Picture a man who, for a brief moment in time,
was arguably the most beloved human being on
the planet. I am not exaggerating here. He was
the very first true king of Hollywood. He was
wealthy beyond comprehension, the guy absolutely
everyone wanted to be friends with, and a mentor
to legends like Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton.
And yet, if you walk down the street today and
ask someone about him, if they even know the
name at all, they usually know exactly two things.
They know a cruel nickname, and they know about
a scandal that didn't just ruin his career. It
completely erased him from history. Yeah, we
are talking about Roscoe Arbuckle today. Yeah.
And I know the moment I said Arbuckle, your brain
probably autofilled the word fatty. Which is
really the first tragedy we need to unpack. Fatty
was just a screen character as a brand name,
you know, kind of like the tramp for Chaplin.
Yeah. But the man himself, Roscoe Arbuckle, he
absolutely detested that nickname. He would even
answer to it off camera. Never. He'd tell people,
I have a name, you know. He was a sensitive,
incredibly agile guy who just happened to be
large. But that nickname and the whole caricature
attached to it became the weapon that was used
to destroy him. For this deep dive, we're pulling
from historical records, trial transcripts, and
biographical summaries to look at what is probably
the original case study of cancel culture. decades
before the term even existed. It really is the
prototype. It's the exact moment Hollywood lost
its innocence. But I feel like to really grasp
the weight of how hard he fell, we have to understand
just how high up he was standing before the cliff
edge crumbled. Because this guy wasn't just famous,
he was an entire industry. He was the highest
paid actor in the world. But his start, I mean,
it couldn't have been further from the glamour
of Hollywood. He was born in Kansas in 1887,
and the circumstances were... pretty traumatic.
To put it mildly, he weighed over 13 pounds at
birth. Which, in 1887, was life -threatening
for the mother. His mother, Mary, suffered chronic
health issues because of the birth and ended
up dying when Roscoe was only 12. But the real
villain in his early life was his father, William.
Yeah, his dad sounds like a real piece of work.
He was a slim man, and so was Roscoe's mother.
So when this massive 13 pound baby arrived, William
flat out refused to believe the child was his.
He was convinced Roscoe was illegitimate. He
was so spiteful about it that he named the baby
Roscoe Conkling Arbuckle. And just for context,
that name was not a compliment. Not at all. It
was an insult. Roscoe Conkling was a New York
senator who was notorious for philandering and
corruption. He was a man William absolutely despised.
So he literally branded his son with the name
of a man he hated. That was the environment Roscoe
grew up in. Neglected, resented, and eventually
just abandoned. But that abandonment actually
led to one of the most mind -blowing origin stories
I've ever read. It's the Shepard's Crook Incident.
It sounds like something totally made up for
a movie, but it really happened. It is pure vaudeville.
So he's essentially an orphan at this point,
working odd jobs in a hotel, and he has this
habit of singing while he works. A professional
performer overhears him and invites him to sing
at an amateur night. Now you have to picture
what vaudeville amateur nights were like back
then. This wasn't some polite talent show. It
was brutal. If the audience didn't like you,
the stage manager would use a literal hook, a
giant shepherd's crook, to reach out and yank
you off the stage by your neck. Imagine the sheer
terror of an 11 -year -old boy facing that. So
Raskin gets up there, he's singing, he's doing
a little dance, but the crowd is dead silent.
They just aren't buying it. He looks into the
wings and he sees the hook coming for him. So
what does he do because he doesn't run? Panic
just takes over. But his body reacts with this
bizarre, innate agility. He performs a full back
somersault right off the stage and into the orchestra
pit. Right into the pit, he crashes straight
into the drums and the audience. They explode.
They thought it was all part of the act. They
absolutely love the physical comedy of this large
boy moving with such reckless grace. That moment
of panic didn't end his career. It launched it.
He realized right then that his body was his
instrument. And that's the thing that always
gets lost in the fatty stereotype. The guy was
a serious athlete. A 300 pound athlete. Max Sennett,
the comedy producer who basically invented film
slapstick, revered him. Sennett said, Arbuckle
skipped up the stairs as lightly as Fred Astaire.
There are actual clips of him doing back flips
on flat ground. And he refused to be the cheap
fat guy joke. Right. He hated that. He didn't
want to get stuck in door frames or break chairs
when he sat down. He wanted the laugh to come
from the contradiction, the big man who moved
like a ballerina. Although we do have to credit
him with one very specific, very messy invention.
and the pie in the face. Yes, that was him. 1913
in a film called A Noise from the Deep. It is
the first recorded pie throw in cinema history.
