The Day the Laughter Stopped, page 26
At the coroner’s inquest assistant DA U’Ren had shown contempt for the coroner. Now Golden reminded Lazarus of the limit of his authority: ‘You are sitting merely as a committing magistrate and not as a trial judge.’
Judge Lazarus eyed Golden coldly and said, ‘I must advise you gentlemen of the prosecution that you are taking a chance on a motion to dismiss; you are travelling very close to the line that may cause me to dismiss the charge.’
Judge Lazarus had become increasingly appalled at the flimsiness of the DA’s case. He had told the DA before the proceedings began that Arbuckle would be held to answer on the charge of murder if the DA had overwhelming evidence of Arbuckle’s guilt and delivered the goods in court. District Attorney Brady had failed to deliver the goods.
For a moment, Arbuckle’s case hung in the balance. On Roscoe’s behalf, Milton Cohen moved to dismiss the charge. His motion was followed by another display of acrimony from Golden. The motion was denied and the hearing adjourned until the following day.
All that remained were defence witnesses, if Dominguez planned to call them at this stage, and then the judge’s finding.
The following morning Dominguez rose and said that he intended to submit the case without calling any witnesses. He attacked the prosecution again for its failure to put Maude Delmont on the stand. Golden rose to argue the merits of the prosecution’s case, but was immediately silenced by the judge, who said that he did not want to hear argument from either side. He had reached his decision.
DA Brady smiled. He knew what the decision was. Hadn’t he arranged it before the proceedings began?
Judge Lazarus began to analyse the evidence. His analysis quickly wiped the smile from the district attorney’s face. Of Al Semnacher, he observed, ‘His testimony was perfectly worthless. Semnacher occupied two days of the court’s time and his testimony might just as well have not been taken as far as its value is concerned. There were other witnesses, called by the district attorney, whose evidence was equally worthless.’
With regard to the piece of ice and its significance, the judge remarked, ‘As a remote connection, evidence has been introduced here referring to a certain vulgar and ribald conduct of the defendant. But this was a matter which happened later; that had no connection. I cannot feel that the defendant would have so acted if he had realized at the time that the lady was in the desperate condition that subsequently developed. Anyhow, that thing, although abhorrent, had nothing to do with any injuries, any possible injuries, received by the deceased.’
Judge Lazarus dealt with the torn clothing of Virginia Rappe. ‘She was clutching at her clothes, and with the assistance of her lady companions, they were removed. The garments have been introduced in evidence here, badly torn, which, at the time of their introduction I thought might have some application to the charge against the defendant. But the testimony of the prosecution witnesses afterwards developed that these clothes were torn by the deceased herself.’
The judge dealt with the bruises upon the body of Virginia. ‘Photographs were introduced here in evidence showing various bruises on the body of the deceased, but Dr Beardslee, who had numerous opportunities, testified that the only bruise he saw was one on the arm.’
Slowly, systematically, the judge demolished the district attorney’s case. He was frequently interrupted by assistant DAs U’Ren and Golden, who challenged his conclusions and were rebuked by the judge. The prosecution’s zeal for getting Arbuckle to trial did not stop at entering into argument with the judge while he gave a verdict.
Only one piece of testimony had impressed Judge Lazarus. ‘There is only one witness whose testimony has any direct bearing. I refer to the chambermaid. Without that evidence I doubt very much whether the testimony would justify holding Mr Arbuckle on any charge.’
Even there the judge had reservations. ‘However and despite the fact that she heard Miss Rappe say, “No. No. Oh my God!”, we must remember a possibility which is suggested in a line from Byron: “And saying she would ne’er consent – consented.” [sic]’
One of the judge’s remarks turned the DA’s face to stone. ‘I do not find any evidence that Mr Arbuckle either committed or attempted to commit rape.’
Again and again the judge criticized the district attorney for not producing Maude Delmont and for failing to provide adequate evidence against Arbuckle.
‘The court has been presented with the merest outline; a very skeletonized description of what, if anything, occurred in the apartment … The district attorney has frankly admitted that he has presented just enough facts, perhaps I might say barely enough facts, to justify my holding the defendant on the charge which is here filed against him.’
