Birth of Hollywood (2011): Season 1, Episode 2 - Episode #1.2 - full transcript
This is
the Orpheum Theatre, Los Angeles.
Built in 1926,
this picture palace gave
its audiences a real taste
of opulence.
And their idols,
the actors on the screen,
were literally larger than life.
These bright icons, 20 foot tall,
black and white, mute,
simultaneously appearing in
darkened rooms throughout the world
must have seemed like visiting gods.
Cinema had created a new class
of human being - the film star.
Audiences were enraptured by
this new phenomenon.
They had their favourites
who they wanted see again and again.
Once producers realised the impact
their stars were having
on the general public, they were
very keen to work with the press
in order to keep
those reputations spotless.
Soon, Hollywood would become known
throughout the world
as a byword for glamour.
But outside of Hollywood,
the rest of America regarded it
as a rather sinful,
degenerate hellhole.
A place of dubious morals.
Mary Pickford, the biggest
female star in the world, was
desperately in love with leading
film actor Douglas Fairbanks.
They were married,
but not to each other.
Mary feared rejection from her fans
if she became a divorced woman.
Another prominent actor, Wallace
Reid, was addicted to morphine.
Others battled cocaine and alcohol.
Hollywood certainly had a very
relaxed attitude towards drugs.
In this bad-taste comedy,
Douglas Fairbanks plays a character
called Detective Coke Ennyday.
But some campaigning
religious groups found the movies
no laughing matter.
They sought tighter controls,
even censorship.
And soon those forces
would taste success,
as scandal after scandal threatened
the very existence of Hollywood.
And their biggest scapegoat
would be Roscoe Arbuckle.
He worked under the name of
Fatty Arbuckle, a name he disliked.
His friends called him Roscoe.
Roscoe was one of American cinema's
earliest and greatest comedians,
and one of its biggest stars.
He was also a friend and champion
to two of the best loved
film comedians of all time -
Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton.
And in 1920, Roscoe was
the highest-paid star in Hollywood.
He was a lot more famous than many
of the people whose names are cast
in the cement outside Grauman's
Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles.
But Roscoe's prints aren't here.
He's missing.
Why? What happened to him?
Today if people are aware
of his name,
they wrongly believe him guilty
of some terrible crime.
But he was a totally innocent man.
Roscoe was destroyed by the dark,
ugly side of Hollywood,
and what happened to him
would change the movies
for decades to come.
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By the mid-1910s, Hollywood's stars
had become the driving force behind
the motion-picture industry, and
the most famous people in the world.
Roscoe Arbuckle's visit to London
was sufficiently newsworthy
to be covered by a newsreel company.
This was Roscoe's
last carefree winter.
Roscoe Arbuckle was
at the height of his career,
reportedly earning $1 million a year
from Paramount Pictures.
Roscoe could claim to be among the
very first American film comedians
to direct his own work.
He could also claim that
Harold Lloyd, Buster Keaton
and Charlie Chaplin all played
supporting roles in Arbuckle films.
This is Charlie Chaplin
on the right,
without his usual tramp make-up.
And here's Buster Keaton,
helping with the luggage.
Roscoe was drawn to vaudeville
from an early age,
but couldn't always afford
to go to the theatre.
In the summer of 1895, Roscoe was
playing around the stage door
when a visiting producer saw him
and grabbed him for a production
that he was staging that week.
They were short of an eight-year-old
boy, and Roscoe fitted the bill.
From then on in,
he appeared in all the various shows
that appeared in that theatre.
One week he might be
a hypnotist's assistant,
another, playing a small but
vital role in a Victorian melodrama.
Roscoe would later parody
small-town theatrical values
in the film Back Stage.
In 1899m Roscoe's mother died,
and shortly after,
he was abandoned by his father.
The teenage Roscoe survived
by doing odd jobs in a hotel.
He was heard singing
in the kitchens one day
and it was suggested he should enter
the local talent contest.
He did, and he won.
It was the beginning of
his vaudeville career.
In 1908, Roscoe married
a fellow vaudeville performer,
a singer called Minta Durfee.
Within five years, he had joined
Mack Sennett's
Keystone Film Company.
Roscoe quickly became
the biggest comedian at the studios.
He impressed a new young English
comedian called Charlie Chaplin,
who joined the studios a year later.
Here, Charlie's improvisation gives
his Keystone colleague
a good giggle.
The Keystone studios were
just behind me here.
Mack Sennett, the boss,
had a great eye for talent.
Most major comedians of the silent
era worked for him
at one time or another.
But Roscoe stood out.
Roscoe Arbuckle was a big man,
but physically very adroit.
Within a few months of
joining Keystone,
he was directing his own movies.
Amidst the slapstick,
Roscoe also introduced elements
of quiet, gentle sentiment
that played very effectively.
That nearly went on!
Here, Roscoe's shadow
lightly kisses Mabel Normand.
Mabel and Roscoe made a series
of highly-successful
comedy films together.
These films were the forerunners
of today's situation comedies.
They were initially cast
as a working-class couple,
but as their fame grew,
so did their social standing.
Here, Mabel and Roscoe have
clearly gone up in the world,
with sophisticated sets
and equally-sophisticated lighting.
In 1915, San Francisco invited
Mabel and Roscoe
as guests of honour
to view the World Trade Fair.
The Mayor of San Francisco
affords them
the status of visiting dignitaries.
This extremely-rare newsreel footage
of Roscoe visiting London in 1920
gives us a valuable glimpse of
the man behind the screen character.
Particularly his sense of fun.
Keep your eyes on the cigarette.
Film stars were now bigger than
the films they appeared in.
A publicity machine grew up
to feed the public's hunger.
Some of the stories were outlandish.
For example, Roscoe Arbuckle was
said to have met Pancho Villa,
the Mexican revolutionary,
in El Paso, Texas.
The story goes that Roscoe Arbuckle
and Pancho Villa's men were
throwing fruit at each other
across a large body of water.
At one point,
Roscoe picked up a bunch of bananas,
threw them across the water,
knocked a bandit off his horse.
Now, you read this story
in all the histories of the period,
but, of course, it's not true.
Just think about it for a minute.
How hard would you have to throw
a bunch of bananas
to knock a seasoned bandit
off a horse?
Quite hard, is the answer.
But it's one of those stories
that came up at the time
because fans were eager to hear
about their favourites,
and it didn't matter
if the story was made up.
It was good publicity.
The practice of making up
newspaper stories would later
have a much darker side.
But for now, any publicity was
good publicity.
It brought people back to
the cinema time and time again
and helped generate unbelievable
profits for the movie business.
Roscoe himself was to earn
$1 million a year
when he switched studios
to Paramount Pictures.
He bought a mansion,
and it was here that
his sense of fun led to
one of Roscoe's most celebrated
practical jokes.
Perhaps we should go in.
Wow!
This is how a movie star lived
in the 1910s.
It's extraordinary to be here.
This is the dining room.
I first read about this room when
I was 13 years old. To be here is...
Well, there's the kitchen
through there.
And look at this.
It's like walking back 100 years.
It's remained...
I mean, look at
this detail here, look.
There's a sort of phone system
for contacting people.
What's does it say?
"Guest room one, the garage, sitting
room, master bedroom, boudoir."
I mean, this is all...
BELL RINGS
There was a dinner party
happened here once,
a long time ago, and this kitchen
was very much part of the story.
To help us restage
this dinner party,
I shall play the part of
a particularly-dumb waiter.
The guest of honour is Adolph Zukor.
He is boss of Paramount Pictures,
and Roscoe Arbuckle is now
Paramount's biggest star.
Zukor, a man who didn't see
the point of a sense of humour,
was bemused by the waiter's
clumsy attempt at serving food.
Roscoe apologised. Zukor understood.
PLATES SMASH
Zukor hated
the entire embarrassing experience.
PLATES SMASH
What Adolph Zukor didn't realise was
that this whole dinner party was
a practical joke on him,
and everybody around the table was
in on it.
The waiter had been played
by Buster Keaton,
who turned up as a guest
about half an hour later,
sat here next to Adolph Zukor,
who recognised him as the waiter,
and then realised he'd been had.
THEY LAUGH
Roscoe!
Roscoe could afford to play
a practical joke on his boss.
He was making millions
for Paramount,
and was immensely popular.
I'm standing by the steps of Federal
Hall on Wall Street in New York.
If you want some idea of
how popular film stars were in 1918,
have a look at this same scene with
Charlie Chaplin, instead of myself,
making a personal appearance.
This is a rally to raise money
for American troops
in the First World War.
Also with Charlie Chaplin were
Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks,
who addressed huge crowds
as they travelled round America.
They were having an affair
with each other at the time,
but as they were both married,
they had to keep this rather quiet.
Being expected to behave
in a moral way by their fans
may have been inconvenient
for Doug and Mary,
but there was plenty of upside
to being a huge star.
