by Jerry Stahl
Again and again I wanted to know why we couldn't use the abortion info in court. "Because," my good Catholic lawyer kept explaining, "we bring up the girl's misfortunes—shame a dead girl publicly—it makes us look heartless, like we're exploiting her. We'd lose whatever sympathy we got."
"B-but . . . but it's truel" I could hear myself sputter, trying to keep from tearing open the two Baby Ruths Dominguez had smuggled past the guards. I'd have preferred a couple of short dogs, but the warden frowned on that.
"Doesn't matter, Roscoe." Dominguez was a patient man. "They already think you're a brute. You go with she-just-had-an-abortion as your defense, it's gonna make you sound more brutal. If Virginia was pregnant, then that means you murdered a girl in a family way"
"But that proves I didn't murder her!" My brain felt like a jar full of flies.
"Defense has a different strategy," Dominguez shrugged.
"And what's that?"
But just then the warden broke in and said it was time to wrap things up. "This ain't a rooming house for famous blubber-guts," he cackled, yukking it up at his own joke. Everybody was a comedian.
Except, at this point, me.
Zombie Wisdom
Let me admit something right here. I marched through the days after my arrest—through all three trials, actually—like Ten Carat Carmichael in Zombie Island. I think that was his name. Maybe it was Two-Carat Louie. At this point, I can't remember Jack, so don't hold me to it if I'm wrong. (What are you going to do, throw me in Fact Jail?) I never had much truck for zombie pics. But now I understood 'em better: zombies were people whose lives had gotten so agonizing, the only way to keep living was to ape the dead. As the days wore on, each one bringing more had news, more stinging displays of public hate, I continued to walk and talk but inside I was numb. I was a junior zombie, waiting for his wings.
Speaking of zombies, I'd like to thank the safecrackers who gave me moonshine my second night in stir. You want to get zombified, jailhouse hooch is your ticket. The prune-juice-and-paint-thinner left me fairly ding-dong the next morning, but I was almost glad of the hangover. Compared to the pain and sadness, the betrayal and surprise and flat-out scared-dripless insanity of what was happening, a pruno headache was pleasant—like a neighbor you never liked, but are glad to bump into in Siberia.
Since my rearrival in San Francisco, after all, I'd suffered a nonstop stream of awfulness. A Venom Marathon. The only time people opened their mouths to me, it was to say something hellacious. I'd hardly ever heard the word "pervert" before; now people shouted it in my face. Even some inmates shunned me. A guy who'd flim-flammed widows out of their pension money actually called me scum. Worse than the insults, though, was having to listen to the list of heinous new developments.
"Fatty, you hear about them cowpokes up in Wyoming? 'Bout ISO of'em, in a town called Thermopolis, busted into the movie house and shot up the screen where one of your films was playing." This from the same malicious screw who slipped me news that the MPTO, Motion Picture Theater Owners of Southern California, had banned my movies, from now until Jesus Christ came back in a gas mask and Panama hat.
In the midst of it all, I did have one chuckle. An Irish rummy in my cell realized I was famous, but was too soused to figure exactly what I did to get that way. "You're Leroy Haynes, aintcha!" he kept saying. "Boy who sat on a flagpole for 18 days in Denver?" The other fellows had a guffaw over that. Imagine my meat wagon fitting on top of a flagpole for two minutes, let alone a record-breaking two and a half weeks.
It really hurt that nobody came to see me in jail but my lawyer. I didn't know Zukor and Lasky had talked to the other studio heads, that they'd issued a decree forbidding any actor from visiting. I may have been done for, but they were gonna make damn sure no other talent brought down the wrath of Hollywood haters by taking my side. Not knowing this, all I could figure was the obvious. Everybody in the known universe thought I did it. Cheery thought.
Hell doesn't always wait for you to die before it invites you inside. Sometimes it wants your life above ground to get so bad you bang on the gates to get let in early.
