls, the edges of which her beauty was always leading her. When it comes to making it as a movie star though, beauty is in the eye not of the beholder, but of the camera. I couldn't make her a star. Her beauty does not film. There is beauty and then there is beauty. Many are its varieties, its lights, its shades and its colors. Some of it loses its color, its line and allure when seen through the limited mechanical eye of the camera. Others were less kind, saying things like the reason for the collapse of Lehrman's star plan was that Virginia lacked talent beyond that of being able to display clothes, face and form.

Look, Hollywood is a real bitch and it always has been. But Virginia was taking her shot and from all accounts, doing pretty well for herself. She decorated her bungalow with all of her mahogany furniture. She stayed fit, living, those who knew her said, a wholesome life. She was frequently spotted by neighbors hiking in the Hollywood Hills with her little bull dog named Jeff. She and her chaperone often spent weeks at a time staying with Henry Lehrman at his home.

It seemed that the chaos of her early life was all but forgotten, that she had managed a near impossible transformation. Years spent working as a model had softened and refined any coarse edges. She lived in Chicago and New York and even Paris. In Paris, Virginia is said to have outdone even the famous French models in her individuality of costume. She introduced the fur anklet, pink pantalettes that showed below her skirt and the colorful fruit bouquet. Virginia was one of the first women to wear furs in the world. She was known for her strange jewelry. She originated the knee watch and adopted the ankle bracelet.

Virginia made an art of getting dressed. She was soon advertised as the tuxedo girl because of her originality in adapting the idea of a man's tuxedo coat into a woman's street suit. She traveled from France to South America where she met one of the wealthiest planters in Argentina. That man was smitten, showering her with gifts and a fortune's worth of jewels.

The man even followed her back to New York, pleading with her to marry him and return to Argentina to live in luxury. Virginia gently refused. He's nice enough, but old enough to be my grandfather. Henry Lehrman, though, that was another story. He was an older man, too, but only by ten years. He was a rich man, accomplished and famous.

And Virginia was head over heels. She gifted Lehrman a pair of platinum cufflinks engraved To Henry, my first and last sacred love. This could have been the beginning of a real Hollywood style happy ending. Scrappy Urchin reinvents herself as a glamorous society lady, finds love and settles down into a life of movie premieres and champagne.

But real life seldom sticks to a script like that. Henry Lehrman headed east to direct a new comedy. Virginia remained behind in California, keeping close to home. She was said to have very few close friends, but did occasionally socialize with the man described as her manager, Al Semnacher. Semnacher was mostly known for identifying and developing young women who dreamed of becoming movie stars.

He'd hustle them through photo shoots and into casting directors. At home, though, his life was a misery. He was estranged from his wife, who'd moved her lover into the house the couple still shared, leaving Semnacher to watch another man playing the role of husband in his own home. It had to have been utterly humiliating for the man.

But with Henry Lehrman away, Virginia had time on her hands. So when Al Semnacher called with an invitation to join a little group he'd put together for a motoring trip over Labor Day weekend 1921, it sounded like a fine idea. Virginia packed a suitcase and was picked up early on the morning of Saturday, September 3rd.

Well, there were two men. Al Semnacher, his son, Carol, myself, and a woman I'd never met before. She was introduced to me as Mrs. B.M. Delmont, a beauty specialist. She told me I was to call her Maude. Our destination was her home in Fresno. The motor trip turned into a picnic affair, with lots of sandwiches and coffee packed away in a lovely hamper.

The little group arrived in Fresno but didn't remain there. They instead made the journey to San Francisco and checked into the Palace Hotel. We were at breakfast when a page approached our table and handed me a note. It was an invitation to the Hotel St. Francis, where Fatty Arbuckle was staying in a suite. Virginia had met Arbuckle before, though only casually.

I knew him in the way I knew most of the motion picture boys and girls, as in we would meet by chance at social affairs, parties, premieres. My Henry was well acquainted with Arbuckle, though I knew him only slightly, though for years, perhaps five. The decision was made to accept Arbuckle's invitation. Virginia dressed for the occasion, slipping into a dress she'd created herself, a rich silk crepe and deep jade green.

She pinned a chic white sailor-inspired hat onto her gleaming dark hair and confided it to Mrs. Delmont. I wouldn't go if you weren't with me. I don't trust Arbuckle and I don't know exactly who's to be there. Roscoe Fatty Arbuckle greeted his guests wearing pajamas and a deep purple velvet robe. A most informal host, but when you're a star, they let you do it.

And Arbuckle was a real deal star, not just one of the most popular stars of the silent film era, but one of the highest paid. He found the stage early at age eight, and that was a good thing because Arbuckle's father despised the boy from the moment he was born. Arbuckle was a big baby, a really big baby, thirteen pounds at birth.

Both parents were small, slightly built people. Arbuckle's father took one look at his jumbo-sized infant and decided that nope, no way, was this howling baby behemoth his. In a fit of temper, he insisted on naming the baby Roscoe Conkling Arbuckle, after a flandering, no-good, dirty dog of a politician that his father loathed.

You can only guess at what sort of childhood Arbuckle had, and if you guessed unhappy, you'd be right. He was teased and tormented over his weight. That's where he got tagged with the nickname Fatty. He lost his mother before his 12th birthday. Mrs. Arbuckle never fully recovered her health after giving birth to Roscoe.

It had been difficult and deeply traumatic, leaving her with numerous chronic health issues. She died in 1898. Arbuckle's father was already in the wind, having abandoned the family. Young Roscoe then was shipped north to live with his father, owned a hotel in Watsonville, California. But by the time Roscoe arrived, the hotel had been sold.

His father was gone, and the child was on his own. Finding him sobbing on the street, the local family took pity on him. And since the boy's father wanted nothing to do with him after that, that left Fatty Arbuckle to support himself with whatever odd jobs he could find. Motherless, fatherless, now mopping floors in a hotel and singing to himself while he worked.

A hotel guest heard him and was both shocked and dazzled by his voice. You should do something with that, the guest urged. There's an amateur talent show. Come perform. Come on, do it. That hotel guest wasn't just being polite. The great opera singer Enrico Caruso once told Fatty Arbuckle that he should give up this silly comedy nonsense and sing.

