The Day the Laughter Stopped, page 27
The blank cheques Paramount waved under his nose were tempting, but McNab didn’t take the Arbuckle case until he had made a full personal investigation and convinced himself that Roscoe was innocent.
He declined to discuss his fee with the press, except to say, ‘My charges in this case are no more than I ordinarily receive in cases involving the same amount of work and a similar responsibility.’ (He had asked $35,000 for the Dempsey case.)
McNab quickly found himself earning his fee. On 22 October, Roscoe was rearrested for having violated Prohibition law at the St Francis party. He went to San Francisco again and was released on bail; the hearing was suspended until after the manslaughter trial. (In 1922, Roscoe pleaded guilty to violating the Volstead Act and was fined $500.)
Driving back to Los Angeles after that hearing, Roscoe went through a red light. A motorcycle policeman pulled him over to give him a ticket, but when he recognized the comedian, he said, ‘Roscoe Arbuckle! Hell, you’ve got enough trouble. On your way and good luck.’
On returning to their West Adams home, Roscoe and Minta discovered that in their absence a number of bugging devices had been installed, the house had been searched, and letters had been taken away. It turned out that a member of Roscoe’s house staff was in the pay of the police. She was promptly fired.
As a result, Roscoe’s lawyers hired private detectives to guard him around the clock. A number of Brady’s detectives spent a lot of time watching Roscoe’s detectives.
Roscoe was under siege in his own house. On his lawyers’ instructions, only Minta was allowed to answer the phone. Bus and coach trips were organized by local companies to view Roscoe’s home. Minta Durfee recalled, ‘They would go by and, seeing the greenhouse, would point at it and shout, “Look! There’s Arbuckle’s own private film studio.” ’
Except for the police informer, Roscoe’s staff remained loyal to the man they called ‘the Chief’. His family and staff gathered protectively around him, trying to blot out the ordeal that lay ahead. Roscoe would putter in the kitchen and make huge beef stews with his sister-in-law Marie on the cook’s night off.
During this period the butler, a Negro named Munroe, was due to become a Mason. It was a big moment in the man’s life. On the night of his initiation, he spruced up and left the house with his wife, who was the cook. Marie cooked the meal that night, and the family sat eating quietly, each alone with his own sad thoughts. Then they heard someone playing the piano softly as a woman sang ‘When Irish Eyes Are Smiling’. Munroe and his wife had come back to ‘cheer up the Chief’.
The Vigilant Committee of San Francisco, which had been silent for nearly two weeks, acted again on 12 October. It passed a unanimous resolution opposing the exhibition of Roscoe’s films in the United States for ever. The final part of the resolution read: ‘Regardless of the fact that Arbuckle may be proved innocent of the police charge, his immoral conduct marks him as a person unfit to appear before the American public.’
Ministers continued their attack on Roscoe and what he represented. One referred to him as a ‘towering monument of iniquity’. Another said, ‘The anti-Christ is here among us.’
Roscoe was quoted as saying, the day after the Vigilant resolution, ‘… The loss of friends, the shame, the stories, the rumours about me, the attitude of the American public, the sermons of the ministers, to say nothing of the loss of money – you’d be glad to get it over with too … I know the American public is fair and square and when it finds out all about this case, it will give me a square deal.’
DA Brady had been busy since the police court hearing, collecting ‘new and invaluable evidence’. He had sent teams of detectives and attorneys all over the country to get background evidence on Roscoe. Men were sent to Boston to check on the infamous 1917 party. Others were sent to Chicago, New York, Washington and Kansas. Brady and U’Ren were themselves investigating Roscoe’s activities in Los Angeles, with the full cooperation of LA’s district attorney, Thomas Woolwine, who was himself under investigation on charges of corruption. The purpose of this nationwide search was to find information that would damage Roscoe’s defence by showing him as a degenerate, a man without morals.
