Fatty Arbuckle and a case of career death

Michael Barrymore’s arrest in connection with the death in 2001 of a young man found in his Essex home with severe internal injuries is the latest low point in the career of an entertainer who was once one of Britain’s most loved television personalities.

A mysterious death, a comic entertainer, lurid headlines . . . it has shades of another famous case. In 1921 Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle was, literally, the biggest thing to hit Hollywood. Weighing in at almost 300lb, the slapstick comedian had a $1 million-a-year contract with Paramount Studios. It was the single highest fee that Hollywood had paid to any actor. The chubby baby-faced star was adored across America.

Until, that is, the events of the night of September 5 hit the newsstands. Arbuckle threw a small party in a San Francisco hotel. Among those who came along to the star’s suite were two young women, Maude Delmont, and her acquaintance Virginia Rappé, a minor actress who had appeared in the films His Musical Sneeze and The Foolish Virgin.

Fuelled by bootleg liquor, Rappé – who had come to town for an illegal abortion – got extremely drunk and began vomiting in Arbuckle’s bathroom. Increasingly hysterical, she started shouting that she was dying and ordered Arbuckle to stay away from her. A doctor was called and pronounced her inebriated. She was given a cold bath and the party recommenced.

But within four days, Rappé was dead. A post mortem indicated that peritonitis from a ruptured bladder was the cause of death. Delmont – who had police records for prostitution, blackmail and swindling – alleged that it had all been Arbuckle’s doing. Rappé’s severe internal injuries, she claimed, were the consequence of a lurid sexual assault.

“Fatty Arbuckle Sought in Orgy Death” ran the newspaper headlines. The entertainer was arrested. His studio dropped him. A group calling itself the Women’s Vigilante Committee turned up to spit on him as he turned up at court. Delmont was considered so unreliable (except by the press) that even the prosecution preferred not to call her as a witness. Although medical evidence suggested the bladder rupture was not caused by external force, the first jury failed to agree a verdict. A retrial was called, resulting in a second hung jury.

In March 1922 a third trial finally ended in Arbuckle’s acquittal, the jury signing a letter of apology to him for the “great injustice” done him and expressing the “hope that the American people” would accept “that Roscoe Arbuckle is entirely innocent and free from all blame”. Fat chance. His career nose-dived and he eventually succumbed to the bottle. In 1933 he died of a heart attack, aged 46.

There is, sadly, little comfort for Mr Barrymore in this story of a much-loved entertainer’s demise.
source:www.timesonline.co.uk