Caruso said that Arbuckle truly could have been the second greatest singer in the world. But destiny had other ideas, and anyway, praise from the legendary Caruso was often the future. Right here and now, 12-year-old Fatty had a talent show to enter. This was the kind of talent show where the audience was in charge. Acts they liked were applauded.

Acts they didn't like were booed and yanked off stage by an enormous shepherd's crook. You know, a long stick with a C-shaped hook at one end. Little Fatty Arbuckle stood on that stage and sang his heart out. The audience hated it. The booing began and Arbuckle spotted the shepherd's crook emerging from the wings. The boy panicked and did a diving somersault straight into the orchestra pit.

The crowd went wild and Fatty Arbuckle's vaudeville career was born. By the time Arbuckle was 15 years old, he was a seasoned singer, magician, and acrobat appearing in vaudeville shows up and down the West Coast. He was cast as a movie extra in 1908 and very quickly found steady work in what they called one reels. These were short films, usually no longer than 12 minutes, that were hugely popular during the era of silent films.

Five years later, Arbuckle signed a contract with Max Sennett's Keystone Studios and became a star. Three years later, Arbuckle branched out into writing and directing as well as acting. By the time he sent that invitation to Virginia Ripay to join him at the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco, he'd appeared in well over 300 films, directed 100 more, and those are just the ones where he received formal credit.

He was more than famous. He was beloved and rich beyond anything he could have dreamed in the days when he was scrambling for odd jobs just to survive. He may seem a fool on the screen, but he is no brainless man in real life. he does not consider his fatness a comic asset. He never uses it to get laughs in pictures, he says earnestly.

He believes comedies should be played straight, relying on the situation for the comedy. Oh, Roscoe Fatty Arbuckle was a star. More popular in his time than even the great Charlie Chaplin. He was the first actor to score a million dollar paycheck. He lived in an opulent 20 room mansion in Los Angeles staffed by a whole squadron of servants and stocked with premium liquor and this during Prohibition.

He bathed in a gold plated tub, owned a fleet of luxury cars. Even his pit bull Terrier Luke was famous. And Fatty Arbuckle gets to claim a comedy first. His 1913 film A Noise from the Deep includes the very first instance of a person taking a custard pie to the face. The way that I am fighting to knock down a rabbit hole of silent black and white movie pie throwing mechanics.

Help me! Okay, I can't stop myself so really really quick. If a blonde was getting hit with a pie because remember these are black and white movies. If a blonde was getting hit with a pie they mixed blackberries with flour and water and then topped it with whipped cream. If the target was a brunette they swapped out the blackberries for lemon meringue.

All pies to be thrown were baked with a double crust. Tin or glass pie plates were never ever used. There was too much risk of someone getting cut or injured. Okay, that's it. It is not stretching it to say that Fatty is one of the hardest working men on earth. He not only writes and acts but cuts and assembles his comedies.

They are set to a certain standard of excellence and below this he will not permit them to fall. This means constant vigilance, constant invention, constant work. And then came Labor Day weekend 1921. Arbuckle and his entourage checked in to the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco taking three adjoining suites on the top floor.

This was a grand place inspired by the finest hotels in Europe. Arbuckle ordered cases of gin and scotch to be delivered. Prohibition again was in full swing but that didn't mean anything to the wealthy or the famous or the powerful. It was a party that flowed around the clock. Guests coming and going booze flowing anything Arbuckle wanted because when you're a star they let you do it.

It was late on Monday morning September 5th when a friend of Arbuckle a fashion designer named Ira Fortlouis who happened to be staying at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco spotted her. Fort Lewis gestured for a bellboy and pointed to the table where Virginia Rappe was seated with her companions asking Who is that lovely chic young woman?

That's Virginia Rappe came the bellboy's response. Once back at the St. Francis Fort Lewis mentioned having seen Virginia who was known to most in Arbuckle's and the invitation to drinks was promptly written and delivered. I'll go up there and if the party is a bloomer I'll be back in 20 minutes. There were showgirls and the usual kinds of hangers-on that can always be found orbiting a big star like Fatty Arbuckle a Victrola had been commandeered and the song Ain't We Got Fun floated beneath the hum of laughter and conversation.

Rappe's friends were sipping orange blossom cocktails and chatting. Virginia needed to use the restroom which was occupied in room 1220 so she made her way to the adjoining room 1221 only to find her new friend Maude Delmont having a moment in there with the actor Lowell Sherman. Excusing herself Virginia then crossed back through the party to the third adjoining room number 1219.

Moments later Arbuckle slipped in after her locking the door behind him. It was just before 3 o'clock in the afternoon. What happened next cost a woman her life and a man his career and though the case was tried three different times the mystery of what really happened in room 1219 remains a frustrating puzzle too many conflicting accounts too many questions regarding the cause of death so much scandal making justice a nearly impossible goal.

Mrs. Maude Delmont went to the San Francisco Police on September 9th to report a Her friend Virginia Rappe had been violently assaulted and died as a result of severe internal injuries and the man responsible said Maude Delmont well that man was Hollywood movie star Fatty Arbuckle. was already back home in LA and upon getting the news of Virginia Rappe's death a late night meeting was Harvard's Chinese Theatre also present Arbuckle's Labor Day weekend buddies and Virginia Rappe's manager Al Semnacher odd who knows what was said that night but it sure had the appearance of men getting their stories straight the San Francisco District Attorney Matthew Brady convened a grand jury the very next day Arbuckle was indicted for manslaughter Brady didn't even wait for autopsy results and he ignored the grand jury's indictment and moved forward with a felony murder case against Arbuckle instead a death penalty felony murder case as Brady told the press following the assault Miss Rappe died as a direct result of the rupture of her bladder the evidence discloses beyond question that her bladder was ruptured by the weight of the body of Mr. Arbuckle either in a rape assault or in an attempt to commit rape we also know that when other members of the party went into the room Miss Rappe was moaning in great pain and crying I'm dying I'm dying he killed me there are at least as many versions of what happened in room 1219 at the St. Francis Hotel as there were criminal trials well in one version of the story Roscoe Arbuckle threw me onto the bed tearing at my dress crushing me beneath his enormous bulk the weight of him causing mortal damage deep inside where the wound couldn't be seen a human being can die as a result of a crush injury but the likelihood of being crushed to death on a mattress by a man weighing 266 pounds that's Arbuckle's recorded weight at the time of the incident that's just about as low as you'd expect and there's this version of events Roscoe Arbuckle found me indisposed I was suddenly ill and he tended to me like a gentleman we weren't alone but for 10 minutes or perhaps an hour depending on whether you believe Arbuckle or Mrs. Maude Delmont both Arbuckle and Delmont would tell multiple versions of events to the police and the courts making it all the more challenging to get at the truth other members of the party who came into room 1219 say they found me barely conscious tearing at my clothing raving about terrible pain in my belly in such agony that I was not in my right mind Virginia was plunged into a cold bath then carried down the hall to room 1227 at the St. Francis the hotel's doctor was summoned after a brief examination he declared that Rappe had been over served her condition was due to nothing more extreme than that she was drunk he said just needed to sleep it off and with that the party continued Virginia Rappe lay in that hotel room dosed on morphine to dull the pain for the next three days only then was she transferred to a hospital why did it take so long how could the hotel physician make such a devastating mistake diagnosing her condition Virginia Rappe