Paramount had tempted
Roscoe Arbuckle away from Keystone
by setting him up
with his own film unit.
His first Paramount film,
The Butcher Boy,
featured a young comedian
fresh from the vaudeville stage -
Buster Keaton.
Roscoe took Buster under his wing
and generously taught him
the intricate techniques of
film comedy, such as how to react
to a huge bag of flour
hitting you in the face.
This joke was captured in one take.
Buster was told not to worry
about the bag of flour -
just turn, and it'll be there.
Their film partnership led to
a lifelong friendship.
Less than a year after
Roscoe acquired his own film unit,
Charlie Chaplin was given
his own purpose-built studio.
We are at the Jim Henson Company,
best known as the creators
of Fraggle Rock, The Dark Crystal,
Farscape and the Muppets.
This studio has
a very colourful history.
It was built in 1918
for Charlie Chaplin
by the First National film company.
In exchange,
Charlie promised eight short films.
Rather optimistically, he hoped that
First National would accept
as one of those films a film about
the building of this very studio.
They didn't.
The film, How to Make Movies,
does offer up
the only footage we have
of Charlie directing.
In just five years,
Chaplin had gone from being
a successful but fairly anonymous
stage actor
to becoming a studio boss
with million-pound budgets
and complete artistic freedom.
He oversaw every aspect
of production.
This new studio inspired Charlie
to greater heights.
His second film for
First National, Shoulder Arms,
was noted for its artistic daring.
A World War I comedy,
set in the trenches,
made while that war was
still being fought.
It was a worldwide smash hit, as
well as being an artistic triumph.
This fluid camera movement was
way beyond
the capabilities of
a Keystone comedy.
The authentic trench setting,
with its attention to detail,
gives the film
a documentary flavour.
The other actor is Sydney Chaplin,
Charlie's brother.
The film was so popular
with the Allied troops,
it was shown to injured soldiers
in military hospitals.
Shoulder Arms was made
in this studio here.
Look at the size of this place.
In just four years, American
screen comedy had come of age.
Just think of all the masterpieces
that were made in this room.
For The Gold Rush,
Charlie created a snowy landscape,
extraordinary for the time, that
made the impossible shot possible.
As well as family films,
Hollywood was putting material
onto the screen that shocked
the more conservative elements
of American society.
Their bete noire was director
Cecil B DeMille, seen here on set.
Cecil B DeMille understood that his
audiences wanted glamour, sensation,
as an escape from the humdrum
reality of everyday life.
And you can't get
more anti-humdrum than this.
Here, Cecil dresses his actors
and his set in glass.
Glass that does not reflect
the real world.
I saw him directing,
and he had the most tremendous energy
of anyone I've ever known.
I always felt I had to give
an absolute reason for being a woman,
for being alive, for being there,
for occupying air space.
A deeply eccentric man,
he ruled his movie sets
with a rod of iron.
One of the actresses who
worked with the great one was
Angela Lansbury,
in Samson And Delilah.
One director that you worked with
is Cecil B DeMille. Yes.
I'd be very interested to hear
what he was like.
As the expression goes,
as my mother in her Irish way would
say, he kind of fancied himself as...
The great director.
The great director. Yes, he did.
And could be quite frightening
at times.
He demanded a certain, you know...
..a performance from everybody,
and that went to everybody.
Any person who worked on a set
for DeMille,
he noted, he knew,
and he watched everything.
There wasn't anything that
he just took for granted.
He never left things to other people,
although he had a lot of assistants,
you know?
He had a man who was always there
with a chair,
ready to shove it under his bottom.
So if he decided
just to sit down,
the chair would have to be there?
Yes, and it would always be there.
And same with a microphone.
He always had a microphone handy,
cos he liked to make
loud announcements,
and he wanted everybody to hear.
Quiet, quiet, quiet.
We're trying to take a scene here.
We've got 4,000 people on this set.
Now keep quiet and
attend to your business.
In 1916, Gloria Swanson was
co-starring with a dog
in a Mack Sennett comedy.
But three years later,
Cecil B DeMille had transformed
her screen image. Here, a naked
Gloria is being helped into a bath.
Film was now the dominant
cultural force on the planet.
People aspired to look like
their favourite glamorous stars.
They copied their hairstyles,
the way they dressed.
Female fashions particularly
were influenced
by what they saw on the screen.
If cinema was shaping fashion,
it was also changing people's
perception of acceptable behaviour.
Cheeky moments like this
in Male And Female
outraged powerful
conservative forces,
who saw Hollywood
as one big, sordid pit of sin.
And they weren't just concerned
that cinema audiences would start
glancing at each other's ankles.
Moral crusaders and social reformers
had achieved a stunning victory
in 1920 when the sale of alcohol was
prohibited in America.
It was an impossible law to police.
Bootleg liquor supplied by gangsters
found thirsty customers in illegal
drinking dens, or speakeasies.
But having secured prohibition,
these campaigners looked to curtail
Hollywood's excesses.
Some strongly believed that films,
like alcohol, could be banned.
It happened briefly
in New York in 1908,
when the mayor had ordered
all cinemas to be closed.
Hollywood was worried.
The voices calling for censorship
were getting stronger.
It didn't help that at just this
moment Mary Pickford announced that
she had divorced from
her husband, Owen Moore.
Many people considered
divorce shameful.
She swore that
she would never marry again.
26 days later, she married
Douglas Fairbanks, also a divorcee.
Other film stars kept
their marital problems private.
Roscoe Arbuckle was formally
separated from his wife Minta,
who now lived in New York.
But his career was going
from strength to strength.
He made the move into feature films,
adapting his style
away from pure slapstick
and into more thoughtful,
carefully-plotted comedies.
Paramount, astounded
at the millions pouring in,
had pushed Roscoe Arbuckle to make
three separate
feature films simultaneously.
Upon their completion in the late
summer of 1921, he needed a break.
He left Hollywood behind and
ventured out into the real world.
Roscoe Arbuckle had been
working extremely hard.
He'd made six feature films
in just seven months,
and these films were enormously
profitable for Paramount Pictures.
Nevertheless, Roscoe needed a break.
On September 3rd 1921,
he left Los Angeles in his
luxury car, along with two friends.
They headed towards San Francisco.
They arrived here at the St Francis
hotel late Saturday afternoon.
Roscoe Arbuckle and
his two travelling companions,
Fred Fischbach and Lowell Sherman,
checked into their rooms.
I've got exactly the same rooms
nearly 90 years later.
I'm on the 12th floor
of the St Francis Hotel.
The Arbuckle group hired
three rooms -
a reception room with
a single bedroom either side.
If you have any preconceptions about
what happened in these three rooms,
wipe them from your mind now.
There have been countless lies,
exaggerations and gross libels.
I, however, shall
tell you the truth.
Follow me.
This is the Arbuckle reception room.
This is Lowell Sherman,
and this is Fred Fischbach.
They're Roscoe's
travelling companions.
Lowell's bedroom is off to the left,
and Fred is sharing with Roscoe
off to the right.
And I'm standing in the reception
room between the two bedrooms.
Prohibition had become law in 1920,
but had very little effect
in San Francisco.
It was known as an open town.
In fact, many bars never closed
throughout the entire
prohibition era.
Some time on Sunday morning, Roscoe
put a call in to a local nightclub.
Within half an hour,
there was a knock at his door,
and Roscoe takes delivery of
a case of bootleg booze.
Roscoe exits into his bedroom.
At 11:00, a friend of Fred Fischbach
arrives at the Arbuckle suite.
KNOCK ON THE DOOR
This man, a dress salesman,
tells Roscoe that he's just seen
an actress called Virginia Rappe
at his hotel,
and wonders if he knows her.
Roscoe does,
and Fred Fischbach phones Virginia
and invites her over.
Virginia Rappe was a bit-part player
who was yet to achieve the giddy
heights of fame and fortune.
Roscoe invites her into what was
quickly becoming a party -
a party Roscoe didn't
particularly want.
Waiting downstairs in the hotel
lobby was a woman who Virginia had
only met the day before,
one Maude Delmont.
Shortly after arriving herself,
Virginia phoned down to the lobby
and invited Maude up to the suite.
David Yallop was the first writer
to properly investigate
the Arbuckle case.
He quickly focused on Maude Delmont.
Her record before this party is that
she's known as a bigamist.
She's into extortion, blackmail,
a quite unsavoury person.
Yes, yes. I mean, not somebody
that you'd want to upset
in particular areas.
I think the only crime I've found
that she hadn't committed
was probably murder.
I think everything else,
she was up for.
And certainly,
in this she saw an opportunity
to make large amounts of money.
This woman, Maude Delmont, is
the real villain of the piece.
All the major players are
now in place.
Now, the tragedy can unfold.
MUSIC PLAYS
The party that Roscoe
hadn't particularly wanted is
getting into full swing.