Judge Lazarus saw issues that far transcended the guilt or innocence of Roscoe Arbuckle:
In this case we have a public lesson. This case is larger than the district attorney would have us to understand, and I had really hoped that this humble police court would be the avenue through which a full and complete revelation would be made concerning absolutely all the facts and circumstances, so that the public, at least, not alone in this city, but of the entire world, would have the opportunity to determine the guilt or innocence of this man whose celebrity has travelled, and I shall say justly travelled, to the four quarters of the globe.
A man who gives joy and pleasure to his fellow men is more valuable I should say in the scheme of creation even than lawyers and judges and other people who add more to the gloom of existence … But I say that this is really an important case. We need not disguise that fact, or beguile ourselves into the idea that we are handling just the ordinary trivial case … We are not trying Roscoe Arbuckle alone; we are not trying the screen celebrity who has given joy and pleasure to the entire world; we are actually, gentlemen, in a large sense trying ourselves.
We are trying our present-day morals, our present-day social conditions, our present-day looseness of thought and lack of social balance. The issue here is really and truly larger than the guilt or innocence of this poor, unfortunate man; the issue is universal and grows out of conditions which are a matter of comment and notoriety and apprehension to every true lover and protector of our American institutions.
In such a manner during the late afternoon of Wednesday, 28 September 1921, it was determined that Roscoe Arbuckle was to become the scapegoat for the Jazz Age. The judge decided that there was not sufficient evidence to send Roscoe to the Superior Court to answer the charge of murder. However, he added, ‘I have decided to make a holding on the ground of manslaughter, feeling that there is enough in the conduct of the defendant justifying some possible defence or explanation on his part.’
Shaking with anger, DA Matthew Brady strode from the court with his assistants scurrying in his wake. The courtroom erupted into cheers. The women who had come to see the rope put around Arbuckle’s neck now shouted and clapped their approval. Sentiment in the court had shifted dramatically towards Arbuckle. While Judge Lazarus had spoken, every interruption from U’Ren and Golden had been greeted with hisses from the women. Appalled, the leaders of the Women’s Vigilant Committee tried to control their members, but without success. Only twenty-four hours previously, their president, Dr Bertola, had told the press that in her opinion the evidence more than justified a murder trial. Now she declared that she was ‘well pleased with the verdict of Judge Lazarus’.
Arrangements were made to release Roscoe on bail pending the manslaughter hearing. He had been in prison for eighteen days.
Roscoe collected his personal effects from the police cell and emerged to find a cheering crowd. He was surrounded by hundreds of people, mainly women, all of whom wanted to shake his hand and touch him. There were shouts of ‘Hurrah for Fatty’ and ‘Good for you, Fatty’ and ‘We’re with you, Fatty’ and ‘Hit ’em with a pie, Fatty’ and ‘Attaboy’.
Those who heard the meagre evidence presented in Judge Lazarus’s courtroom – even though they had entered the courtroom eager for a more severe judgement – left feeling more well-disposed to Roscoe Arbuckle. Personal feelings aside, there were many who could not understand the insistence with which the prosecution case had been pursued. Judge George B. Harris, of San Francisco, recently told me, ‘I’ve always wondered about the stability of the prosecution in this case. Why the prosecution in the first place? If it had been John Jones, he would never have been prosecuted. It was the spectre of Hollywood. It was a witch-hunt.’
This contemporary view was held by many in the early twenties, but not by all. Among those who thought justice had miscarried were the Hearst newspapers, which gave much space to Brady’s peevish remarks. Brady launched a bitter attack on Judge Lazarus which the Hearst papers headlined: ‘IF ARBUCKLE WERE UNKNOWN HE’D BE HELD FOR MURDER,’ BRADY DECLARES.