died on September 9th four days after receiving that invitation to a party at the St. Francis Hotel the cause of death was a ruptured bladder and secondary peritonitis an inflammation of the lining of the inner wall of the abdomen and covering of the abdominal organs when the trial began in November 1921 it was immediately obvious that some witnesses had changed their stories in Arbuckle's initial statement to police he described how Virginia became hysterical after a few drinks complained she couldn't breathe and began tearing off her clothing on the stand at the time though Arbuckle described a different version of events he told of finding Virginia sick in the bathroom of his hotel room vomiting and in such distress that he helped her to the bed and went back to the party in search of help Al Semnacher Virginia's manager also told two different stories he told the grand jury that Arbuckle had been alone in the room with Virginia Ripay and then he testified under oath that Arbuckle had never been alone with Virginia and further that she was in the habit of just getting drunk and ripping her own clothing off then there was the expert testimony Dr. Shields illustrated on a blackboard how bladder injuries might result from hysteria or alcoholism two other medical men Dr. Bryan and Dr. Zemalt said that ruptures under certain conditions might be purely spontaneous according to the NIH the National Institutes of Health bladder rupture is common in cases of blunt or penetrating abdominal injuries but spontaneous bladder rupture is extremely rare which is not the same thing as impossible but in this case it's kinda close Roscoe is a good witness in his own defense Arbuckle was never at a loss for an answer when he sensed the danger in a query he relied on the simple statement that he could not remember several times he rose from the witness chair to demonstrate clearly and carefully just how he picked the girl up from the floor how he laid her on the bed how she was tearing at her clothing when he reentered the room he faced the battery of eyes as serenely as he ever faced a camera there was no apparent effort to evade any question and it was also noted that Arbuckle showed no emotion whatsoever at the mention of Maude Delmont whose report to the police had brought all of this down on his head as for Delmont herself the prosecutor didn't dare let her testify in the rush to charge Arbuckle DA Matthew Brady didn't do a deep enough dive on Maude Delmont's the ink had barely dried on Arbuckle's indictment when it came out that Delmont had an extensive record of criminal fraud and was a bigamist on top of that Delmont would never get near the stand not in any of Arbuckle's three trials now Arbuckle denied responsibility for everything including the party itself he testified under oath that he didn't even know there was gonna be a party until guests began arriving he did admit to drinking alcohol and acknowledged that he wasn't wearing much more than underwear and a robe and then there was the whole situation involving the ice Al Semnacher testified that the day after the party Arbuckle told him that he'd applied ice to Virginia's body Semnacher was reluctant to say where the ice had been placed finally whispering the into the court reporter's ear newspapers

didn't dare print the truth that Arbuckle had applied ice to Virginia's that was the word Semnacher refused to utter in open court and we won't even get into the time they spent debating whether said ice was introduced internally to said snatch or merely laid atop it it was all so tawdry and Virginia forever silenced had no way to defend herself and instead of printing the word snatch the press instead ran headlines that Arbuckle confesses he tortured actress leaving Arbuckle caught between a snatch and a cold place it seems that this is the moment an immortal urban legend was born that Arbuckle had forcibly violated Virginia with a glass bottle a Coca-Cola bottle as the story often goes the jury deadlocked 11 to 1 in favor of acquittal and a mistrial was declared Arbuckle pleaded pleaded for a second chance to prove his innocence and so the second trial of Roscoe Fatty Arbuckle in the death of Virginia Rappe began on January 11th 1922 this time the defense didn't put Arbuckle on the stand though many of the star witnesses from the first trial were back with different stories to tell this time showgirl Zae Prevost claimed in her earlier testimony that she'd heard Virginia wailing well she said that was something the prosecution forced her to say other witnesses also seemed less certain less reliable on the stand feeling confident the defense didn't even bother to make a closing argument the jury once again deadlocked this time 9-3 in favor of conviction Arbuckle left the his movie studio and his public had them turned their backs on him this was the most shocking fall from grace that Hollywood had ever seen and it wasn't over the third trial began on March 13th 1922 with a new defense team their strategy attack Virginia they asked a witness and medical history they ordered a woman who worked as a midwife to be deposed she claimed that she cared for Virginia Virginia had no children this was code for multiple abortions even though the defense never called the midwife to testify her deposition was damaging and there was no evidence or no proof to back up her other witnesses took the stand and talked about Virginia's numerous venereal diseases no evidence of which had appeared in the autopsy Virginia was portrayed as a woman of loose morals reckless behavior drunk promiscuous just one more slut trying to ride a star's coattails it took the jury all of five minutes to return with a statement statement was signed by every juror we feel that a great injustice has been done him there was not the slightest proof to connect him in any way with the commission of a crime he was manly throughout the case manly throughout the case did the jury say what manly throughout the case and told a straightforward story on the witness stand which we all believed we wish him success and hope that the American people will take the judgment of 14 men and women who have sat listening for 31