Other people, hearing that there is
a gathering in Arbuckle's suite,
turn up uninvited.
After an hour or two
of heavy drinking,
Maude catches the eye
of Lowell Sherman.
He follows her into his bathroom.
After more alcohol is consumed,
Virginia feels unwell and heads
for the bathroom adjoining
Lowell Sherman's bedroom.
But Maude Delmont and Lowell Sherman
are busy, and Maude tells Virginia
to use the other bathroom
adjoining the other bedroom.
She passes through the living
room and into Roscoe's bathroom,
where she's physically sick.
A few minutes later, Roscoe,
who has an afternoon appointment,
makes his excuses
and leaves the party.
He finds Virginia,
assumes she's had too much to drink,
and places her on the bed.
He then shaves and has a quick bath
in preparation for going out.
This takes ten minutes.
When he finishes, he sees that
Virginia has been sick again,
and he quickly tells
the other guests.
This girl is really sick in here.
I think she needs some help.
Roscoe phones down
to the front desk.
Lowell Sherman and Maude Delmont
come from the other bedroom
to see what's going on.
The hotel doctor arrives
and examines Virginia
and concludes that she is suffering
from excess alcohol.
Later, a female nurse will
also examine her
and find no evidence
of any physical injury.
Nevertheless, Virginia's
condition worsened,
but she was not taken to hospital
for another three days,
where, 24 hours later, she died.
She was 27 years old.
But what did she die of?
To understand what happened
to Virginia Rappe, I asked
a leading Californian physician,
Dr Leslie Kaplan,
to examine
the medical records of the time.
What was wrong with her? What was
she suffering from, do you think?
As things go on and the doctors
see her, we hear about her abdomen,
her stomach area,
being very, very tender.
The doctors had referred to it
as being an acute abdomen.
An acute abdomen with a fever
means usually
what we call a perforated viscous.
That means some internal organ has
exploded, usually from infection,
but it can be from other things.
In a young woman, there are several
different things that can happen.
So, one of them is appendicitis.
Appendicitis will show up
with a high fever,
abdominal pain, a rigid abdomen
and sometimes fever to delirium.
So will an infection
in the female tubes,
what's called a tubo-ovarian abscess.
So, between the uterus and the ovary
there's a tube
called the fallopian tube,
and if it gets an infection in it,
that can rupture,
and that can leak into the abdomen,
cause peritonitis
and an acute abdomen.
An ectopic pregnancy,
so a pregnancy stuck in the tube,
can also rupture
and do the same thing.
But whatever Virginia was
suffering from,
she was taken to
the wrong kind of hospital.
The fact that she was taken
rather than to a hospital
to a more of a maternity sanatorium,
where she eventually died,
and then when an autopsy was done
at that maternity hospital
and her remains then
were returned to the coroner,
it appears that all of her
pelvic organs had been removed
at the maternity hospital
prior to her being presented
back to the coroner.
Does that suggest anything?
Well, it would suggest
possibly an illegal abortion
as being the cause of her injury.
If the internal organs are removed,
you're destroying the evidence
of that.
It surely seems
that way in terms of...
As I say, that's the information
that we have,
and that to me is
kind of the smoking gun.
Why else would the people
at the maternity hospital,
when they released the body
back to the coroner,
not provide the organs that might
have been injured at such a time
and might identify that as a cause?
So, definitely an illegal autopsy,
possibly to cover up
an illegal abortion.
When Virginia Rappe died,
Roscoe was back home in Hollywood.
The last time he had seen Virginia
at the St Francis Hotel
in San Francisco,
he, like everybody else
present, thought
she'd simply had too much to drink.
He'd made his way back home
thinking that she had received
adequate medical care.
When Virginia died,
Maude Delmont took centre stage.
I've not seen that shot
of her before. There she is there.
As you say, she's always
pretty grim-faced.
So, what was the story that
Maude was putting across
once Virginia died?
It was the beauty and the beast.
It was a man weighing in
at about 266lbs, and this waif
of a little girl there.
He violated her, he lay on her
and burst her bladder.
That was the kind of story
that you would hear.
Maude Delmont's
the source of all these stories.
Who did she first tell
this story to?
Anyone that would listen.
Preferably if they'd got a uniform.
And the police believed it -
took it hook, line and sinker.
This is how her story
first appeared in the press.
Remember, when Virginia first fell
ill at the party, Maude Delmont was
in Lowell Sherman's bathroom with
a busy reception room in between.
She couldn't possibly have heard
screams from Arbuckle's bedroom.
People who were
much nearer heard nothing.
When Roscoe returned voluntarily
to San Francisco
to be questioned
about the St Francis hotel party,
he must have thought it would be
a simple matter to clear up.
He had no involvement
in the girl's death,
and was shocked by
the hysteria that greeted him.
Women's groups stormed
the courthouse,
appalled by the stories
they had read.
The police, caught up
in this public mood of vengeance,
arrested Roscoe without
a shred of evidence against him.
He was charged with murder.
Roscoe Arbuckle was facing
the fight of his life.
If found guilty of murder,
he'd be sentenced to death.
If he looked over San Francisco Bay,
he couldn't help but notice
the island of Alcatraz.
On that island there's a prison,
and in that prison an electric
chair, ready and waiting.
This photograph was taken
moments after Roscoe was charged.
And one powerful man who wanted
to make the charge stick
was Matthew Brady.
Brady was District Attorney.
He was out of town
when it happened, so he comes back
to this madness where they've
already charged him with murder.
He doesn't stop
and evaluate the evidence,
he just jumps on this because Brady,
I think, had a different agenda.
He was a political animal. I think
he saw that if you attached yourself
to this case and were successful,
he could become
Governor of California.
He might even make a run
for the White House.
I definitely believe that
that applied in this man's thinking.
On Monday September 12th 1921,
Matthew Brady's name was
all over the newspapers.
Perhaps now realising that there was
no credible evidence against Roscoe,
he elected to fight the case in
the press as well as the courtroom.
The papers were more than happy
to continue the gross fiction,
particularly those published
by the Hearst Corporation.
Brady had a very powerful ally in
press baron William Randolph Hearst.
At his peak, Hearst owned
nearly 50 newspapers, magazines
and periodicals.
The Hearst newspapers faked
this photograph of Roscoe,
painting prison bars
across his face.
The public believed
this was a genuine photo.
Hearst realised there was
an enormous profit to be made
from the Arbuckle case.
Hearst often boasted that the
Arbuckle story sold more newspapers
than any other single event
since the sinking of the Lusitania,
which had brought America
into the First World War.
The public's reaction to
Arbuckle's indictment was immediate.
Whipped up by a sensational
press and various pressure groups,
the public no longer saw
Roscoe as a loveable fat man,
but instead saw a gross monster.
The judge ruled that Arbuckle could
be charged with first-degree murder.
Later, that charge was
dropped to manslaughter.
Roscoe's friends stood by him.
Buster Keaton wanted to give
evidence as a character witness,
but was told by
Roscoe's lawyers that
San Francisco was so anti-Hollywood
that if Keaton appeared in court,
his own career could be at risk.
Charlie Chaplin, visiting London,
was also asked
about Roscoe's arrest.
Charlie said, "I simply cannot
believe it, and I cannot believe
"that Roscoe had anything
to do with Miss Rappe's death.
"I know Roscoe to be
a genial, easygoing type
"that would not hurt a fly."
Chaplin's words went
unreported in America.
They didn't fit the way
the story was unfolding.
When the trial began,
Maude Delmont was considered
such an unreliable witness,
she was never called to the stand.
Here is Roscoe photographed in
the courtroom, giving his testimony.
The jury believed him -
from one member,
a Mrs Helen Hubbard,
who said in the jury room that
Arbuckle was definitely guilty,
and nothing would change her mind.
In this photograph of the jury,
Mrs Hubbard hides her face from
the camera, perhaps in shame.
It later emerged that
her husband was an attorney
with connections
to Matthew Brady's office.
The trial ended with a hung jury.
Roscoe Arbuckle would have to
undergo a second trial.
His legal team then made
an horrendous mistake.
Believing that Roscoe had proved
his innocence in the first trial,
they saw no reason to call him
to testify in the second.
This decision did not
impress the jury.
This time, they voted 8-4 in
favour of guilty, another hung jury.
At the third Arbuckle trial,
Virginia's medical history was
revealed for the first time.
A series of abortions had ruined
her health from an early age.
A doctor's report made it clear that
Virginia Rappe had not been injured
in any way consistent with assault.
Arbuckle was acquitted
at the third trial.
The foreman of the jury read out
a written apology,
an apology unprecedented
in American legal history.
It read, "Acquittal is not
enough for Roscoe Arbuckle.
"We feel that
a great injustice has been done him.
"There was not the slightest proof
produced to connect him in any way
"with the commission of a crime.