It's the ultimate cliche now. But Roscoe literally
invented the grammar of screen comedy. So fast
forward to 1920 and he is untouchable. Paramount
signs him to a contract worth a million dollars
a year. They'd even offered him a three million
dollar contract a couple of years earlier in
1918. And context is key here. A million dollars
in 1920 with almost no income tax is wealth that
is hard to even comprehend today. Adjusted for
inflation, it's like signing a deal for 16 or
maybe 20 million dollars a year, but keeping
almost every single cent of it. He had a whole
fleet of custom cars. He had complete artistic
control. He was the Prince of Wales, which was
a nickname his fans gave him with actual affection.
He was also a total kingmaker behind the scenes.
He discovered Buster Keaton, didn't he? He literally
pulled Keaton off of Vaudeville stage and put
him in front of a movie camera. Keaton absolutely
worshiped him. Arbuckle taught him everything
there was to know about filmmaking. He mentored
Bob Hope. He mentored Chaplin. He was generous.
He was kind. And by 1921, he was completely exhausted.
And that exhaustion is exactly what leads us
to Labor Day. 1921. He'd been churning out films
nonstop for years. He actually had second degree
burns on his backside from an onset accident
involving a chemical fire. He was in physical
pain and he desperately needed a break. So he
grabs two friends and drives up to San Francisco
for the long weekend. They check into the St.
Francis Hotel. They get a suite of rooms. Yeah.
1219, 1220, and 1221. It sounds super grand,
but really it was just a place to hang out, drink
some gin, which was illegal. Remember, we are
in the middle of prohibition and just relax.
Exactly. It wasn't this wild bacchanalian orgy
that the papers later described. It was a sophisticated,
if pretty boozy, gathering. People were coming
and going all day. And one of those people was
Virginia Rappé. And this is where the story turns
incredibly tragic. Virginia Rapp was a 30 year
old aspiring actress. She comes to the party
and at some point during the day she falls violently
ill. She's found in Roscoe's room vomiting and
tearing at her clothes in sheer pain. Now, the
people at the party, including Roscoe, assume
she was just incredibly drunk. Which, to be fair,
seems like a pretty reasonable assumption at
a prohibition party. It really was. They tried
to revive her. They used pieces of ice to try
and cool her down. The hotel doctor was eventually
called. And even he thought it was just severe
intoxication. He gave her some morphine and told
them to let her sleep it off. But she didn't
get better. She had to be hospitalized a few
days later. And she died on September 9th. The
cause of death was peritonitis, which was caused
by a ruptured bladder. A horrible, incredibly
painful way to die. Absolutely horrific. But
here is where our deep dive gets critical, because
the medical context at the time was completely
ignored. Virginia Rappa had a chronic condition
called cystitis. Her bladder was already severely
inflamed and weak. Alcohol, especially the low
-quality bootleg liquor available during Prohibition,
would have aggravated that condition immensely.
It is medically probable that her bladder ruptured
spontaneously or even just from the violent strain
of vomiting. But the police didn't look at medical
probabilities. They had a witness who was telling
a very, very different story. Right. Maude Delmont.
She was a companion of a Pez, and she had a,
well, let's say a colorful reputation. She was
actually known to police for setting up wealthy
men in compromising situations to blackmail them.
She goes to the police and says that Arbuckle
had dragged Ripa into the bedroom, raped her,
and that his massive weight had caused the rupture.
And the police just bought it. They did. But
the bigger problem wasn't even the police. It
was the press. This brings us to William Randolph
Hearst. The newspaper mogul. Hearst. He despised
Hollywood. He viewed the whole movie colony as
this den of immorality filled with liberals and
libertines who were actively corrupting America.
He needed a villain to prove his point to the
public. And Arbuckle was the perfect target.
He was huge. He was incredibly rich. And suddenly,
he was vulnerable. This is where the whole bottle
story comes from, right? I feel like I've heard
this rumor my whole life that he assaulted her
with a champagne bottle or a Coca -Cola bottle.
It is easily the most persistent myth in Hollywood
history and it is a complete 100 % fabrication
of the Hearst Press. The witnesses at the party
testified that Arbuckle used ice, literally a
physical chunk of ice, to try and soothe her
pain when she was writhing on the bed. But the
tabloids took the word ice and twisted it into
foreign object and then eventually into bottle.
It was specifically designed to be grotesque.
It was designed to make him look like a monster.
And it worked. The public turned on him instantly.
Morality groups were literally demanding the
death penalty. Overnight. Hearst allegedly bragged
later on that the Arbuckle scandal sold more
newspapers for him than the sinking of the licitania.