days to the evidence that Roscoe is entirely innocent and free from all blame the American people were like nope not happening it was over for Fatty Arbuckle once Hollywood's biggest star beloved by Fatty never really had a chance to test the public's because Hollywood stepped in and threw their golden box office boy to the wolves to save itself the public had been completely transfixed by the three Arbuckle trials couldn't get enough sordid details the jolly fat clown crushing the body of the fragile starlet that fragile starlet just another harlot all of Hollywood depraved and debauched coming for the innocence the pure and sweet morality of hard working salt of the earth decent godly Americans as 1921 drew to a close months before that third jury would acquit the king of the silent film comedy the heads of a dozen Hollywood studios got together and offered Will H. Hays a job Will Hays once president Warren G. Harding's campaign manager and now postmaster general of the United States Hays hailed from the Indiana heartland and looked every bit the granite chiseled Presbyterian elder that he was which made him almost the polar opposite of the major Hollywood studio heads all of whom were Jewish and immigrants critics of Hollywood weren't subtle about their antisemitism you still hear those same vile rants today and then there was the nativism how dare these immigrants come to America and pollute the culture those rants are good and loud now too more than a hundred years later the movie studios offered Hays a staggering salary one hundred thousand dollars per year to head up a new organization called the motion picture producers and distributors of America the idea was simple the movie business would censor itself before anyone else could it was a solid strategic move because the between that and Hollywood's firm desire to keep the feds from looking too closely at their business practices can you say monopoly well best to at least look like virtue was a goal with the public clutching its pearls over the shocking testimony in the first Arbuckle trial Hollywood knew it had to clean up its act Hays's first task under pressure from Adolf Zucker the president of Paramount was to sacrifice fatty Arbuckle and then take the fall for it so the studio wouldn't have to Hays obliged and Arbuckle was finished movie theaters around the banned his films Hays office was bombarded with letters and telegrams all demanding that fatty Arbuckle be made an example of what happens when anyone even a star so gravely violates the moral code of this nation not too long after the Hollywood power establishment had the audacity to be surprised when their chosen watchdog Will Hays turned around and bit them Hays released his now infamous list of movie don'ts and be careful any content that might inspire criminal behavior or be deemed immoral or offensive is prohibited heck nothing even morally ambiguous can be shown no profanity no drug use no explicit

depictions of sex or violence no interracial relationships Hays not only helped yeet fatty Arbuckle into oblivion the Hays Code landed just in time to dramatically influence the age of talkies movies as we know them from the early 1930s all the way through the late 1960s even the Puritans would have approved of Hays that's how repressive the Hays Code was Virginia Rape was buried at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery she'd be joined there in eternal rest by her fiance Henry Lehrman who died 25 years later in November 1946 acquittal or no Lehrman blamed Fatty for Virginia's would I kill Arbuckle yes I feel just as would any other man with red blood in his veins I will not deny that I've said I would kill him if we were to meet now remember Lehrman had directed Fatty Arbuckle in films had reportedly told the man to stay away from the women's dressing rooms there are some people who are a disgrace to the film business they get enormous salaries and have not sufficient balance to keep right they are the kind who resort to cocaine and opium and who participate in orgies that are of the lowest character they should be driven out of the picture business I'm no saint but I've never attended one of their parties Virginia's were decent people and I know she would not have associated with anyone she knew to be vile as for Fatty Arbuckle that acquittal didn't matter he'd spent a fortune on his defense then any hope of a comeback was destroyed by Hays doing the bidding of his studio bosses Arbuckle was drinking heavily in the wake of the scandal he bought a nightclub in Culver City and tried to make a go of that even with some of his famous friends loyally showing up in support the stock market crash of 1929 put an end to it he tried returning to vaudeville but with mixed success using a he was 46 years old the illustration of the beautiful young woman that graced the cover of the sheet music for this song let me call you sweetheart that was a no not really we'll never know for certain no matter which verdict we believe and you can't say that fate doesn't have the most wicked sense of humor these two lives so similar in so many ways Virginia and Roscoe children abandoned by their fathers children made motherless at such young ages both of them gifted with talent and both making their way to and somehow despite crazy odds succeeding we watch Virginia and Fatty with a feeling of dread watch them spinning in their separate orbits drawing closer and closer together until they collide in tragedy and scandal maybe even murder Hollywood has tried for more than a century

to dress up the fact that wealth and fame can be such a poison more intoxicating than any bootleg liquor go ahead fame whispers who would dare stop you from taking your pleasure says wealth because when you're a star they let you they let you leave you next time on true weird stuff have you ever been on a road trip and you see a sign up ahead that says gas snacks and live alligators or exotic bird snakes and souvenirs there's a name for those places they called them and you will be amazed at America's history with animals on the side of the highway on the next true weird stuff special thanks to our voice talents on this episode Don Morgan Sam Moore Kary "Doc" Bowser who I left out of last episode's credits by mistake and Erin Cox as Virginia Rape Sherry I was familiar with this story and I was familiar with certain aspects of this story that I think are urban legend lore now what was it that sparked your interest into doing an episode about this exactly what you just said like the only version of this that I've ever heard was that the big silent movie star named Fatty Arbuckle at a big Hollywood party sexually assaulted a woman with a milder and he got away with it that was the whole version of the story that I had sort of picked up you know going through life and I can't tell you why you're like you know you have a head full of stuff I do I have like a head full of things and every once in a while one of those things will float up to the surface and go hey what's up with that yeah so I just I decided let me let me see if this is really true because it's so horrific if he did in fact sexually assault a woman with a coke bottle how what jury in the land let him go like there were so many questions that I had so I began I began digging and and the more I dug the more I realized oh we don't know anything justice I don't know if justice was served here or not we don't know anything that happened in that hotel room other than that woman died I mean that she died and and I so I have a couple of thoughts on that one I think it's horrifying that she not only lost her life but became part of a coke bottle rape urban legend which is a nightmare right awful so I wanted I wanted to go looking and I don't know I mean I none of us none of us right now are old enough in any way shape or form to have been watching fatty Arbuckle movies like it's all a million years ago and all the connections to the Hays Code and the motion picture rating system they all came out of this incident because Hollywood was in big trouble with the American public in the wake of the Arbuckle scandal so let's start with the let's let's go back to the beginning of the urban legend fatty Arbuckle is at a great big Hollywood party well yes and no um fatty and some of his entourage and hangers-on were in San Francisco for Labor Day weekend and they were partying in the hotel suite and even though it was prohibition you know rich famous people get what they want when they want it no matter what the laws are and they were drinking and listening to music and here's the beautiful Virginia Rape

