Hollywood Tragedy: The Fatty Arbuckle Scandal

Roscoe Fatty Arbuckle was a highly regarded silent movie star who was considered by some to be almost as talented as Charlie Chaplin. It all fell apart after a wild night in San Francisco when a young woman died in scandalous circumstances and soon Arbuckle's promising career was over.

Fatty Arbuckle was born in 1887 in Kansas and moved to California with his family and he worked in the entertainment industry from the age of eight onwards and eventually became a bit player in silent films.

Fatty Arbuckle

Around 1914 Arbuckle began to direct and star in his own films in which he found great success and new-found popularity and then his career took off. His notable films included Mabel and Fatty Viewing the World Fair in San Fransisco and Brewsters Millions among others.

Arbuckle couldn't have known that despite his prodigious comic talents and successes that all of his achievements would soon be for nothing as an incident was soon to occur that would destroy his reputation and ruin his life forever.

On September 5th, 1921 a party was hosted by Arbuckle's roommate at the St Francis Hotel in San Francisco and a young starlet called Virginia Rappe attended as a guest. During the party Virginia Rappe was found seriously ill and the hotel doctor came to check on her health and then prescribed morphine for her symptoms. Two days later Rappe went to hospital near death.

Virginia Rappe

A friend of Rappe's at the hospital told a doctor that Fatty Arbuckle had raped the young woman at the party and caused her to be ill. Rappe died one day later from Peritonitis which is an infection of the abdomen caused by a ruptured bladder.

The police were called and the investigating officers decided that the young starlet's ruptured bladder was caused by Arbuckle's weight and that there was merit in charging the actor with rape and murder even though there was only a hearsay witness to accuse Arbuckle.

This is where the story got extremely murky. Rappe's manager claimed that Arbuckle had raped Rappe with a piece of ice which then got changed to a Coca Cola bottle in a later version of the tale by the Hollywood rumour mill.

The subsequent case became a major scandal largely driven by William Randolf Hearst's newspapers which depicted Arbuckle as a sleazy, disgusting man who was purely motivated by sex and lust.
Arbuckle was tried three times but was eventually found not guilty due to a lack of evidence.

Arbuckle's career never recovered from the scandal and his name became synonymous with rape and depravity despite the not guilty verdict and subsequently several of his films were destroyed. He went back to working as a director under an alias and died at age 46 of a heart attack.

It is widely believed that Arbuckle was not guilty of the crimes of that he was accused and that he was a victim of a shakedown by unscrupulous characters and an ambitious prosecutor. However what is beyond debate is that is that it was an incredible tragedy that Virginia Rappe died so young and painfully and was also unable to tell her side of the story. Because of this the entire truth will probably never be known.