"He was manly throughout the case,
"and told a straightforward story
which we all believe.
"We wish him success, and hope
that the American people will take
"the judgment of 14 men and women
"that Roscoe Arbuckle is entirely
innocent and free from all blame."
Here, the jury members are proud to
be photographed with an innocent man
who was clearly immensely relieved.
It must have seemed
Roscoe's troubles were over.
His Hollywood friends had
never doubted him.
Charlie Chaplin stood by him.
And so did Buster Keaton.
But outside
this loyal circle of friends,
the real power in Hollywood lay
in the hands of
ruthless businessmen,
men such as Adolph Zukor, head
of Paramount Pictures, who had been
the unwitting stooge and the butt of
the joke at Roscoe's dinner party.
Zukor and other producers were
determined at any cost to protect
their hugely-profitable industry
from outside interference.
By the time of Roscoe's acquittal
in 1922, the federal government
and 36 states were considering
enacting laws
against the movie business.
Banks were withholding credit.
The powerful lobbyists
that had successfully prohibited
the sale of alcohol were
gunning for Hollywood.
A nervous film industry decided to
regulate itself.
They needed the right man to
help them fend off censorship,
and they decided on William H Hays.
Once chairman
of the Republican Party,
Hays had served in government
as Postmaster General.
Some people said he had
the appearance of an anxious rabbit.
As a teetotaller and a church elder,
he was the ideal head
of the newly-formed Motion Picture
Producers and Directors Association.
He was paid $100,000 a year to stop
individual states banning films.
And sitting next to him is
Adolph Zukor.
On April 18th 1922,
six days after the acquittal,
Will Hays, the man appointed
to help clean up Hollywood,
banned Roscoe Arbuckle's films
from the screen.
Despite his total innocence,
Hollywood needed a scapegoat.
And Roscoe was hung out to dry.
When Hays banned him,
that would have been unbelievable.
After what you've just achieved,
which is total exoneration
of your career, your reputation,
everything has been
given back to you,
"No, actually, Roscoe,
we lied about that.
"We had our fingers crossed
when we said you were innocent,
"cos we really want to
make you guilty,
"and Mr Hays wants to
make you guilty,
"because he doesn't really want to
see this job that he's got,
"which is going to get
even more wealthy for him,
"more money will be
generated for him..."
And this industry that
Mr Zukor and his friends...
They don't care a crap now
about Roscoe.
He's got to be cut off, he's got to
be removed from the body, hasn't he?
Amputated. Amputated, yes,
I like that.
And you know, "If we see him
in the street, we'll say hi,
"but we might not say hi."
Roscoe was a broken man.
He had separated from his wife Minta
a few years before the San Francisco
party, and although she stood by him
in the courtroom,
they went their separate ways
at the end of the trial.
He no longer had his big salary, and
he was forced to sell his big house,
which once rocked with laughter,
to pay legal bills.
His friends were appalled
by Arbuckle's treatment,
and pressure was put on Hays
to lift the screen ban,
which he did
towards the end of 1922.
But the damage had already
been done.
The negative publicity
had been so intense
that Roscoe never made
another appearance
on the silent screen -
with one exception.
In Go West, director Buster Keaton
places Roscoe Arbuckle,
dressed in drag,
in the very centre of this shot.
And at the back of this one, too.
Then, a little more riskily,
Buster goes to a mid shot,
where, for a moment,
Roscoe is recognisable.
The lift goes up. When it
comes down, Roscoe isn't there.
He's been replaced by an actress
who looks nothing like him.
Even his great friend Buster Keaton
couldn't risk
putting a close-up of
Roscoe Arbuckle into his film.
In that same year, 1925,
Charlie in The Gold Rush paid
his own discreet tribute to Roscoe.
In 1918, Roscoe had invented
this piece of comic business,
mimicking Charlie's distinctive walk
with two bread rolls.
Charlie remembered the gag,
and embellished it further.
Although Roscoe couldn't expect
to find work as a film actor,
he did as a director.
Working behind the camera,
using the pseudonym William Goodrich
kept him employed in the industry.
In this film directed by him,
we first see a country boy preparing
for a big trip to the big city.
We then see the farm,
the rustic setting.
The father runs over.
And then...
Whilst Roscoe was directing others,
Will H Hays was still
doing his best,
in his anxious, rabbit-like way,
to tell the rest of America
how wonderful Hollywood was.
Last year, 115 million persons
every week attended
the motion-picture theatres
in the United States.
This was nearly three times as great
as the 40 million weekly attendance
in 1922.
Such an endorsement from the American
people could only have come
to a form of entertainment
essentially wholesome
and responsive to
the needs of the public.
Hays introduced the stipulation
that put a morality clause
into every Hollywood contract.
If an actor's off-screen behaviour
reflected badly on his employer,
that actor's contract
could be terminated for
bringing the studio into disrepute.
Around the time of the
Arbuckle trial,
other Hollywood scandals emerged.
Actor Wallace Reid became
addicted to morphine, after
being prescribed it by a studio
doctor following a painful injury.
He died in a sanatorium in 1923.
His widow made a film called
Human Wreckage, attacking drug use.
Hays gave it his full support.
Later, Hays brought in
on-screen regulations.
Married couples' beds
could not be nearer than 21 inches.
No kiss could last for
more than three seconds.
One, two, three...
And women could not be seen
drinking -
although this was later relaxed.
This self-censorship
would last nearly 40 years.
Some Hollywood directors
like Cecil B DeMille
had long been getting
round this moralising climate
by dressing sex and sadism up
in a bit of history.
In these films, sinners are
punished for their excesses.
In Manslaughter, DeMille
compared the habits of modern youth
with orgies in ancient Rome.
AGNES DeMILLE: I think he was filming
his own daydreams.
He really DID like
voluptuous young women.
He really did like them all
rolling around in these beds.
I think it's extraordinary -
but then I'm not a man, you see.
I don't know, I mean,
maybe men like that sort of thing.
Women rolling around bulls...
Then he finally hit on the formula
of extreme religious fervour
and interest in God
with extreme sexuality -
and of course, it's almost
irreplaceable as a combo.
It would be in the Bible
that DeMille
found his greatest inspiration.
Cecil B DeMille announced that his
next production would be his biggest
and most ambitious to date.
The Ten Commandments, filmed here
at the Guadeloupe sand dunes,
150 miles from Hollywood.
The Ten Commandments gave the
director a chance to play God,
to film miracles.
Here, he parts the Red Sea...
Cecil B DeMille built a movie set
that still boggles the imagination.
The location was spread
over 25 square miles.
2,500 people were employed
to build the costumes and the props.
16 miles of cloth,
three tonnes of leather...
They built 250 wooden chariots -
to say nothing of
the imposing structures
that emerged all around it.
1,600 craftsmen constructed a temple
800 feet wide and 120 foot tall,
flanked by four 40-tonne statues
of the Pharaoh Rameses II.
When location filming was over,
Cecil B DeMille
had a massive problem -
what to do with the gigantic sets?
It would be too expensive to
transport them back to Los Angeles,
but he couldn't leave the sets
just standing around here
because another rival film company
might come along
and make its OWN biblical epic.
So, what they did was
they dug a 300-foot trench,
and buried the set
underneath the sand.
And the best part
of a century later,
the elements have revealed what
remains of the Pharaoh's kingdom.
And like that kingdom,
Roscoe Arbuckle's film career
had been covered over,
lost in the sands of time.
But ten years after his acquittal,
Roscoe was given an opportunity
to return to the screen.
Roscoe Arbuckle signed a contract
with Warner Brothers
to make six short comedies,
using his own name on screen
for the first time in ten years.
The films were successful -
so much so that on June 28th 1933,
he signed a contract
to make a feature film.
That night, he celebrated,
went home, went to bed...
..and died of a heart attack
in his sleep.
He was 46.
But he died knowing that he was
back at the top of the profession
that he loved so much.
His ashes were scattered here,
in the Pacific Ocean.
And Roscoe Arbuckle did finally
make it to the Walk of Fame.
Ah...
Here it is.
Here's Roscoe Arbuckle's star
on the Hollywood Walk of Fame...
'..unveiled in 1960,
nearly 30 years after he died.'
So let's remember
Roscoe Arbuckle this way.
This was the man Hollywood
studio bosses stabbed in the back,
and made a scapegoat
so they could brush aside criticisms
of excess and decadence
by saying, "Hey, look -
we got rid of Arbuckle."
Once Roscoe was out of the pictures,
the industry could
breathe a sigh of relief.
By the mid-1920s, the
Hollywood ship had been steadied.
Film stars stood on the upper deck
and took in their privileged
elevated views.
From their giddy vantage point,
these stars must have thought that
their destiny was assured - fated
to shine like diamonds for ever.
But, in the next part of our story,
the growth of the big studios
with their iron grip
on the industry,
they had much more to say
about the future of Hollywood.