and they're in town so they send her an invitation so it's a Hollywood party but not in the way that you're you were led to believe right I mean did you realize this was some folks hanging out in the hotel suite no I didn't I I was I I the the big big Hollywood party the the coke bottle incident and that fatty got away with it those are the those are the things the the facts that you know have come across the transom um you know through the course of time that I know about this story so that's the first that's the first thing that wasn't really it was very accurately reported at the time but it hasn't been accurately remembered so there was that and then there was the incident itself which you hear it from multiple different perspectives just not Virginia's Virginia herself cannot tell you what happened because the hotel physician put her on a morphine drip and she was unconscious for most of the three days following whatever happened can I tell you who is the hotel physician I boy those were the days those were the those were the days anyhow and how reliable is somebody who doesn't have an office but they're the hotel physician the hotel doctor anyhow so you've got all of these different um stories about what happened and you know the first trial they voted to acquit and the sec and hung the jury the second trial they voted to convict and hung the jury so now we're in this hotel room and here's Virginia Rape and she was absolutely she was one of those people that stopped traffic but not in a classically beautiful way like she didn't have perfectly symmetrical you know she was just so incredibly captivating and the still camera loved Virginia she had a very successful career as a model it was the motion picture camera that even her fiance said her beauty doesn't translate for movies but in real life apparently she was just just yummy like you couldn't men, women, children, dogs like you couldn't not be captivated by her so you know she rolls into this party she knows many of the people there very casually she herself is successful her fiance is you know incredibly powerful player on the scene and then she disappears to use the restroom and the rest of it is completely chaotic and unknown so as soon as you dig and you realize well nothing about this story fits the urban legend you know but part of the reason that that urban legend caught hold is because in the with the stock market crash and the great depression Hollywood had to be really careful and during the prohibition years Hollywood had to be really careful to not seem so out of touch with Heartland America I mean you had Fatty Arbuckle making so much money do you know what a million dollar paycheck was back in the early 1920s?

Like 50 million today? Yeah and you had you had these beloved movie stars openly defying the laws against liquor they were you know lewd and lascivious and periscuous and all of the things people complain about now and the content in movies was a lot more risque than you would have thought it would have been we think that risque stuff didn't come along until much later but actually they were doing some stuff in there that was you look back and go wow I'm really surprised prior to this incident and the studio heads were troubled because they could see that they had a public relations problem they called it the Hollywood movie colony I used those words in the beginning because that's what they called Hollywood back then they called it the movie colony and as as movies were transitioning from the silent era to the talky era people you know money was tight Great Depression and you know going to the movies was a treat and a luxury and you could not alienate the American public by being crude and you know amoral so at at the time that the party happened on Labor Day weekend at the hotel in San Francisco Hollywood was grappling with transitioning into talking movies which was as big a deal as transitioning from movie theaters to streaming right yeah it was a it was a huge change in the business model and they had this publicity problem this perception problem with the public and then here comes Fatty Arbuckle who is the biggest star in Hollywood he is beloved he's um he's non-threatening to women and men he's funny he's wholesome you know he's he's perfect for Hollywood and then he's suddenly drunk in a bathrobe and a woman is dead and this is absolutely the worst thing that could have happened to the baby movie business at the time so when when Fatty went through his first trial even though he was acquitted by a hung jury a mistrial not acquitted really a mistrial it was already over for Fatty even though he didn't realize it the studio heads were already like hmm this we're not going to be able to rehabilitate this and then here comes the second trial and with each trial the testimony was so shocking and you have to remember that this is Prohibition and times are hard people are struggling they're struggling and the newspapers are filled with their beloved fat-faced comic clown walking around with his dick out um and just whooping it up like some sort of debauched Roman emperor can you imagine how much that didn't fly with the American public how quickly they turned on him so the only reason that Fatty managed to eke out an acquittal in the third trial and you probably noticed that that was when the defense was like aw man we gotta we gotta put the victim on the stand here we've gotta make this case a referendum on Virginia Rape hey was she a venereal disease ridden slut with no self control drunk ripping her clothes off just begging for it was she asking for it by her behavior and substance use and the jury decided yeah sounds like it and that's how Fatty got his acquittal and so when you put all of these ingredients together I was like let's tell the story let's tell the story a little differently than movie star

and coke bottle I have so many thoughts about this Sherry one of them is whatever the truth is in this you have a prosecutor who has a really big fish and there's no prime clint intended by that but he's got a really big fish so he really wants to make this case because if he makes this case against him it helps him and so you have a witness but the prosecutor told us to say that and you say what we love to think of things the movie business has done this to us who are the good people who are the bad people Fatty is the bad person Virginia is the good person and then you realize that in the course of this story there's a lot of ass covering that's going on by everybody involved with it because everybody is worried about their own reputation when it comes down to it which is probably why there were so many different stories that were told throughout this Stop there because you caught where this whole thing made a wrong turn and that was with San Francisco District Attorney Matthew Brady rushing this one to judgment because the findings of the grand jury were not felony death penalty murder that wasn't where the grand jury indicted Fatty but it was Matthew Brady who decided to turn this into the trial of the century and I think there was a rush to that obviously because they didn't even he didn't even bother to do the due diligence on his star witness Maude Delmont who she was shady AF that doesn't mean she was lying that's not the same thing as being a liar but in terms of being a credible witness she's got a long police record of fraud she's a bigamist, of course back then everyone was a bigamist, your paw paw was a bigamist divorce was a pain in the ass you just moved on and married somebody else but you know what I'm saying, she didn't have any credibility which is why she never once took the stand in three criminal trials right, because they knew they would bring up her past and then that would it all would fall apart there I was, and I think that Arbuckle was such a huge star but I have to believe that by the time they got to the third trial, the movie industry said you know we made a lot of money with him but we probably can make money without him now yeah they abandoned him which let this be a lesson this is like Shakespearean let this be a lesson to all of us you're only valuable to people when they can get something from you and the minute you become a liability you are the cheese who stands alone for sure, that's a thing we see play out over and over again so I made two decisions with this one because I knew before I sat down to write this one, I knew that there is not a satisfying and that's how it happened at the end I knew that we didn't have that so I thought for a while and then I thought you know what, I'm going to leave Fatty Arbuckle silent I'm going to let Virginia Rappe talk because she's the centerpiece of this story but she's silent because she died, she died in a morphine fog of massive internal injuries, a ruptured bladder, oh my god and they tried to make it out that her bladder ruptured because she had so many abortions even though there was no evidence to back that up, they tried to make it out that her bladder ruptured because she was riddled with VD no evidence, not in her medical record, not in the autopsy, they tried to make it out that her bladder ruptured spontaneously like bladders sometimes

