Dave S Humphreys wrote with reference to my post on Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle…
I've been reading your column for a while and it's become a part of my daily routine. I'm a little troubled by some phrasing in your post, namely …"because he raped some woman"…
The use of the word "some" sounds dismissive, like she was not someone worth of any consideration — just another anonymous bimbo. "A" woman would sound much better. Or mentioning her name (Virginia Rappe) would humanize her more. I don't believe he was guilty, myself, though I won't contest your saying that he raped a woman. That is your opinion.
I am not a feminist, but I was struck by the sad ending for this poor woman when I first read of it 40 years ago.
Thanks for all of the great content over the years.
I think I've been misinterpreted here. Maybe it was my fault. I don't think Arbuckle was guilty and I don't think the woman he was accused of harming was unworthy of any consideration. The lines that bothered you read…
…you've probably heard that his career ended because he raped some woman in a hotel room and she died. You may not have heard that he was totally exonerated of the crime but nonetheless banned from the silver screen.
Was he guilty? He went through three trials. The first two resulted in hung juries. The last one not only found him Not Guilty but also issued a statement that said that "…there was not the slightest proof adduced to connect him in any way with the commission of a crime." That's good enough for me to reach the conclusion that, like I said, he was totally exonerated. How could you have thought I thought he was guilty?
But most people haven't heard that part. They just heard he raped a woman and they don't know her name or care about it. With the word "some," I was not demeaning her…just saying that's how little most people knew of the case. (An awful lot of people also seem to think he raped her with a Coke bottle, though that does not seem to have been alleged or even mentioned by any prosecutor of the time. I believe it was a speculation in some newspaper and it caught the worst part of some folks' imagination, as did the whole wretched story.)
About three decades ago, I did a lot of research about Arbuckle for a project that never went the distance. I don't recall it all now…and since then, there have been a number of books so I probably need to brush up and update. But I do remember deciding that his banishment was inexcusable but understandable. Movies were still new and there were religious leaders benefiting from decrying Hollywood Decadence, to say nothing of the yellow journalism of the day that knew how to sell newspapers filled with lurid scandal.
Arbuckle was almost certainly innocent of what happened to Virginia Rappe but he did host what to much of America seemed like a "wild party" that flaunted conventional morality: Unescorted women, illegal drinking (during Prohibition), etc. The Hearst newspapers covering the trials made sure America heard that Ms. Rappe had a bad reputation. Whether he'd harmed her or not, Arbuckle was carousing with one of those "bad girls"…and of course, his weight and baby face made him a colorful player in the sinful drama.
Silent film producer Hal Roach told me the moguls of his business had sacrificed "Fatty" as a kind of appeasement to those who thought Hollywood was Sodom and Gomorrah rolled into one. It was like, "See? We got rid of the cancer!" He said they were afraid that "the public" would look too closely at the way they — the studio owners, that is — were living and partying and whoring and drinking. And I guess it worked…for them.
Getting back to why you wrote, Dave: I'm sorry you thought I thought Arbuckle was guilty or that Virginia Rappe was just "some woman." I never thought either for a minute. But it's the way a lot of people then saw it, making it another one of those "lessons for our time" from which very few people learn.