And all the stars
could do...was twinkle.
the Orpheum Theatre, Los Angeles.
Built in 1926,
this picture palace gave
its audiences a real taste
of opulence.
And their idols,
the actors on the screen,
were literally larger than life.
These bright icons, 20 foot tall,
black and white, mute,
simultaneously appearing in
darkened rooms throughout the world
must have seemed like visiting gods.
Cinema had created a new class
of human being - the film star.
Audiences were enraptured by
this new phenomenon.
They had their favourites
who they wanted see again and again.
Once producers realised the impact
their stars were having
on the general public, they were
very keen to work with the press
in order to keep
those reputations spotless.
Soon, Hollywood would become known
throughout the world
as a byword for glamour.
But outside of Hollywood,
the rest of America regarded it
as a rather sinful,
degenerate hellhole.
A place of dubious morals.
Mary Pickford, the biggest
female star in the world, was
desperately in love with leading
film actor Douglas Fairbanks.
They were married,
but not to each other.
Mary feared rejection from her fans
if she became a divorced woman.
Another prominent actor, Wallace
Reid, was addicted to morphine.
Others battled cocaine and alcohol.
Hollywood certainly had a very
relaxed attitude towards drugs.
In this bad-taste comedy,
Douglas Fairbanks plays a character
called Detective Coke Ennyday.
But some campaigning
religious groups found the movies
no laughing matter.
They sought tighter controls,
even censorship.
And soon those forces
would taste success,
as scandal after scandal threatened
the very existence of Hollywood.
And their biggest scapegoat
would be Roscoe Arbuckle.
He worked under the name of
Fatty Arbuckle, a name he disliked.
His friends called him Roscoe.
Roscoe was one of American cinema's
earliest and greatest comedians,
and one of its biggest stars.
He was also a friend and champion
to two of the best loved
film comedians of all time -
Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton.
And in 1920, Roscoe was
the highest-paid star in Hollywood.
He was a lot more famous than many
of the people whose names are cast
in the cement outside Grauman's
Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles.
But Roscoe's prints aren't here.
He's missing.
Why? What happened to him?
Today if people are aware
of his name,
they wrongly believe him guilty
of some terrible crime.
But he was a totally innocent man.
Roscoe was destroyed by the dark,
ugly side of Hollywood,
and what happened to him
would change the movies
for decades to come.
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By the mid-1910s, Hollywood's stars
had become the driving force behind
the motion-picture industry, and
the most famous people in the world.
Roscoe Arbuckle's visit to London
was sufficiently newsworthy
to be covered by a newsreel company.
This was Roscoe's
last carefree winter.
Roscoe Arbuckle was
at the height of his career,
reportedly earning $1 million a year
from Paramount Pictures.
Roscoe could claim to be among the
very first American film comedians
to direct his own work.
He could also claim that
Harold Lloyd, Buster Keaton
and Charlie Chaplin all played
supporting roles in Arbuckle films.
This is Charlie Chaplin
on the right,
without his usual tramp make-up.
And here's Buster Keaton,
helping with the luggage.
Roscoe was drawn to vaudeville
from an early age,
but couldn't always afford
to go to the theatre.
In the summer of 1895, Roscoe was
playing around the stage door
when a visiting producer saw him
and grabbed him for a production
that he was staging that week.
They were short of an eight-year-old
boy, and Roscoe fitted the bill.
From then on in,
he appeared in all the various shows
that appeared in that theatre.
One week he might be
a hypnotist's assistant,
another, playing a small but
vital role in a Victorian melodrama.
Roscoe would later parody
small-town theatrical values
in the film Back Stage.
In 1899m Roscoe's mother died,
and shortly after,
he was abandoned by his father.
The teenage Roscoe survived
by doing odd jobs in a hotel.
He was heard singing
in the kitchens one day
and it was suggested he should enter
the local talent contest.
He did, and he won.
It was the beginning of
his vaudeville career.
In 1908, Roscoe married
a fellow vaudeville performer,
a singer called Minta Durfee.
Within five years, he had joined
Mack Sennett's
Keystone Film Company.
Roscoe quickly became
the biggest comedian at the studios.
He impressed a new young English
comedian called Charlie Chaplin,
who joined the studios a year later.
Here, Charlie's improvisation gives
his Keystone colleague
a good giggle.
The Keystone studios were
just behind me here.
Mack Sennett, the boss,
had a great eye for talent.
Most major comedians of the silent
era worked for him
at one time or another.
But Roscoe stood out.
Roscoe Arbuckle was a big man,
but physically very adroit.
Within a few months of
joining Keystone,
he was directing his own movies.
Amidst the slapstick,
Roscoe also introduced elements
of quiet, gentle sentiment
that played very effectively.
That nearly went on!
Here, Roscoe's shadow
lightly kisses Mabel Normand.
Mabel and Roscoe made a series
of highly-successful
comedy films together.
These films were the forerunners
of today's situation comedies.
They were initially cast
as a working-class couple,
but as their fame grew,
so did their social standing.
Here, Mabel and Roscoe have
clearly gone up in the world,
with sophisticated sets
and equally-sophisticated lighting.
In 1915, San Francisco invited
Mabel and Roscoe
as guests of honour
to view the World Trade Fair.
The Mayor of San Francisco
affords them
the status of visiting dignitaries.
This extremely-rare newsreel footage
of Roscoe visiting London in 1920
gives us a valuable glimpse of
the man behind the screen character.
Particularly his sense of fun.
Keep your eyes on the cigarette.
Film stars were now bigger than
the films they appeared in.
A publicity machine grew up
to feed the public's hunger.
Some of the stories were outlandish.
For example, Roscoe Arbuckle was
said to have met Pancho Villa,
the Mexican revolutionary,
in El Paso, Texas.
The story goes that Roscoe Arbuckle
and Pancho Villa's men were
throwing fruit at each other
across a large body of water.
At one point,
Roscoe picked up a bunch of bananas,
threw them across the water,
knocked a bandit off his horse.
Now, you read this story
in all the histories of the period,
but, of course, it's not true.
Just think about it for a minute.
How hard would you have to throw
a bunch of bananas
to knock a seasoned bandit
off a horse?
Quite hard, is the answer.
But it's one of those stories
that came up at the time
because fans were eager to hear
about their favourites,
and it didn't matter
if the story was made up.
It was good publicity.
The practice of making up
newspaper stories would later
have a much darker side.
But for now, any publicity was
good publicity.
It brought people back to
the cinema time and time again
and helped generate unbelievable
profits for the movie business.
Roscoe himself was to earn
$1 million a year
when he switched studios
to Paramount Pictures.
He bought a mansion,
and it was here that
his sense of fun led to
one of Roscoe's most celebrated
practical jokes.
Perhaps we should go in.
Wow!
This is how a movie star lived
in the 1910s.
It's extraordinary to be here.
This is the dining room.
I first read about this room when
I was 13 years old. To be here is...
Well, there's the kitchen
through there.
And look at this.
It's like walking back 100 years.
It's remained...
I mean, look at
this detail here, look.
There's a sort of phone system
for contacting people.
What's does it say?
"Guest room one, the garage, sitting
room, master bedroom, boudoir."
I mean, this is all...
BELL RINGS
There was a dinner party
happened here once,
a long time ago, and this kitchen
was very much part of the story.
To help us restage
this dinner party,
I shall play the part of
a particularly-dumb waiter.
The guest of honour is Adolph Zukor.
He is boss of Paramount Pictures,
and Roscoe Arbuckle is now
Paramount's biggest star.
Zukor, a man who didn't see
the point of a sense of humour,
was bemused by the waiter's
clumsy attempt at serving food.
Roscoe apologised. Zukor understood.
PLATES SMASH
Zukor hated
the entire embarrassing experience.
PLATES SMASH
What Adolph Zukor didn't realise was
that this whole dinner party was
a practical joke on him,
and everybody around the table was
in on it.
The waiter had been played
by Buster Keaton,
who turned up as a guest
about half an hour later,
sat here next to Adolph Zukor,
who recognised him as the waiter,
and then realised he'd been had.
THEY LAUGH
Roscoe!
Roscoe could afford to play
a practical joke on his boss.
He was making millions
for Paramount,
and was immensely popular.
I'm standing by the steps of Federal
Hall on Wall Street in New York.
If you want some idea of
how popular film stars were in 1918,
have a look at this same scene with
Charlie Chaplin, instead of myself,
making a personal appearance.
This is a rally to raise money
for American troops
in the First World War.
Also with Charlie Chaplin were
Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks,
who addressed huge crowds
as they travelled round America.
They were having an affair
with each other at the time,
but as they were both married,
they had to keep this rather quiet.
Being expected to behave
in a moral way by their fans
may have been inconvenient
for Doug and Mary,
but there was plenty of upside
to being a huge star.