Just think about that for a second. A horrific
maritime disaster that killed over a thousand
people was somehow less interesting to the American
public than a comedian in a hotel room. So the
man is arrested. He's charged with murder, which
is later reduced to manslaughter. His wife, Minta
Durfee, who actually supported him through this
whole ordeal, was literally shot at just trying
to enter the courthouse. The hostility was insane.
So go to trial. But this wasn't just one trial.
It was a whole legal roller coaster. Three separate
trials. And the first one, in November 1921,
really should have been the end of it. The prosecution's
case fell apart almost immediately. Because their
star witness, Ma Delmont, was so unreliable.
She was so unreliable, the prosecution refused
to even put her on the stand. They knew she would
perjure herself. So instead, they relied on other
guests from the party, like a woman named Betty
Campbell. But under cross -examination, Campbell
completely broke down. She admitted the district
attorney had explicitly threatened her with perjury
charges if she didn't testify against Arbuckle.
blatant witness tampering. Oh, it gets worse.
The prosecution actually produced a hotel room
door in court claiming our buckles fingerprints
were found on it in a very specific way that
proved he held the door shut to trap wrap inside.
It was supposed to be their smoking gun and the
defense completely crushed this in spectacular
fashion. They called the hotel made to the stand.
She testified under oath that she had thoroughly
cleaned that room, wiped down every single door
and surface after the party was over. but before
the police investigators ever arrived. So the
fingerprints? Were completely bogus. They were
either faked by the police or they were from
a completely different time. The jury saw right
through it. The vote was 10 -2 for acquittal.
10 -2. That's a landslide. But in the American
legal system, if it's not unanimous, it's a hung
jury. He had to go back and do it all again.
And this brings us to trial two. And this is
exactly where the defense made a catastrophic
psychological error. They got cocky. They looked
at that 10 -2 vote and thought, the prosecution
has absolutely no case. We don't even need to
mount a defense. So they didn't put Arbuckle
on the stand. They arrested their case without
calling a single witness. Not one. They just
argued that the prosecution hadn't met the burden
of proof. Which, strictly legally speaking, might
have been true. But how on earth did the jury
read that silence? They read it as arrogance,
or worse, as guilt. They sat there in the box
thinking, if this man is really innocent and
he's facing actual prison time, why won't he
look us in the eye and say he didn't do it? That
silence just hung over the entire courtroom.
This time, the vote was 10 to 2 again, but for
conviction. Wow. He came within two votes of
going to prison for a crime he didn't commit.
That must have terrified him. He was completely
broke, he was physically exhausted, and he finally
realized the legal system wasn't some kind of
game. So for trial three, in March 1922, they
brought in a new lead attorney, Gavin McNabb.
And McNabb went to war. What did he do differently?
He stopped playing nice. He aggressively exposed
Rapp's medical history, specifically her long
history of cystitis. He completely tore apart
the prosecution's timeline of events. And most
importantly, He finally put Roscoe Arbuckle on
the stand. And Roscoe finally got to tell his
story. He was simple, he was direct, and he was
highly emotional. He explained finding her vomiting,
assuming she was drunk like everyone else did,
and just trying to help her be comfortable. He
came across exactly as he was, a confused, gentle
man who had tried to help a sick woman. So the
jury goes out to deliberate. And this is the
part of the story that absolutely blows my mind.
How long were they out? Six minutes. Six minutes.
You can't even order a cup of coffee in six minutes.
And here is the real kicker. They weren't even
debating the verdict during that time. They spent
five of those six minutes drafting a formal apology
letter to the defendant. That has to be totally
unique in legal history. A jury writing an apology.
It's basically unheard of. The jury foreman stood
up and read it to the court. They explicitly
said that a simple acquittal wasn't enough. They
wrote, we feel that a great injustice has been
done him. There was not the slightest proof adduced
to connect him in any way with the commission
of a crime. They basically scolded the prosecution
for wasting the court's time and destroying an
innocent man's life. Not the slightest proof.
So legally, he is completely vindicated. He walks
out of that courthouse, a free man. You'd think
the newspaper headlines the next day would be
our buckle innocent. Welcome back to Hollywood.
You really would think that. But the court of
law and the court of public opinion are two entirely
different jurisdictions, and Hearst had already
won the public. This is the moment the industry
totally turns its back on him. Enter Will H.
Hayes. The studio heads were absolutely terrified
that the ongoing scandal would bring down federal
censorship on all their movies. They needed to
show the government they could police themselves.
So exactly six days after the acquittal, six
days after a jury of his peers said he did nothing
wrong, Will Hayes, the new czar of Hollywood
censorship, banned Roscoe Arbuckle from appearing
in any motion picture. It's a classic scapegoat
situation. The studio head, Adolf Zuckor, just
sacrificed him. Look, we killed the monster,
we're all good now. Exactly. And it wasn't just
a ban on his future work. Hayes asked exhibitors
to stop showing all of his old movies. And the
studios... This is the part that just hurts me
as a film historian. The studios actually burned
his negatives. They burned them like in a literal
bonfire. In industrial incinerators. They wanted
to completely erase the physical evidence of
his existence. We lost a massive percentage of
his entire filmography. Beautiful works of art.