do, that's not really credible they tried to make it out that she was a drunk and out of control person and that she was bound to come to a bad end and yet there wasn't any real evidence to back that up either, in fact the testimony about Virginia Rappe was a woman who was a little bit of a health nut a little bit of a fitness fanatic at a time when people didn't work out or exercise right? I wonder in the legal behind the scenes on this, whether they said to Fatty look we can paint her in a bad light and you'll get off and he said no I don't want to do that and then the second trial the third trial we're going to get you off if you do this and then he said okay because if he let's just say he was not guilty of doing something that was awful something happened innocently enough let's just say and he went yeah but I know that I didn't it doesn't matter she's dead so then we can say all those things and I'll get off because I'm innocent do you see what I mean?

Yeah I do the truth of it is so we probably all have our opinions on what happened here I think that something went down between the two of them in that bathroom but the idea that her bladder ruptured because of his great weight can I please have a break he weighed 266 pounds yeah it wasn't like he was 500 pounds I mean 266 pounds what do you weigh about 190?

oh thank you thank you for thinking that I weigh a little more than that Cher but you don't weigh 266 no I don't but you probably are closer to 266 than you are to 500 yeah but you have known me when I've weighed 266 and there's no way you crushed anyone to the point their bladder ruptured like that was really sensational and it made for it sold newspapers the laughing clown crushes Starlet what?

you people are animals I can think in listening to the story I had and I'm not going to mention what incidents happened but there's been incidents that have happened that have been big news stories like this where things have happened and everybody rushes in and hangs their little cause on the story you know what I mean?

and so everybody says hey listen to me I think this and so you end up having this very muddled mess that's on your hands and everybody has an opinion about it based on the little information that they've gotten and so I think that that is one of the reasons that I was fascinated with your telling of this story was just the fact that the truth is only that this woman died that's the only thing we know for sure that's the only thing we know and there was no over the years if you brushed up against this story you may have heard things like that he was like an asshole like a brute and she was a drunken starlet and hungry for fame neither of those things are true not really he was allegedly a very easy going gentle sort of a person who was at pains to make good work and not just make fun of himself for being overweight and while Virginia won it I mean obviously she was ambitious you don't pull yourself up from the life where she began to the life she had without ambition but she was successful and she was happily engaged and had her own home and so the characterizations on both sides are not they don't really feel in any way based in truth and I did not come into this story to be a Fatty Arbuckle defender at all but I thought it was interesting how similar their lives were and it made me think a lot about the kind of people that are drawn to chasing fame and stardom you know people who need the love of an audience because they've not had the love and that's a broad characterization and it's not true for everyone right but very often you know you'll have a lot of sad Hollywood stories like this orphaned, cast out by your father, you know judged by society and then suddenly the audience loves you that's what happened for Roscoe Fatty Arbuckle Virginia was pretty self made and the other thing in this story is just how much bullshit is always being floated. Virginia was a Texas oil heiress Can I tell you one of the most interesting things about this? She was born in 1891 so she was approximately 30 years old she turned 30 the year that she passed I don't know exactly whether she was 29 or 30 but on her plaque for her grave it says she was born in 1895 which is kind of the most Hollywood thing ever you don't lie about your age which I thought was an interesting little aside in this. No it's true there's so much that's like fuzzy and of course back then we didn't keep we might have tried to keep records but they were paper records and things get lost and misplaced and so there are questions about both of their early lives I came away thinking first of all I came away just so sad for Virginia who her manager Al, what a dick he threw her under the bus I came away thinking that something nefarious went down I just don't know what and not just because they all met at Sid Groman's Chinese Theater you know where the stars put their handprints and footprints that's where that is and Sid was alive and well back then to host this meeting they all met at a

get your story straight story meeting but of course you would do that even if you were innocent right let's say that Max is falsely accused of murder or manslaughter we're going to get together and talk about it that doesn't make him guilty right? No and people's recollections are the least reliable evidence in a criminal trial I mean it just is you say but there's the truth there's the truth the way you perceive it to be even if nobody was doing anything that they were purposely trying to be deceptive the truth is the way you see it the way you hear it all of those things and that comes into play with this as well well and keep in mind that everybody involved here had an agenda Al Semknocker he was not like a power player in Hollywood he was kind of a hanger you know kind of a C student hanger on who was being humiliated on the daily by his wife and he suddenly finds himself at the big table with a fatty arbuckle and all these powerful players do you think that Al Semknocker wouldn't say whatever he had to to be part of that boys club?

Yeah that's true because you realize hey here's a moment yeah it's unfortunate circumstances but I can I can make a name for myself in this situation which you see with unfortunate situations all the time he changed his story after that little meeting and I feel like yeah you finally got to sit at the big boys table you finally were one of the power players and as human beings that whatever other temptations the devil has on the menu that proximity to power that feeling of being part of the popular table boy that is an express lane to hell is it not you see so many people go down like that so he was garbage and had Henry Lehrman Virginia's fiance not been in New York directing a movie there's a very small chance that Virginia would have been in San Francisco that day at all I mean she just had her manager invited her on a little outing little road trip and why not right she's home alone why not go so you see the way like destiny is moving you toward these tragic outcomes and I looked at all of the ways like what can cause a person's bladder to spontaneously rupture and you die so blunt trauma is one that'd be like you know a car accident or a really bad fall or a terrible assault a penetrating trauma I know you're thinking that that means like intercourse but a penetrating trauma is like a stab wound or a gunshot right you can have you can hurt yourself you can be injured during childbirth which happened to Heidi Arbuckle's mother you can have cancer for example that would make the bladder wall weak and more susceptible to a rupture diabetes she didn't have cancer or diabetes so we can rule those out she hadn't had radiation therapy that wasn't a thing there was no indication that she had a bladder disease but alcohol intoxication can be a factor in the spontaneous rupture of the bladder so then you're like okay they were drinking orange blossoms how many orange blossoms like how intoxicated would you have to be to find yourself in that situation and if that was the case let's say that Virginia had some health issue that had gone on with her bladder her pelvic area there were people who testified that she had had some sort of ongoing health issues in the past that caused a lot of pain and that she would you know they described it as abdominal pain but that could be pelvic right is it possible that all of this terrible tragedy was the result of an ongoing chronic medical condition that got tipped over the edge by alcohol intoxication and she was not given appropriate medical treatment because the hotel doctor apparently learned how to be a hotel doctor from a comic book so she wasn't given appropriate medical attention was not taken to the hospital as she should have been and she died unnecessarily and a man's reputation career and life were destroyed that's a possibility that's as much a possibility as he crushed her with his 266 pound bulk and then raped her with a coke bottle well if we've learned anything sherry the press from this era certainly took a lot of license with