Arthur Brisbane, Hearst’s right-hand hack, editorialized:
The learned Judge in the Arbuckle case says not Roscoe Arbuckle but ourselves, our morals, our present-day social standards are on trial. Mr Chesterton, fat and forceful, discovers in the Arbuckle case much wickedness on the part of America generally. The learned Judge and the clever Englishman perhaps attach too much importance to Mr Arbuckle. Brutality usually lacks intelligence and is therefore unable to gratify its tendencies. It hasn’t the money. Occasionally, as in the case of Coal Oil Johnny, Arbuckle and others, money comes rapidly, without restraining intelligence, and what Zola describes as the ‘hog asleep in each man’ breaks out and disgraces itself. But it doesn’t disgrace everybody.
The New York Times was equally distressed that the charge against the comedian had been reduced. The Times questioned the decision ‘respectfully but a little pressingly’ and criticized the people who had responded to Roscoe at the end of the hearing. An editorial was headed ‘HOW CAN ANY WOMAN BE PLEASED?’
The following day, Roscoe went home to Los Angeles – to Hollywood. At every stop on the way, large crowds waved and cheered at him. It was reminiscent of his 1917 train journey across the nation – except then he had suffered acute physical pain; now he was psychologically wounded. The past nineteen days had marked him deeply. Sitting in his San Francisco cell, he had sensed the hysteria he was causing. Now, returning home, he wondered how he would be received by the film colony.
Many have written of the moment when he stepped off the train in Los Angeles, and the story they usually tell is the same: that he was greeted by a howling mob who spat on him, and that the heart of the man died then. His closest friend, Buster Keaton, described the crowd as ‘a hate-frenzied mob of fifteen hundred men and women who seemed to want only to get close enough to tear him to pieces. And they yelled at the fat man they had loved so much a few weeks before, “Murderer! Big fat slob! Beast!” and “Degenerate bastard!” Some in the crowd had come to cheer him, but they were drowned out in the din.’
To friends like Buster, it may have seemed an unfriendly crowd, but in fact the reception was so impressive and generally so favourable to Roscoe that some newspapers hinted the next day that the crowd had been made up of ‘supers’, or as we call them now, extras. Half of Hollywood was there, including not only Buster Keaton, but also Bull Montana, Viola Dana, Eileen Percy, Natalie Talmadge and Hank Mann. One woman stood on a crate and denounced Roscoe, but few took notice of her.
Accompanied by his wife, Roscoe returned to his millionaire’s house. It was Minta’s first look at her husband’s home. She oohed and ahed at the magnificence of it, which to Roscoe now seemed meaningless.
He asked her to choose a suit for him to wear. Minta pulled open the large doors of his wardrobe and counted fifty-seven suits. Roscoe smiled as he watched her counting, then remarked, ‘You know, Minty, when I first met you I had just one suit. Remember? A brown one. I was a lot happier then.’
In the years between those two moments the American public had made Roscoe Arbuckle a superstar and had turned on him when it appeared he didn’t deserve their adulation. Perhaps they even took pleasure in thinking, ‘How the mighty have fallen.’
Motion Picture News, on 24 September, had warned actors that they were not artists, and had continued, ‘You are mere photographic types … you think you have been touched by divine fire, whereas you have only been touched by Celluloid … If you don’t protect yourselves, the same forces that made you will rise up and put you out of business overnight, destroy you in the very same magic way that you were created.’
While Roscoe had endured the police court hearing in San Francisco, forces were rising to destroy not only him but the entire industry. The St Francis party and its aftermath had been eagerly seized upon by those who wanted to destroy the film industry. Some wanted films banned from existence; others proposed censorship. At the heart of the industry, the city council of Los Angeles was moving towards censorship of all films. By the time Roscoe came home, the battle had been well and truly joined.
Through his papers, William Randolph Hearst had proclaimed himself a bitter opponent of censorship. He also announced that Metropolitan Films, which he owned, would not be making five million dollars’ worth of movies in the coming year in Los Angeles if the city council brought in censorship. Myron Selznick rallied to the fight by announcing that, if censorship became a reality, his company would withhold the making of four million dollars’ worth of films in the city.
William B. De Mille wrote a long open letter to the leader of the censorship lobby in Los Angeles, a certain Dr Briegleb. The good doctor objected to the religious persuasion of many of the film moguls. As he put it, ‘When the Jews get together to say what my boy and girl shall see on the screen, then I am going to fight.’