Crucial pieces of early cinema history just melted
down to silver nitrate because executives were
scared of a public boycott. That is just cultural
vandalism. So Roscoe is banned. He's broke. I
think he owed something like $700 ,000 in legal
fees at that point, and his life's art is being
literally set on fire. What does a man even do
in that situation? He tried to disappear, but
he had one thing keeping him going and keeping
him alive. Buster Keaton. I really love that
about this story. Keaton didn't bail on him,
did he? Never. Keaton publicly supported him
the whole time. He actually proposed a deal where
he would give Arbuckle 35 % of the profits from
his own production company just to keep Roscoe
fed and a roof over his head. And eventually,
Keaton and a few others convinced the studios
to let Arbuckle direct again. But only if he
stayed strictly in the shadows. Under the pseudonym,
he directed as William Goodrich. Which is a pretty
heartbreaking pun. Buster Keaton later claimed
he was the one who suggested it, William Goodrich.
We'll be good. We'll be good. Like a scolded
child having to promise to behave just to get
a job. And he was good. He was a very talented
director. But the spark was just gone. Louise
Brooks, the famous flapper actress, worked with
him during this dark period. She later said,
he made no attempt to direct. He just sat in
his director's chair like a dead man. She called
him sweetly dead. That image is haunting. A man
sitting in the director's chair of the very industry
he helped build, hiding behind a fake name, just
staring at the floor. It's deeply tragic. But
history does have a bit of a twist here. There
was a redemption arc, wasn't there? It took 10
long years. But in 1932, the public anger had
finally faded enough. Warner Bros. decided to
take a chance on him. They signed Arbuckle to
star in six comedy shorts and under his own name,
Roscoe Arbuckle was finally back on the marquee.
And the crazy thing, the public totally loved
him. The shorts were huge hits in the U .S. It
turned out the audience had actually missed him.
So a comeback is real. It's really happening.
It was happening. On June 29, 1933, he finished
filming The Last Short. The studio was so incredibly
impressed with his work that they drew up a contract
for a full feature length film. He was going
to be a major movie star again. He signed the
contract that very day, right? He did. That night,
he went out to celebrate with his friends and
his third wife, Addie. It was actually their
first wedding anniversary, too. He was reportedly
just beaming. He told his friends, This is the
best day of my life. The best day of my life.
He went home, went to bed, and passed away in
his sleep. A massive heart attack. Just like
that. Just like that. He was only 46 years old.
The coroner said it was heart failure, but absolutely
everyone who knew him said it was a broken heart.
The sheer stress of the past decade, the crushing
weight of the shame, his body just gave out the
exact moment he finally crossed the finish line.
It's almost too written. It feels like a movie
script you'd reject for being way too on the
nose. Yeah. But it really happened. It leaves
us with a very complicated legacy. We have the
films of his that survived the incinerators,
and they are brilliant. If you see a comedian
take a physical fall today or throw up high,
you are quite literally watching Arbuckle's DNA
at work. He even finally got a star on the Walk
of Fame in 1960. But we also have the warning.
The warning of what happens when a false narrative
completely overtakes the truth. Precisely. The
fatty caricature, the greedy, gluttonous, giant
monster that Hearst created out of thin air overshadows
actual man. The real Roscoe was shy, he was generous,
and he was phenomenally talented. But the fake
Roscoe, the monster of the tabloids, is the one
who ended up dominating the history books for
so long. It really makes you think about how
we operate today. We have Twitter, we have TikTok,
we have 24 hour news cycles. Reputations are
incinerated in seconds now. That's the lingering
question of this whole deep dive. Roscoe Arbuckle
had a jury of 12 peers who formally cleared him,
apologized to him and scolded his accusers on
the record. And it didn't matter. The verdict
of the public was guilty and there was no appeal
process for that. It's a terrifying thought.
Once Once the public decides you're a monster
and the system actually cleared you, what happens
to the apology? Who owes you your life back?
It really makes you wonder if the digital age
just means we're all one bad out of context headline
away from a burning of our own negatives. It
certainly didn't catch up in time for him. That
is a very heavy note to end on, but a necessary
one, I think. We wanted to look at the man behind
the very first Hollywood scandal, and I think
we found him. I think we did. Thanks for joining
us for this deep dive into the lost king of Hollywood.
We'll catch you on the next one.