Every available man was mustered in the task and outside agencies were used as well, including the famous Pinkerton Detective Agency. Among the Pinkerton men searching for dirt was Dashiell Hammett, who didn’t find any dirt, and who maintained a firm belief in Roscoe’s innocence from then on. It is said that he drew on the Arbuckle case to create some of the characters in The Maltese Falcon. Certainly both Arbuckle and Brady lent themselves to fictional representation.
During these investigations, Brady told the press that he had ‘overwhelming evidence that shows what kind of a man Roscoe Arbuckle really is’. Indeed he did. One hundred men working diligently all over the country were unable to discover any unsavoury facts about Arbuckle.
In fact, their investigations must have uncovered a great deal to support Arbuckle. It was clear from the medical evidence, for example, that Virginia Rappe was probably suffering from gonorrhoea at the time of the party in Roscoe’s suite. If Arbuckle had had sexual intercourse with the girl in Room 1219, he would almost certainly have contracted the disease. Yet during the three and a half weeks he was in prison he was examined regularly by the prison staff and at no time during his incarceration did he display any symptoms of the disease. The incubation period for gonorrhoea is short; within two days to three weeks symptoms appear. And theoretically Roscoe had been exposed to the disease several days before his arrest.
The Hearst press leaped on a report that Brady’s Chicago investigators had discovered details of an attack that Roscoe had made the previous year on a woman and a bellboy in a Chicago hotel. They ran the headline, ‘NEW ARBUCKLE CHARGE. GIRL ATTACK IN CHICAGO LAID TO FATTY’. Subsequent reports indicated that Arbuckle had slapped a man’s face because the man made improper remarks in front of female guests.
Milton Cohen, one of Roscoe’s attorneys, observed, ‘Fatty Arbuckle is the Dreyfus of America. He has been made the victim of a conspiracy based upon greed for political power, with no consideration of the injustice upon its victim. But like Dreyfus, my client will be vindicated.’
How long would that vindication take?
While Brady dug into Roscoe’s past without much success, the defence – and the newspapers – found out what they could about other members of the St Francis party. They had already uncovered Al Semnacher’s divorce proceedings. Now they concentrated on Virginia Rappe and Maude Delmont.
Some of the less innocent details of Virginia’s past were beginning to appear in newspaper stories, and the defence was carefully tracking down details of her peculiar medical history both in Los Angeles and Chicago. Unfortunately, much of the information they turned up about doubtful aspects of her moral character could not be introduced at the first trials, either because it was not allowed as evidence or because the defense lawyers believed it would alienate the jury to defame the character of the dead starlet.
Maude Delmont was having problems of her own as a result of all the publicity surrounding the trial. A mislaid husband had turned up, a gentleman by the name of Cassius Clay Woods. They had been married only eight months when Mr Woods was arrested and charged with embezzlement. Maude had immediately started divorce proceedings, but had a problem in the form of yet another husband, James Hopper. A warrant for her arrest on the charge of bigamy was issued, but Matthew Brady intervened. It would hardly help his case if Maude were brought from prison to testify in the Arbuckle trial, so it was quietly arranged that Maude would not be arrested for bigamy until after the comedian’s trial had ended.
Either way, it was a boost to the defence. If Maude testified, her own statement and pre-trial testimony were so full of holes that they could be used against her. Now the bigamy charge could be used to discredit her too.
As it turned out, she would not testify at all.
On 14 November 1921, the arduous process of jury selection began. Gavin McNab asked prospective jurors questions about virtually every aspect of the trial. Anyone admitting a connection with the Women’s Vigilant Committee was challenged and disqualified.
After five days and forty-three people, the jury – seven men and five women – had been selected. Throughout the trial McNab would pay special attention to the expression on the face of one of the female jurors.
Roscoe’s case was to be heard not only by the twelve jurors in that San Francisco courtroom, however. While they deliberated, he would be tried simultaneously by a jury of hundreds of millions of people all over the world. Every news syndicate in the country had representatives in that courtroom; details of the trial’s progress would be flashed daily to newspapers in North and South America, Europe and Asia. In Chicago and Bombay, in Buenos Aires and Liverpool, men, women and children who had laughed at the innocent films of the world’s most popular comedian would join the world jury of public opinion. Would the people who loved to laugh decide that Arbuckle should not make them laugh any more? From the moment of his arrest, two trials proceeded, one in a courtroom in San Francisco and the other at the world bar of public opinion. For Roscoe to survive, he had to win both trials.