Paramount had tempted
Roscoe Arbuckle away from Keystone
by setting him up
with his own film unit.
His first Paramount film,
The Butcher Boy,
featured a young comedian
fresh from the vaudeville stage -
Buster Keaton.
Roscoe took Buster under his wing
and generously taught him
the intricate techniques of
film comedy, such as how to react
to a huge bag of flour
hitting you in the face.
This joke was captured in one take.
Buster was told not to worry
about the bag of flour -
just turn, and it'll be there.
Their film partnership led to
a lifelong friendship.
Less than a year after
Roscoe acquired his own film unit,
Charlie Chaplin was given
his own purpose-built studio.
We are at the Jim Henson Company,
best known as the creators
of Fraggle Rock, The Dark Crystal,
Farscape and the Muppets.
This studio has
a very colourful history.
It was built in 1918
for Charlie Chaplin
by the First National film company.
In exchange,
Charlie promised eight short films.
Rather optimistically, he hoped that
First National would accept
as one of those films a film about
the building of this very studio.
They didn't.
The film, How to Make Movies,
does offer up
the only footage we have
of Charlie directing.
In just five years,
Chaplin had gone from being
a successful but fairly anonymous
stage actor
to becoming a studio boss
with million-pound budgets
and complete artistic freedom.
He oversaw every aspect
of production.
This new studio inspired Charlie
to greater heights.
His second film for
First National, Shoulder Arms,
was noted for its artistic daring.
A World War I comedy,
set in the trenches,
made while that war was
still being fought.
It was a worldwide smash hit, as
well as being an artistic triumph.
This fluid camera movement was
way beyond
the capabilities of
a Keystone comedy.
The authentic trench setting,
with its attention to detail,
gives the film
a documentary flavour.
The other actor is Sydney Chaplin,
Charlie's brother.
The film was so popular
with the Allied troops,
it was shown to injured soldiers
in military hospitals.
Shoulder Arms was made
in this studio here.
Look at the size of this place.
In just four years, American
screen comedy had come of age.
Just think of all the masterpieces
that were made in this room.
For The Gold Rush,
Charlie created a snowy landscape,
extraordinary for the time, that
made the impossible shot possible.
As well as family films,
Hollywood was putting material
onto the screen that shocked
the more conservative elements
of American society.
Their bete noire was director
Cecil B DeMille, seen here on set.
Cecil B DeMille understood that his
audiences wanted glamour, sensation,
as an escape from the humdrum
reality of everyday life.
And you can't get
more anti-humdrum than this.
Here, Cecil dresses his actors
and his set in glass.
Glass that does not reflect
the real world.
I saw him directing,
and he had the most tremendous energy
of anyone I've ever known.
I always felt I had to give
an absolute reason for being a woman,
for being alive, for being there,
for occupying air space.
A deeply eccentric man,
he ruled his movie sets
with a rod of iron.
One of the actresses who
worked with the great one was
Angela Lansbury,
in Samson And Delilah.
One director that you worked with
is Cecil B DeMille. Yes.
I'd be very interested to hear
what he was like.
As the expression goes,
as my mother in her Irish way would
say, he kind of fancied himself as...
The great director.
The great director. Yes, he did.
And could be quite frightening
at times.
He demanded a certain, you know...
..a performance from everybody,
and that went to everybody.
Any person who worked on a set
for DeMille,
he noted, he knew,
and he watched everything.
There wasn't anything that
he just took for granted.
He never left things to other people,
although he had a lot of assistants,
you know?
He had a man who was always there
with a chair,
ready to shove it under his bottom.
So if he decided
just to sit down,
the chair would have to be there?
Yes, and it would always be there.
And same with a microphone.
He always had a microphone handy,
cos he liked to make
loud announcements,
and he wanted everybody to hear.
Quiet, quiet, quiet.
We're trying to take a scene here.
We've got 4,000 people on this set.
Now keep quiet and
attend to your business.
In 1916, Gloria Swanson was
co-starring with a dog
in a Mack Sennett comedy.
But three years later,
Cecil B DeMille had transformed
her screen image. Here, a naked
Gloria is being helped into a bath.
Film was now the dominant
cultural force on the planet.
People aspired to look like
their favourite glamorous stars.
They copied their hairstyles,
the way they dressed.
Female fashions particularly
were influenced
by what they saw on the screen.
If cinema was shaping fashion,
it was also changing people's
perception of acceptable behaviour.
Cheeky moments like this
in Male And Female
outraged powerful
conservative forces,
who saw Hollywood
as one big, sordid pit of sin.
And they weren't just concerned
that cinema audiences would start
glancing at each other's ankles.
Moral crusaders and social reformers
had achieved a stunning victory
in 1920 when the sale of alcohol was
prohibited in America.
It was an impossible law to police.
Bootleg liquor supplied by gangsters
found thirsty customers in illegal
drinking dens, or speakeasies.
But having secured prohibition,
these campaigners looked to curtail
Hollywood's excesses.
Some strongly believed that films,
like alcohol, could be banned.
It happened briefly
in New York in 1908,
when the mayor had ordered
all cinemas to be closed.
Hollywood was worried.
The voices calling for censorship
were getting stronger.
It didn't help that at just this
moment Mary Pickford announced that
she had divorced from
her husband, Owen Moore.
Many people considered
divorce shameful.
She swore that
she would never marry again.
26 days later, she married
Douglas Fairbanks, also a divorcee.
Other film stars kept
their marital problems private.
Roscoe Arbuckle was formally
separated from his wife Minta,
who now lived in New York.
But his career was going
from strength to strength.
He made the move into feature films,
adapting his style
away from pure slapstick
and into more thoughtful,
carefully-plotted comedies.
Paramount, astounded
at the millions pouring in,
had pushed Roscoe Arbuckle to make
three separate
feature films simultaneously.
Upon their completion in the late
summer of 1921, he needed a break.
He left Hollywood behind and
ventured out into the real world.
Roscoe Arbuckle had been
working extremely hard.
He'd made six feature films
in just seven months,
and these films were enormously
profitable for Paramount Pictures.
Nevertheless, Roscoe needed a break.
On September 3rd 1921,
he left Los Angeles in his
luxury car, along with two friends.
They headed towards San Francisco.
They arrived here at the St Francis
hotel late Saturday afternoon.
Roscoe Arbuckle and
his two travelling companions,
Fred Fischbach and Lowell Sherman,
checked into their rooms.
I've got exactly the same rooms
nearly 90 years later.
I'm on the 12th floor
of the St Francis Hotel.
The Arbuckle group hired
three rooms -
a reception room with
a single bedroom either side.
If you have any preconceptions about
what happened in these three rooms,
wipe them from your mind now.
There have been countless lies,
exaggerations and gross libels.
I, however, shall
tell you the truth.
Follow me.
This is the Arbuckle reception room.
This is Lowell Sherman,
and this is Fred Fischbach.
They're Roscoe's
travelling companions.
Lowell's bedroom is off to the left,
and Fred is sharing with Roscoe
off to the right.
And I'm standing in the reception
room between the two bedrooms.
Prohibition had become law in 1920,
but had very little effect
in San Francisco.
It was known as an open town.
In fact, many bars never closed
throughout the entire
prohibition era.
Some time on Sunday morning, Roscoe
put a call in to a local nightclub.
Within half an hour,
there was a knock at his door,
and Roscoe takes delivery of
a case of bootleg booze.
Roscoe exits into his bedroom.
At 11:00, a friend of Fred Fischbach
arrives at the Arbuckle suite.
KNOCK ON THE DOOR
This man, a dress salesman,
tells Roscoe that he's just seen
an actress called Virginia Rappe
at his hotel,
and wonders if he knows her.
Roscoe does,
and Fred Fischbach phones Virginia
and invites her over.
Virginia Rappe was a bit-part player
who was yet to achieve the giddy
heights of fame and fortune.
Roscoe invites her into what was
quickly becoming a party -
a party Roscoe didn't
particularly want.
Waiting downstairs in the hotel
lobby was a woman who Virginia had
only met the day before,
one Maude Delmont.
Shortly after arriving herself,
Virginia phoned down to the lobby
and invited Maude up to the suite.
David Yallop was the first writer
to properly investigate
the Arbuckle case.
He quickly focused on Maude Delmont.
Her record before this party is that
she's known as a bigamist.
She's into extortion, blackmail,
a quite unsavoury person.
Yes, yes. I mean, not somebody
that you'd want to upset
in particular areas.
I think the only crime I've found
that she hadn't committed
was probably murder.
I think everything else,
she was up for.
And certainly,
in this she saw an opportunity
to make large amounts of money.
This woman, Maude Delmont, is
the real villain of the piece.
All the major players are
now in place.
Now, the tragedy can unfold.
MUSIC PLAYS
The party that Roscoe
hadn't particularly wanted is
getting into full swing.
