5. Fatty Arbuckle and the Labor Day Party of 1921
Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle was one of Hollywood’s biggest stars in 1921, the first to pocket $1 million per year, and well known around town for his hedonistic pursuits. Especially popular with children, Arbuckle had given comic star Buster Keaton his big break, and was a friend and supporter of Charles Chaplin. On September 5, 1921, Arbuckle attended a gala party on the twelfth floor of San Francisco’s famed St. Francis Hotel. It was a party that proved to be his downfall. During the party actress Virginia Rappe was heard screaming in a room from which Arbuckle later emerged. Guests (friends of Arbuckle’s) who found the 30-year-old actress claimed that she was fully clothed at the time; her friends later claimed she was raped, by Arbuckle, though a subsequent physical examination revealed no physical evidence of sexual assault. The next day Rappe died of peritonitis, the result of a ruptured bladder.
Arbuckle found his fame was a liability rather than an asset as he denied the charges of rape, and the subsequent trial was a media sensation for weeks. Arbuckle was tried three times, with the first two resulting in mistrials due to juries unable to render a verdict. In the third, he was acquitted, though the press and the public had long before convicted him. Arbuckle was formally barred from acting by a newly formed censorship board, and the press and public subjected him to continuous condemnation, as well as ridicule over his substantial girth. Finally offered a film contract in 1933, a dozen years after the scandal, he died of a massive heart attack before the project could be started. Almost a century after the event, the mystery of what really happened that Labor Day remains unanswered, though Fatty Arbuckle’s reputation as a rapist and worse is still whispered about in Hollywood.