Expect the Worst, You Won't Be
Disappointed
I knew from the papers, and the ever-helpful guards, that my films had been pulled. And I'd gotten a telegram from Zukor saying I was in breach for pulling a no-show on The Melancholy Spirit. This way he could suspend my salary until the matter at hand was cleared up. But Dominguez and Cohen kept telling me that was just window dressing, part of a plan. At three in the morning, listening to the snores and Mommy-whines of the other prisoners, I'd think, Maybe Zukor's plan is to keep me from spouting off about what a cesspool of drugs and debauchery Paramount and Famous Players-Lasky are . . . Maybe my own lawyers aren't on my side . . . Maybe they're getting pressure from Zukor and Lasky. But presure to do what? Then, just so I could let myself sleep, I'd entertain the zaniest thought of all: Maybe Zukor and company are actually men of honor. Maybe those boys will come to the aid of a friend and colleague who's made them all more rich and powerful than they were when we met . . .
I just had to believe. 'Cause, like I said, deep down I'm just a wide-eyed optimist.
Mostly, I confess, I just wasn't used to accommodating such weighty matters between my ears. The constant fretting and figuring blew some fuse in my brainpan. Shorted me out. Take it from me, being thrown in jail is almost more than your mind can accommodate. See, it's not where you are that's so disorienting. It's where you're not.
Namely, in your own life.
Your home, your work, the view out your back door—all the things you never even think about, they're gone. You're now in another life. Another world you didn't even know existed, let alone see coming. If this happens to you, get ready. The suddenness of the drop from movie star to slammer—from the planet you take for granted to one you never imagined—will give anyone the bends.
Absorbing the shock of what was happening to my body was ordeal enough. The damp, the cold, the grubs in the oatmeal. Grasping the savagery being done to my name and my career was more than I could begin to contemplate.
I'd be lying if I said I remembered the chronological details of this period. You don't remember the chronology of an earthquake—you remember flashes, moments, random heart-grabbing impressions. The time between and during my trials is a jagged blur: endless minutes and weeks when just walking into a diner or stepping out of a car in front of the courtroom was like having your skin flayed. Reporters, haters, baiters, more reporters, and always the police. Brady kept me surrounded by cops, so it looked like I was Public Enemy Number One—someone from whom the God-fearing citizens of his decent city required protection.
The days and nights bleed together like eggs cracked over a skillet. Still, even in my haze during that first week of confinement, I was aware enough to know Dominguez was killing me by not letting me tell my story. The shame and terror were still novelties then. So I remember my shock, my sense that Brady—this will sound so corny—was not playing fair! Every other word out of the DA's mouth at the deposition was "murder." All I could do was listen and try not to fly out of my chair and pound my fists on the floor when he said it.
The whole strategy felt wrong—but everything was so wrong I thought I had to let my lawyer tell me what to do. Dominguez was hanging everything on getting Maude Delmont in front of the grand jury. He kept saying that's how we were going to get her. The problem was, Brady finessed him every time, going so far as to insist that the subject of "forced and violent intercourse" was not one on which any lady should be asked to ruminate, let alone one as refined and delicate as Maude Delmont.
Even with my bug-juice hangover, I almost laughed. If the wannabe governor had seen Lady Maude gallivanting in Lowell Sherman's unbuttoned pajamas, he might have had to rethink his notion of "refined."
Here's something else from the early days of my damnation. Have I told you about the warden yet? Listen to this. The man was a Bible-reading teetotaler in a string tie who
told me he hated my "kind" and poked me in the stomach with a shoehorn the first time we met. "Your type are ruining this country, but not for long!"
"My type?" I managed to ask him. "You mean fat guys?"
"Owff!" Another poke with that ivory shoehorn.
I'd wondered why the goons who marched me up to the Warden's office shoved me so far forward I almost butted heads with the guy. Now I understood. He wanted the screws to drag me into shoehorn range.
After he jabbed me in the breadbasket, the warden snickered. "Whatever you were out there, Two-Ton, in here rat turds got more value than you."
Every few hours, for my entire state vacation, the warden visited my cell, popping his waxy face between the bars to remind me that no one was coming to my defense. That I was the most hated man since the Kaiser. Warden Meers is the one who told me about Grauman. When Zukor and Lasky announced that the studio was suspending my salary, pending the outcome of my trial, the warden cackled at that, too. "See, you get in a Jew business, you're going to get jewed."