Other people, hearing that there is
a gathering in Arbuckle's suite,
turn up uninvited.
After an hour or two
of heavy drinking,
Maude catches the eye
of Lowell Sherman.
He follows her into his bathroom.
After more alcohol is consumed,
Virginia feels unwell and heads
for the bathroom adjoining
Lowell Sherman's bedroom.
But Maude Delmont and Lowell Sherman
are busy, and Maude tells Virginia
to use the other bathroom
adjoining the other bedroom.
She passes through the living
room and into Roscoe's bathroom,
where she's physically sick.
A few minutes later, Roscoe,
who has an afternoon appointment,
makes his excuses
and leaves the party.
He finds Virginia,
assumes she's had too much to drink,
and places her on the bed.
He then shaves and has a quick bath
in preparation for going out.
This takes ten minutes.
When he finishes, he sees that
Virginia has been sick again,
and he quickly tells
the other guests.
This girl is really sick in here.
I think she needs some help.
Roscoe phones down
to the front desk.
Lowell Sherman and Maude Delmont
come from the other bedroom
to see what's going on.
The hotel doctor arrives
and examines Virginia
and concludes that she is suffering
from excess alcohol.
Later, a female nurse will
also examine her
and find no evidence
of any physical injury.
Nevertheless, Virginia's
condition worsened,
but she was not taken to hospital
for another three days,
where, 24 hours later, she died.
She was 27 years old.
But what did she die of?
To understand what happened
to Virginia Rappe, I asked
a leading Californian physician,
Dr Leslie Kaplan,
to examine
the medical records of the time.
What was wrong with her? What was
she suffering from, do you think?
As things go on and the doctors
see her, we hear about her abdomen,
her stomach area,
being very, very tender.
The doctors had referred to it
as being an acute abdomen.
An acute abdomen with a fever
means usually
what we call a perforated viscous.
That means some internal organ has
exploded, usually from infection,
but it can be from other things.
In a young woman, there are several
different things that can happen.
So, one of them is appendicitis.
Appendicitis will show up
with a high fever,
abdominal pain, a rigid abdomen
and sometimes fever to delirium.
So will an infection
in the female tubes,
what's called a tubo-ovarian abscess.
So, between the uterus and the ovary
there's a tube
called the fallopian tube,
and if it gets an infection in it,
that can rupture,
and that can leak into the abdomen,
cause peritonitis
and an acute abdomen.
An ectopic pregnancy,
so a pregnancy stuck in the tube,
can also rupture
and do the same thing.
But whatever Virginia was
suffering from,
she was taken to
the wrong kind of hospital.
The fact that she was taken
rather than to a hospital
to a more of a maternity sanatorium,
where she eventually died,
and then when an autopsy was done
at that maternity hospital
and her remains then
were returned to the coroner,
it appears that all of her
pelvic organs had been removed
at the maternity hospital
prior to her being presented
back to the coroner.
Does that suggest anything?
Well, it would suggest
possibly an illegal abortion
as being the cause of her injury.
If the internal organs are removed,
you're destroying the evidence
of that.
It surely seems
that way in terms of...
As I say, that's the information
that we have,
and that to me is
kind of the smoking gun.
Why else would the people
at the maternity hospital,
when they released the body
back to the coroner,
not provide the organs that might
have been injured at such a time
and might identify that as a cause?
So, definitely an illegal autopsy,
possibly to cover up
an illegal abortion.
When Virginia Rappe died,
Roscoe was back home in Hollywood.
The last time he had seen Virginia
at the St Francis Hotel
in San Francisco,
he, like everybody else
present, thought
she'd simply had too much to drink.
He'd made his way back home
thinking that she had received
adequate medical care.
When Virginia died,
Maude Delmont took centre stage.
I've not seen that shot
of her before. There she is there.
As you say, she's always
pretty grim-faced.
So, what was the story that
Maude was putting across
once Virginia died?
It was the beauty and the beast.
It was a man weighing in
at about 266lbs, and this waif
of a little girl there.
He violated her, he lay on her
and burst her bladder.
That was the kind of story
that you would hear.
Maude Delmont's
the source of all these stories.
Who did she first tell
this story to?
Anyone that would listen.
Preferably if they'd got a uniform.
And the police believed it -
took it hook, line and sinker.
This is how her story
first appeared in the press.
Remember, when Virginia first fell
ill at the party, Maude Delmont was
in Lowell Sherman's bathroom with
a busy reception room in between.
She couldn't possibly have heard
screams from Arbuckle's bedroom.
People who were
much nearer heard nothing.
When Roscoe returned voluntarily
to San Francisco
to be questioned
about the St Francis hotel party,
he must have thought it would be
a simple matter to clear up.
He had no involvement
in the girl's death,
and was shocked by
the hysteria that greeted him.
Women's groups stormed
the courthouse,
appalled by the stories
they had read.
The police, caught up
in this public mood of vengeance,
arrested Roscoe without
a shred of evidence against him.
He was charged with murder.
Roscoe Arbuckle was facing
the fight of his life.
If found guilty of murder,
he'd be sentenced to death.
If he looked over San Francisco Bay,
he couldn't help but notice
the island of Alcatraz.
On that island there's a prison,
and in that prison an electric
chair, ready and waiting.
This photograph was taken
moments after Roscoe was charged.
And one powerful man who wanted
to make the charge stick
was Matthew Brady.
Brady was District Attorney.
He was out of town
when it happened, so he comes back
to this madness where they've
already charged him with murder.
He doesn't stop
and evaluate the evidence,
he just jumps on this because Brady,
I think, had a different agenda.
He was a political animal. I think
he saw that if you attached yourself
to this case and were successful,
he could become
Governor of California.
He might even make a run
for the White House.
I definitely believe that
that applied in this man's thinking.
On Monday September 12th 1921,
Matthew Brady's name was
all over the newspapers.
Perhaps now realising that there was
no credible evidence against Roscoe,
he elected to fight the case in
the press as well as the courtroom.
The papers were more than happy
to continue the gross fiction,
particularly those published
by the Hearst Corporation.
Brady had a very powerful ally in
press baron William Randolph Hearst.
At his peak, Hearst owned
nearly 50 newspapers, magazines
and periodicals.
The Hearst newspapers faked
this photograph of Roscoe,
painting prison bars
across his face.
The public believed
this was a genuine photo.
Hearst realised there was
an enormous profit to be made
from the Arbuckle case.
Hearst often boasted that the
Arbuckle story sold more newspapers
than any other single event
since the sinking of the Lusitania,
which had brought America
into the First World War.
The public's reaction to
Arbuckle's indictment was immediate.
Whipped up by a sensational
press and various pressure groups,
the public no longer saw
Roscoe as a loveable fat man,
but instead saw a gross monster.
The judge ruled that Arbuckle could
be charged with first-degree murder.
Later, that charge was
dropped to manslaughter.
Roscoe's friends stood by him.
Buster Keaton wanted to give
evidence as a character witness,
but was told by
Roscoe's lawyers that
San Francisco was so anti-Hollywood
that if Keaton appeared in court,
his own career could be at risk.
Charlie Chaplin, visiting London,
was also asked
about Roscoe's arrest.
Charlie said, "I simply cannot
believe it, and I cannot believe
"that Roscoe had anything
to do with Miss Rappe's death.
"I know Roscoe to be
a genial, easygoing type
"that would not hurt a fly."
Chaplin's words went
unreported in America.
They didn't fit the way
the story was unfolding.
When the trial began,
Maude Delmont was considered
such an unreliable witness,
she was never called to the stand.
Here is Roscoe photographed in
the courtroom, giving his testimony.
The jury believed him -
from one member,
a Mrs Helen Hubbard,
who said in the jury room that
Arbuckle was definitely guilty,
and nothing would change her mind.
In this photograph of the jury,
Mrs Hubbard hides her face from
the camera, perhaps in shame.
It later emerged that
her husband was an attorney
with connections
to Matthew Brady's office.
The trial ended with a hung jury.
Roscoe Arbuckle would have to
undergo a second trial.
His legal team then made
an horrendous mistake.
Believing that Roscoe had proved
his innocence in the first trial,
they saw no reason to call him
to testify in the second.
This decision did not
impress the jury.
This time, they voted 8-4 in
favour of guilty, another hung jury.
At the third Arbuckle trial,
Virginia's medical history was
revealed for the first time.
A series of abortions had ruined
her health from an early age.
A doctor's report made it clear that
Virginia Rappe had not been injured
in any way consistent with assault.
Arbuckle was acquitted
at the third trial.
The foreman of the jury read out
a written apology,
an apology unprecedented
in American legal history.
It read, "Acquittal is not
enough for Roscoe Arbuckle.
"We feel that
a great injustice has been done him.
"There was not the slightest proof
produced to connect him in any way
"with the commission of a crime.
"He was manly throughout the case,
"and told a straightforward story
which we all believe.
