27. A Wild Party That Turned Out to be Too Wild
The scandal that destroyed Fatty Arbuckle’s public image began with a wild party at a San Francisco hotel, where he and his friends rented adjacent luxury suites in September of 1921. Several women were invited, and at some point during the revelry, an aspiring actress, Virginia Rappe, was found seriously ill in one of the suites. The hotel’s doctor examined her, concluded she was just super drunk, and gave her morphine to calm her.
Two days later, Rappe was rushed to a hospital. There, a friend claimed that Fatty Arbuckle had sexually assaulted Rappe at the party. The next day, Rappe died of peritonitis, caused by a ruptured bladder. Medical examinations found no evidence of assault. Newspapers had a field day, however, printing increasingly salacious stories. Some alleged that Fatty Arbuckle had killed Virginia Rappe with his weight while raping her. Other stories claimed that Arbuckle had penetrated Rappe with a piece of ice. That eventually grew into accusations that he had ruptured her insides by raping her with a bottle of Coca-Cola or champagne.