The esteemed warden took great delight in showing up with a folded newspaper, key passages circled carefully in red ink. I thought he might keel over from delight the day he told me I'd been condemned by the League of Nations. Seems the ambassadors were gathered in Geneva to discuss the White-Slave traffic, and the Danish delegate declared that Fatty's party contributed to a steep rise in the business of sex. On top of everything else, I was now banned in Switzerland, Denmark, and England. The French, on the other hand, ordered more prints of my movies.
In between the international news, the Warden reeled off all those juicy quotations from Lehrman. Who'd have expected to see Pathé's pointy kisser on anything but a mug shot? But there it was, slapped on front pages from Bangor to San Berdoo. I was in the prison barbershop receiving my regulation snippage when Meers pushed his way in between two Dempsey-sized bulls and told me he had something I'd want to hear.
The barber kept trimming, for which I was unaccountably grateful. But I can still smell the Warden's rancid aftershave. In close quarters he gave off the scent of lavender soaked in bacon grease.
If I close my eyes, I can still hear the Warden's reedy, wheedling voice—not unlike my old man's—as he held his bifocals over the page and read to me from Lehrman's rant: "For a year and a half I was Arbuckle's director. He is merely a beast. He made a boast to me that he had torn the clothing from a girl who sought to repulse his attentions. This is what results from making idols and millionaires out of people that you take from the gutter. Arbuckle was a spittoon cleaner in a barroom when he came into the movies." Here the Warden looked up from his dramatic reading, smiled, then resumed, savoring Lehrman's last sentence: "I would kill him if I had the chance." He smiled with glee. "Well, he won't get to do it, Fatty boy, but I will. Your fat ass is gonna get the gas."
"After five days of jail food, my ass already has gas," I responded, and let loose a clapping fart that just happened to be sitting idle in my guts, waiting for the go-ahead. The Warden was so shocked he dropped his bifocals. But the convict barber laughed and I told him to resume his ministrations. It probably wasn't the wisest move: cracking wise and risking the wrath of the man who had my life—not to mention my bodily comforts—in his hands. But nature provided the punch line, and I used it.
By way of retaliation, the Warden produced yet another newspaper, and recited a list of cities: "Fresno, Memphis, Toledo, Medford, Massachusetts, Pittsburgh, Butte, Montana, Des Moines . . ." And so on. He then proceeded to tell me that these were cities whose theaters had canceled my films. Gasoline Gus was pulled at once. And my next one, Crazy to Marry, was canceled while it was still in the can.
"The thing's been snuffed," I replied, without thinking. "Snuffed as surely as the demon child Virginia was carrying after the butchers at Wakefield Sanitarium got to it."
I occasionally get dramatic when nervous, and this was one of those times. A doughy vein in the Warden's temple swelled up so fast I thought he was going to have a stroke. "That is beneath despicable," he hissed at me. "To slander a dead girl that way!" Which half-convinced me Dominguez was right about not announcing the event to a jury. But only half.
On account of my wrists were too thick for regular handcuffs, I was late getting to the arraignment on September 16. When Police Chief O'Brien apprised Brady of the situation, Brady was livid. He screamed through the telephone that he wanted "that bastard restrained" if they had to hogtie me and roll me up the courthouse steps in a wheelbarrow.
By the time I picked a pair of leg shackles off the table and snapped them on my own wrists—"Anything else I can do to help, fellas? You want me to drive?"—the forces of good were already marshaled at Superior Court.
Members of the frothy-lipped San Francisco Women's Vigilante Group crowded the sidewalk. None of the 250 females on hand were shy about expressing their desire that I pay with my wretched life for my treachery. Thanks to Zukor and Lasky's order that no one from the studio show any public support for me whatsoever, no pro-Arbuckle brigade was there to counter my henhouse of detractors. I was alone.
Trials and Permutations
On the suggestion of my second attorney, Milton Cohen—again supplied by the studio on condition they not be linked—Minta was induced to brave the pack of reporters camped outside her apartment and make her way to Grand Central for the train to Frisco. Importing Minta was a gamble. Her presence at my side would look good to a jury of married people. But it would be disastrous if some roving reporter had the chance to ask why she kept a residence in Manhattan while her husband resided in California.