"We wish him success, and hope
that the American people will take
"the judgment of 14 men and women
"that Roscoe Arbuckle is entirely
innocent and free from all blame."
Here, the jury members are proud to
be photographed with an innocent man
who was clearly immensely relieved.
It must have seemed
Roscoe's troubles were over.
His Hollywood friends had
never doubted him.
Charlie Chaplin stood by him.
And so did Buster Keaton.
But outside
this loyal circle of friends,
the real power in Hollywood lay
in the hands of
ruthless businessmen,
men such as Adolph Zukor, head
of Paramount Pictures, who had been
the unwitting stooge and the butt of
the joke at Roscoe's dinner party.
Zukor and other producers were
determined at any cost to protect
their hugely-profitable industry
from outside interference.
By the time of Roscoe's acquittal
in 1922, the federal government
and 36 states were considering
enacting laws
against the movie business.
Banks were withholding credit.
The powerful lobbyists
that had successfully prohibited
the sale of alcohol were
gunning for Hollywood.
A nervous film industry decided to
regulate itself.
They needed the right man to
help them fend off censorship,
and they decided on William H Hays.
Once chairman
of the Republican Party,
Hays had served in government
as Postmaster General.
Some people said he had
the appearance of an anxious rabbit.
As a teetotaller and a church elder,
he was the ideal head
of the newly-formed Motion Picture
Producers and Directors Association.
He was paid $100,000 a year to stop
individual states banning films.
And sitting next to him is
Adolph Zukor.
On April 18th 1922,
six days after the acquittal,
Will Hays, the man appointed
to help clean up Hollywood,
banned Roscoe Arbuckle's films
from the screen.
Despite his total innocence,
Hollywood needed a scapegoat.
And Roscoe was hung out to dry.
When Hays banned him,
that would have been unbelievable.
After what you've just achieved,
which is total exoneration
of your career, your reputation,
everything has been
given back to you,
"No, actually, Roscoe,
we lied about that.
"We had our fingers crossed
when we said you were innocent,
"cos we really want to
make you guilty,
"and Mr Hays wants to
make you guilty,
"because he doesn't really want to
see this job that he's got,
"which is going to get
even more wealthy for him,
"more money will be
generated for him..."
And this industry that
Mr Zukor and his friends...
They don't care a crap now
about Roscoe.
He's got to be cut off, he's got to
be removed from the body, hasn't he?
Amputated. Amputated, yes,
I like that.
And you know, "If we see him
in the street, we'll say hi,
"but we might not say hi."
Roscoe was a broken man.
He had separated from his wife Minta
a few years before the San Francisco
party, and although she stood by him
in the courtroom,
they went their separate ways
at the end of the trial.
He no longer had his big salary, and
he was forced to sell his big house,
which once rocked with laughter,
to pay legal bills.
His friends were appalled
by Arbuckle's treatment,
and pressure was put on Hays
to lift the screen ban,
which he did
towards the end of 1922.
But the damage had already
been done.
The negative publicity
had been so intense
that Roscoe never made
another appearance
on the silent screen -
with one exception.
In Go West, director Buster Keaton
places Roscoe Arbuckle,
dressed in drag,
in the very centre of this shot.
And at the back of this one, too.
Then, a little more riskily,
Buster goes to a mid shot,
where, for a moment,
Roscoe is recognisable.
The lift goes up. When it
comes down, Roscoe isn't there.
He's been replaced by an actress
who looks nothing like him.
Even his great friend Buster Keaton
couldn't risk
putting a close-up of
Roscoe Arbuckle into his film.
In that same year, 1925,
Charlie in The Gold Rush paid
his own discreet tribute to Roscoe.
In 1918, Roscoe had invented
this piece of comic business,
mimicking Charlie's distinctive walk
with two bread rolls.
Charlie remembered the gag,
and embellished it further.
Although Roscoe couldn't expect
to find work as a film actor,
he did as a director.
Working behind the camera,
using the pseudonym William Goodrich
kept him employed in the industry.
In this film directed by him,
we first see a country boy preparing
for a big trip to the big city.
We then see the farm,
the rustic setting.
The father runs over.
And then...
Whilst Roscoe was directing others,
Will H Hays was still
doing his best,
in his anxious, rabbit-like way,
to tell the rest of America
how wonderful Hollywood was.
Last year, 115 million persons
every week attended
the motion-picture theatres
in the United States.
This was nearly three times as great
as the 40 million weekly attendance
in 1922.
Such an endorsement from the American
people could only have come
to a form of entertainment
essentially wholesome
and responsive to
the needs of the public.
Hays introduced the stipulation
that put a morality clause
into every Hollywood contract.
If an actor's off-screen behaviour
reflected badly on his employer,
that actor's contract
could be terminated for
bringing the studio into disrepute.
Around the time of the
Arbuckle trial,
other Hollywood scandals emerged.
Actor Wallace Reid became
addicted to morphine, after
being prescribed it by a studio
doctor following a painful injury.
He died in a sanatorium in 1923.
His widow made a film called
Human Wreckage, attacking drug use.
Hays gave it his full support.
Later, Hays brought in
on-screen regulations.
Married couples' beds
could not be nearer than 21 inches.
No kiss could last for
more than three seconds.
One, two, three...
And women could not be seen
drinking -
although this was later relaxed.
This self-censorship
would last nearly 40 years.
Some Hollywood directors
like Cecil B DeMille
had long been getting
round this moralising climate
by dressing sex and sadism up
in a bit of history.
In these films, sinners are
punished for their excesses.
In Manslaughter, DeMille
compared the habits of modern youth
with orgies in ancient Rome.
AGNES DeMILLE: I think he was filming
his own daydreams.
He really DID like
voluptuous young women.
He really did like them all
rolling around in these beds.
I think it's extraordinary -
but then I'm not a man, you see.
I don't know, I mean,
maybe men like that sort of thing.
Women rolling around bulls...
Then he finally hit on the formula
of extreme religious fervour
and interest in God
with extreme sexuality -
and of course, it's almost
irreplaceable as a combo.
It would be in the Bible
that DeMille
found his greatest inspiration.
Cecil B DeMille announced that his
next production would be his biggest
and most ambitious to date.
The Ten Commandments, filmed here
at the Guadeloupe sand dunes,
150 miles from Hollywood.
The Ten Commandments gave the
director a chance to play God,
to film miracles.
Here, he parts the Red Sea...
Cecil B DeMille built a movie set
that still boggles the imagination.
The location was spread
over 25 square miles.
2,500 people were employed
to build the costumes and the props.
16 miles of cloth,
three tonnes of leather...
They built 250 wooden chariots -
to say nothing of
the imposing structures
that emerged all around it.
1,600 craftsmen constructed a temple
800 feet wide and 120 foot tall,
flanked by four 40-tonne statues
of the Pharaoh Rameses II.
When location filming was over,
Cecil B DeMille
had a massive problem -
what to do with the gigantic sets?
It would be too expensive to
transport them back to Los Angeles,
but he couldn't leave the sets
just standing around here
because another rival film company
might come along
and make its OWN biblical epic.
So, what they did was
they dug a 300-foot trench,
and buried the set
underneath the sand.
And the best part
of a century later,
the elements have revealed what
remains of the Pharaoh's kingdom.
And like that kingdom,
Roscoe Arbuckle's film career
had been covered over,
lost in the sands of time.
But ten years after his acquittal,
Roscoe was given an opportunity
to return to the screen.
Roscoe Arbuckle signed a contract
with Warner Brothers
to make six short comedies,
using his own name on screen
for the first time in ten years.
The films were successful -
so much so that on June 28th 1933,
he signed a contract
to make a feature film.
That night, he celebrated,
went home, went to bed...
..and died of a heart attack
in his sleep.
He was 46.
But he died knowing that he was
back at the top of the profession
that he loved so much.
His ashes were scattered here,
in the Pacific Ocean.
And Roscoe Arbuckle did finally
make it to the Walk of Fame.
Ah...
Here it is.
Here's Roscoe Arbuckle's star
on the Hollywood Walk of Fame...
'..unveiled in 1960,
nearly 30 years after he died.'
So let's remember
Roscoe Arbuckle this way.
This was the man Hollywood
studio bosses stabbed in the back,
and made a scapegoat
so they could brush aside criticisms
of excess and decadence
by saying, "Hey, look -
we got rid of Arbuckle."
Once Roscoe was out of the pictures,
the industry could
breathe a sigh of relief.
By the mid-1920s, the
Hollywood ship had been steadied.
Film stars stood on the upper deck
and took in their privileged
elevated views.
From their giddy vantage point,
these stars must have thought that
their destiny was assured - fated
to shine like diamonds for ever.
But, in the next part of our story,
the growth of the big studios
with their iron grip
on the industry,
they had much more to say
about the future of Hollywood.
And all the stars
could do...was twinkle.