the ways in which they reported incidents I mean a surprising amount an astonishing amount of license I just the last thing I thought when I went into this I was like Fatty Arbuckle I am coming for you I'm going to wear you like a suit the last thing I thought would happen would be to arrive at the end of this going oh my god Virginia I'm so sorry and I don't know what happened but there's a possibility that what happened to you was only tangentially connected to this man there is that possibility what do you think Max yeah I mean and that is a possibility as well like I say I don't know who I don't know if anybody is good or bad in this but I know that there's a lot of seedy characters as a part of the story that much I do know for sure and when you find those kinds of characters they generally are not going to tell the truth I am there was one interesting thing that you said about him Fatty Arbuckle that I recognized from the John Candy documentary and that is despite the fact that he was overweight it was not the thrust of his comedy John Candy was the same way he did not like his weight to be to have anything to do with the material he was doing or the entertainment it's too easy of a laugh and even during the silent era he knew that so I thought that was an interesting little thing that I I was talking to my mom about this episode and so my mom obviously older than me that's how that works but my mom she's like I hate that man he is a disgusting pig who deserves to burn in hell for what he did to that girl so I said well what because my mom is not old enough to be in the silent movie era I was like well what do you remember ever hearing about that and she said that it was this big Hollywood party and he attacked her like an animal okay that is the legend that is the story and so when I finished it I was like you know mom there's more to this than we ever knew and there's a possibility I think you have to hold open space for a possibility that this guy really was in the wrong place at the wrong time and my mom said no he's guilty because the movies have taught us there are good guys and bad guys and we have to pick a side you know and I wanted the world for Virginia she was a really special person she was special as a kid people that knew her in childhood were like she was so lovely and so focused she was a gifted dress designer she was a successful model was she a great actress no there's not one person in Hollywood that would say that Virginia was a great actress but she was a working actress right was she ever going to be a giant star probably not but you know she had a checklist of dreams and she made most of them come true and she probably would have lived a very long time as you know on the fringes of Hollywood's power players and so and she was also very much her own person you know I mean when I was thinking when I was listening to you talk about the fashion sense that she had she was doing a lot of things like incorporating men's clothing like a men's tuxedo jacket and it reminded me of Diane Keaton who did very much the same thing when she had her life so this was a person who was doing it the way she wanted to do it and wasn't just saying what do you want me to be and I'll be that no she was

she was really and ballsy you know she went to lived in Paris for a while traveled she wasn't you can say well she was a gold digger no she wasn't because that Argentinian businessman offered her basically the world on a plate and she was like he's nice but he's just too old for me like she she didn't even marry him and wait for him to die and cash in his fortune I think that she's been woefully misrepresented and it pissed me off to no end that the winning strategy for Fatty Arbuckle was to put her on trial as a slut and just as a gross drunken party girl which I think was untrue and unfair. It's untrue it's unfair but I think they knew it would be effective because guess what Virginia can't defend herself she's dead and it was and the person who brought Virginia's story to the attention of the law was so lacked credibility so much that they wouldn't put her on the stand and that made people wonder that made people wonder if she's telling the truth why won't she testify you hear people say that kind of stuff today it's interesting that Fatty only testified in the first trial and they said that he apparently according to the story you told handled himself well on the witness stand when he did testify absolutely and so my guess is let's just say he knows he's innocent of this and he says look I'll let me testify okay and so he does but he realizes that that testimony by itself and what his truth is is not going to be enough to get him off so I guess that's why he didn't testify in the other two trials the defense yeah the defense for Arbuckle and he did bankrupt himself paying for his defense they realized that they could not have a third mistrial they had to get an acquittal for this man and they did it at any cost and there's something else I want to say about Fatty Arbuckle and it's something that you Max have mentioned when we've talked about other big celebrities facing scandal Arbuckle's willingness to bankrupt and destroy himself proving his innocence I think says something because we look at how many other famous people when faced with disgrace and scandal have settled the shit out of that remember when Sir Elton John was accused or no when Michael Jackson was in all this trouble and Sir Elton John said if it was me I'd spend every dime I had to clear my name and not I would never settle do a payoff I would never settle and there are that's not to say that every person who settles out of court is guilty there are very good legal compelling and financial reasons for an out of court settlement but a lot of times it is an admission of guilt you look at Johnson and Johnson with the asbestos and the baby powder they never acknowledge there was asbestos in the baby powder we just did a True Weird Stuff episode on that that touched on that they never acknowledge the asbestos they just spent billions settling claims out of court so people would shut up and it would get out of the news Arbuckle broke himself trying to prove that he was an innocent man so does that carry any weight for you?