The sea of hateful ladies reserved their special wrath for Minta. This was painful to observe. One young harridan pulled out a harmonica, accompanying a scarecrow I presume was her mother through "Carry Me Back to Old Virginny." The other women picked up the tune. I wanted to die for my poor wife. She bore herself with stoic dignity as the police parted the crush of females before us like Moses dividing the Red Sea. But I knew enough about Minta's face to know the set of her jaw meant she was squeezing back tears, fighting them off with every shred of strength she had.
Inside the court, I felt my mind careen in and out of awareness. One second I was watching Matthew Brady preen with his thumbs tucked in his vest like a bantam rooster, the next I was back in Kansas, jerking awake when Daddy urinated on my head, as he was wont to do when the amount of beer he'd gulped caught up to the amount of hate available for release. I juked back to consciousness when Holy Ladies began standing on their chairs and chanting "KILLER! KILLER! KILLER!" I turned around to see how Minta was taking this. Oddly, she looked almost happy. She said she was glad I needed her.
Judge Shortfall banged his gavel and declared that the trial would commence in November. Then I tapped Dominguez on the arm. What was I being tried for? The attorney just mopped a handkerchief across his brow and shook his head.
"I asked to dismiss all the charges, Roscoe, but two old ladies wanted you hung. Rape and murder have been dropped down to manslaughter."
It's hard to fathom a planet where being wrongly accused of manslaughter is cause for celebration. And yet I seemed to be living on one.
For this break—and please forgive the digression—I always meant to thank Jim Richardson, a newshound with the Evening Herald. Richardson, with a judicious combination of skill and martinis, had gotten Maude Delmont to brag that not only did she plan on changing her testimony, but, and I quote, "it's going to help the prosecution, you can be sure of that!" This was pretty much gold for the defense. Brady declared a conspiracy by the studios—which, as it turned out, could have been my defense. As if anything the studios did could explain Maude Delmont. The jurors all wanted to let me go, except, as mentioned, for the two church secretaries who wouldn't sleep again until I was neutered.
For $5,000 in bail—which Schenck produced on condition it not be announced that Paramount contributed in any way—I was free until the start of the trial in November.
Manslaughtered
If I had any doubts left as to why I'd become a prize pariah, the first paper I bought back in Union Station helped remind me. I tipped the newsie a five-spot and he looked at me like the world had gone purple.
The screaming headline said it all: FLESHPOTS OF BABYLON! Then came the good word from Reverend Bob Shuler of Trinity Methodist Church in downtown Los Angeles. Reverend Bob declared "the death of poor Virginia was God's way of waking America up!" The Almighty was saying that it was high time to end the moral decay of show business. Here's the line burned into my brain for all time: "Movies, dancing, jazz, evolution, Jews and Catholics are all destroying this fine nation."
The article left no doubt that movies and Jews were the worst. And I was but their monstrous tool. I, Roscoe Arbuckle, had gone from humble slap-and-tumble man to Tool of the Hebrews.
Los Angeles Greeting
The longest minutes of my life were spent wading through those legions of God's Army assembled outside the train station to shout my damnation. It was one thing in San Francisco, where hatred of all things Los Angeles is the perpetual plat de jour. But in my own town! Even though I'd seen the headlines I hadn't expected it. Somehow—and I know how nuts this must sound—the headlines seemed like props. No more real than a breakaway dinner chair. But that sensation was shattered fast. There was no escaping the massed wrath of the folks who turned out to curse me. Not when they were staring me in the face, screaming that I should die, waving banners calling for this portly lad from Kansas to be lynched, axed, castrated, or gassed. Maybe all at once.
More of these hate fans were lined up on Adams Boulevard, outside my house. A curious thing—at first glance they bore no discernible difference from the devoted who once showed up because they loved me. The reason they looked the same, it finally occurred to me, is that they were. Their expressions were different—rageful instead of delighted—but that was all. "The sad part is," Minta remarked, when Okie had to step out of the Pierce-Arrow and clear them bodily off the driveway, "if they hadn't loved you so much before, they wouldn't hate you so much now."