The trial was presided over by Judge Louderback, who was recently described to me as ‘a man who ran his courtroom with an iron hand. He was pompous and arrogant’. He was also destined to be the subject of a Senate investigation for corruption in the 1930s, when his career would be saved by the intervention of one of the members of the investigating committee, Louisiana’s Huey Long. But that lay in the future as the trial of Roscoe Arbuckle began.
Apart from Gavin McNab, there were four other attorneys involved in Roscoe’s defence: Charles Brennan, Milton Cohen, Nat Schmulowitz and Joseph McInerney. For the state, Brady was assisted by U’Ren and a man new to the case, Assistant DA Leo Friedman.
On Friday, 18 November 1921, at precisely 2.00 p.m., Leo Friedman rose and made the opening speech on behalf of the State of California. He outlined to the jury the prosecution’s version of events leading up to the moment of Virginia Rappe’s death, saying among other things, ‘We will prove to you that the defendant and Miss Rappe remained in Room 1219 for a period of time extending over possibly a half an hour to an hour.’
The crux of the allegations against Roscoe was contained in his closing remarks.
We will prove to you that the defendant in this action made a wilful, unlawful and felonious assault upon and against the person of Miss Virginia Rappe; and we will prove to you that the assault was made by the defendant with the intent to rape and ravish Miss Virginia Rappe at that time.
And we will prove to you beyond any question of doubt that as a result of this felonious assault made by the defendant upon this poor girl, we will prove to you that the bladder of Miss Rappe was ruptured.
Friedman went on to say that a result of Virginia Rappe’s bladder rupture during that assault had been peritonitis, from which she had died. Having proved all of these ‘facts’ beyond all question of a doubt, he concluded, ‘We shall request and expect at your hands a verdict finding Roscoe Arbuckle, the defendant in this action, is guilty of manslaughter as charged in the information.’
On the first Saturday, the trial was adjourned at midday so that members of the jury could attend an afternoon football game between the University of California and Stanford University.
The prosecution was first to call witnesses. Here I will touch only on highlights of the lengthy testimony.
Dr Arthur Beardslee, the hotel physician for the St Francis and the second doctor to attend Virginia Rappe, was called to the stand. He told the court that at his first examination he had given the girl morphine to ease her pain. The following exchange then took place:
U’REN: What was your opinion at that time, after your examination, as to what ailed the patient?
BEARDSLEE: Besides treating her in this manner, I tried to learn something about her history by interrogating this woman [Maude Delmont] that was attending her.
U’REN: Well, do not give anything that was said, Doctor.
MCNAB: We have no objection, Doctor; we want all the facts before this jury at any time.
JUDGE LOUDERBACK: The Court does not desire to have the record filled up with anything that is not necessary.
U’REN: And we are not going to try this case in that improper manner; we are going to try this case according to the rules of evidence, no matter what counsel says, and we do not want all this hearsay stuff in the record.
JUDGE LOUDERBACK: Proceed.
And proceed U’Ren did. Aided by the judge, he had safely steered the witness away from the conversation that had occurred among Dr Beardslee, Maude Delmont and Virginia Rappe, ‘hearsay stuff’ that could destroy his case. He knew that the drunken Maude Delmont had told Dr Beardslee that Roscoe had attacked Virginia; he knew also that Virginia had contradicted Maude, declaring that Roscoe had not touched her. And he knew that when Beardslee had asked the sick girl if she had had intercourse with Arbuckle, Virginia had firmly said there had been no intercourse. Avoiding these points, U’Ren turned again to the doctor’s conclusions at that time.
U’REN: And what did you find out?