I think that's an up to you question I think that it carries some weight but who is he going to pay off to get out of this? Do you know what I mean? You have a prosecutor who is like we're going to get you we're going to prosecute you so he had no he had nobody to pay off perhaps perhaps this is the only way he could have moved on or tried to move on that's one of those little interesting details in his story and he there was no redemption arc for Fatty he died before he died before he could have a shot so we'll never know if the public would have accepted him. Warner Brothers was willing to at least roll the dice on him but you look at the way the other studio heads all got together in some back room and said either we risk everything or we throw Fatty to the wolves yeah that part of it is I mean that part of it is the part of it that really is it does make you go hmm because as I said before I think they realized hey you know we made a lot of money with him but I think we can move on without him and still make a lot of money because that's the one thing during the depression especially the entertainment business thrived because people were in the depths of despair but they still had enough money to go to movie theaters because they wanted an escape from what was going on in their real lives in Hollywood so I mentioned this briefly in passing so Hollywood was running the absolute definition of a monopoly they owned the movie studio they owned the camera company they owned the actors they owned the theaters where the movies were shown and the last thing that Hollywood especially Hollywood and its burgeoning you know infancy heading into talkies the last thing Hollywood wanted was anybody looking too closely at their business model and you cannot have your biggest star killing women in hotel rooms because that is going to bring the kind of attention that will have people asking questions about how you're making your money so that's a thread in here too that's part of this story that is as much a part of this story as any other detail was the way the Hollywood power establishment sat back and looked at this and went we got to put the kibosh on this right now no matter who suffers and then there's one more piece of this that is very so fatty if we're going to look at this like in terms of Greek mythology fatty is Icarus flying way too close to the sun I want you to look at Will Hays so here we have this pinch faced you know gray misery from the heartland working as the postmaster general and why was the postmaster general of interest to Hollywood well because you couldn't send like porno or stuff through the mail that was illegal and the postmaster general was kind of like a little bit of a moral watchdog so they decide we'll police ourselves before the federales can get in here and take a look so they create this whole new thing for Will Hays he's their boy, he's their lap dog he is going to put a sunshiny heartland wholesome spin on the whole Hollywood story and make it palatable to the public and show the public that Hollywood is so concerned about the moral welfare of the American movie going populace that they're going to police their own bad selves except what happens next is what

always happens your little watchdog as soon as he gets a taste she gets a taste of that sweet power they're going to turn on you and that's what the Hays Code did the Hays Code laid a whooping on Hollywood and dramatically transformed the business almost overnight right up through the early 1970s so the industry, like everybody here, everybody here has this mythic twist in the story Will Hays gets plucked from obscurity and becomes a man who most people don't know his name but he becomes an individual with more ability to influence and shape American pop culture than you can even imagine right, so that's his mythic arc and of course there's Fatty flying too close to the sun, Virginia the sacrificial lamb to the slaughter and the Hollywood power establishment getting a good hard lesson in making their own Frankenstein who then turns on them I think that's why this story has always kind of stayed in my head because it's mythic in scope and frustrating in facts yes it is so if you had to, if your life depended on it and you have to come up with your own theory of events as we wrap up, what do you think happened? What do you suspect the truth is?

It's very difficult to say because the circumstances of her going to his room are still a little murky, do you know what I mean? That part of it, there's oh and then she went up to his room what were the intentions of all of that? Did he rape her? Is that something that happened that might have caused this situation or did it happen as he said?

Those are things that I wonder about I don't know how the whole business with the coke bottle got started but that is something that has endured interestingly enough Yeah Sherry, I don't know I think what turns my stomach about the story is a woman died and then there was the reaction of everybody around it from the prosecutor to the people in the industry to the woman that was in the room next door all of these people I find no good guys in this story With the exception of Henry Lehrman I don't think there are So here's the thing that will break your heart Henry and Virginia were engaged and you know he never married Interesting and he is buried beside her at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery which tells you that that was real, that was a real deal love story right there and he never forgave he never let go of the idea that Fatty Arbuckle had murdered his fiance that was his take on it When I look at the facts as we have them and the facts as we have them are not necessarily the actual full facts but the facts as we have them is there she is eating breakfast and she's spotted by this Fortlouis Ira Fortlouis who knows who she is and tells Fatty you'll never guess who I saw at the Palace Hotel it was Virginia Rappe and Fatty and his entourage are like Virginia send a note over to the Palace let's have her around for a drink You know Hollywood people hang in with Hollywood people, you know how that goes we see that in our news feeds every day and so what does Virginia say? I wouldn't go if you weren't with me Maud and Al because I don't know that I trust him does that sound like a woman who's like oh booze, count me in right?

This was not some party girl hanger on as she was portrayed to be She seemingly was very much her own woman and on her own life, had her own beautiful home and a future and everything I don't know that Fatty Arbuckle murdered Virginia Rappe and I don't know that he didn't but I do know this, he was ultimately acquitted because as is our custom in this country when it's sexual assault it's the victim who's on trial not the perpetrator and that's a story as old as time so I'm sorry that we don't have, it's kind of like when we do a Bigfoot episode and we can't present Sasquatch at the end, we can't tell you we don't have a definitive answer that's for sure but maybe now that you've listened to this story the next time you hear oh yeah didn't some silent movie guy kill a woman with a coke bottle you'll go maybe but a coke bottle didn't ever appear in the original events it was ice and yeah maybe that's not exactly how it happened maybe there's more to the story that makes it a lot harder to have a hero and a villain and maybe the villain in this story isn't Fatty Arbuckle or Virginia Rappe maybe the villain in this story is the puritanical underpinnings of American culture that makes sex a filthy crime when a woman's doing it and that makes it impossible for a victim of sexual assault to not be painted with at least a little bit of guilty just for existing long enough to become a victim that happens all the time yeah ain't nothing new about that so that's today's episode of True Weird Stuff next time we're going to pay a visit to some roadside zoos and buddy I gotta tell you it is a wonder more people were not eaten by their own bears that's all we're going to say about that we appreciate you listening we just love y'all and we'll see you on the next True Weird Stuff and we really appreciate it if you subscribe, rate, and review True Weird Stuff hit our website trueweirdstuff.com for show notes and photos and videos when we have it and bonus content everything true weird is waiting for you at trueweirdstuff.com and follow true weird stuff on Instagram true weird stuff is a Now! Media production our executive producer is Anthony Garcia the show is written and hosted by me along with my deeply weird director Max Sweeten our equally odd producer is Kary Bowser additional production by the mysterious Stephen Call our digital witch and social media cult leader is Heather Furr original graphics by Kevin Nash original artworks by Olivia Axland true weird original music composed and performed by Jack Griffin and Zane Nash copyright 2025 Now! Media all rights reserved all wrongs remembered