Apparently, what Dr Briegleb had in mind was a group of Christians getting together to tell people what they should or should not see on the screen.
On 1 October 1921, reformers got further confirmation of the film world’s iniquity. The Boston courts delivered their judgement on the charges of corruption that had been made against DA Tufts: he was found guilty and removed from office. There was no mention of Roscoe Arbuckle in the judgement, but there was considerable comment about Adolph Zukor, Jesse Lasky and the other movie moguls who had attended ‘an orgy of drink and lust’.
The Hearst papers ignored this report of scandal among the moguls. At the time, they were preoccupied with convincing reformers that the men who ran the film industry were models of propriety, set on cleaning their own house. As Murray Schumach was to observe in his book on film censorship, The Face on the Cutting Room Floor, in rather a different context, ‘The unwilling alliance of greed and idealism is one of the most fascinating ironies of the movie censorship story … No political issue has ever made stranger bedfellows.’
The film industry did not fight the censorship lobby in a united fashion. In many ways, the industry’s reaction was one of blind panic. As a direct result of the Arbuckle case, the film companies inserted a ‘morality clause’ in all contracts, which stipulated that actors would ‘conduct themselves [sic] with due regard to public conventions and morals and will not do anything tending to degrade him (her) in society or bring him (her) into public hatred, contempt, scorn, or ridicule, or tending to shock, insult, or offend the community or outrage public morals or decency, or tending to prejudice the company or the motion picture industry.’ Violation of the clause would ensure immediate dismissal. Many film companies even inserted a ‘retrospective morality clause’: if something from an actor’s past came to light and upset the public, the actor was fired. Morality clauses are still used in contracts today.
As for Roscoe: Zukor and Lasky simply stopped paying him. Famous Players-Lasky advised him that he was in ‘breach of contract for failing to appear on the set for the filming of The Melancholy Spirit on the first day of shooting’. (Roscoe had been locked in a San Francisco cell.) He was further told that he was ‘suspended until you are cleared’.
Having resolved Roscoe’s financial situation to their satisfaction, if not his, they then fired his lawyer, Frank Dominguez. Paramount had put limitless funds at Dominguez’s disposal and felt that Roscoe should have got a full acquittal at the police court. Dominguez had had his chance, and he blew it. He was replaced by a San Francisco attorney named Gavin McNab.
McNab was one of the city’s leading attorneys and a powerful political force. He virtually ran the Democratic party there. He had once put up for election to the city council a man named Billy Hines. Hines was an affable man with no knowledge of politics, whose main talent was the ability to bow from the waist to lady customers at the store where he worked. He also sang ‘The Laughing Song’ for amateur theatricals. When he began campaigning and people asked him policy questions, his response was to take a deep breath and sing, ‘Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ho, ho, ho, ho.’ While other candidates analysed rising taxes and the cost of living, Billy was a lot of fun. He got elected.
An Irish tailor named Kellerher came soon after to see McNab. He was a dab hand at the Irish jig. He told McNab that if Hines could laugh his way into office, he, Kellerher, should be able to dance his way in. McNab agreed. So did the citizens. Kellerher was elected.
These were two of many stories illustrating McNab’s power. Furthermore, the film industry had had direct opportunities to see him in action.
When in April 1920, the Nevada attorney general had said that there was collusion in the March divorce of Mary Pickford, McNab had stepped in and saved the day.
A few months later he had been called on to defend the heavyweight champion of the world, Jack Dempsey, who had been accused of draft dodging. The state’s principal witness against Dempsey was his former wife, Maxine Cates. San Francisco reporter Edward ‘Scoop’ Gleeson introduced Dempsey and his manager, Jack Kearns, to McNab, and outlined the case against the fighter. The canny Scottish lawyer said quietly, ‘I can’t go into the court with the case of a prizefighter versus a whore.’ But when Gleeson told him that the Pathé film company had $200,000 tied up in a series of films starring Dempsey, McNab murmured, ‘Well, that’s different. A case of invested capital. Maybe there’s a way of handling that.’ He took the case.