BEARDSLEE: I was not able to form an opinion at this time. I merely knew I was dealing with a surgical abdomen; it was self-evident.
U’REN: What do you mean by a surgical abdomen? Kindly explain that term to the jury.
BEARDSLEE: An abdomen which would require surgical interference, an operative case, in other words. And at this time I informed this lady that was caring for her …
U’REN: (interrupting) Well, I do not think you can give even that, Doctor, because conversation that occurred there would be hearsay testimony at this time.
MCNAB: We are not making any objection to any information he obtained from anybody.
JUDGE LOUDERBACK: The Court is not going to let hearsay and rumour go into the record anyhow. We are going to try this case upon the real issues.
BEARDSLEE: The facts were self-evident at this time. I knew I was dealing with a lesion of the bladder, and from the signs and symptoms, and the scanty urine tinged with blood, I knew that her internal condition was at least complicated by bladder trouble, a ruptured bladder, I suppose.
Nobody asked the questions that begged to be asked: If Virginia Rappe had been operated on at the time Dr Beardslee arrived at his conclusions, might she have lived? Why wasn’t she operated on right away?
At the police court hearing, Frank Dominguez had tried to establish why Dr Beardslee did nothing. The prosecution had objected, and the objections had been sustained. Dominguez had also asked Dr Beardslee why, when he had been replaced by Dr Rumwell, he had not advised his colleague of his conclusions. In Dr Beardslee’s view, it was a question of medical etiquette: if your patient is seriously ill, it is bad form to tell an incoming doctor your opinion of the patient’s condition.
When McNab on cross-examination tried to bring out the conversations that the doctor had had with both women, U’Ren objected again and again. These conversations that occurred only a few hours after Virginia became ill were, in the opinion of the assistant DA, hearsay evidence and inadmissible. (The DA was later able to introduce in evidence conversations that Al Semnacher had had with both women over twenty-four hours after the conversations with Dr Beardslee.)
The curious matter of the illegal post-mortem at the Wakefield Sanatorium was touched on a number of times during the trial. It became evident that the defence considered a deal had been made between the DA’s office and the physicians involved. Only Dr Rumwell had been arrested and charged with performing an illegal autopsy (and ultimately the DA did not proceed with the charge). Dr Wakefield, who had given permission, and Dr Ophuls, who had actually performed the autopsy, were never charged. All three doctors were prosecution witnesses, and so was the nurse who had assisted Dr Ophuls.
The situation raised many questions regarding medical ethics. There was the matter of Virginia Rappe’s pregnancy. She had asked Roscoe for money for an abortion and had asked one of her nurses for the address of an abortionist. When she was finally admitted to a hospital, it was a maternity hospital. Immediately after her death an illegal post-mortem was performed. Why? Why was the illegal autopsy performed in the operating theatre of the hospital? Why wasn’t official permission obtained? Why were attempts made to keep the autopsy secret from the coroner’s office?
More basically: was it possible that Virginia Rappe died because of medical malpractice?
The questions would never be answered.
On Monday, 21 November, the state produced two of its star witnesses, Zey Prevon and Alice Blake. For seven weeks both girls had been kept in ‘protective custody’ in the home of George Duffy, one of the DAs assistants. No-one had had contact with them except members of the DA’s office. From time to time during that period they had been brought into San Francisco and ‘processed’.
Roscoe Arbuckle had been charged with manslaughter not only as a result of the police court hearing, but also as a result of the grand jury hearing. Under California law, the DA could proceed on the basis of one or the other of the charges, though not both.
He had proceeded on the police court charge, for one reason: he hoped to exclude the grand jury testimony of Zey Prevon from the trial. In the event, the gambit failed. McNab succeeded, after a long and bitter battle, in getting Zey’s grand jury testimony read into the trial record, and it damaged the state’s case. In the witness box she gave the testimony that U’Ren and Brady wanted her to give, including the allegation that Virginia had said, ‘I am dying, I am dying. He hurt me.’ But it was clear that her evidence had been changed under pressure from the prosecution.
