What was always difficult to reconcile about Zukor in his lifelong quest for greatness was his intractable moral authority,
which he evidently identified with the genteel, and his lust for power, which was anything but genteel.

—Neal Gabler, An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood

When I see myself on film, I can’t laugh from the heart. There is always too much that’s disturbing [. . .]

—Roscoe Arbuckle, “Fatty über sich selbst,” Kino-Journal, 1923

As another thought experiment for our work-in-progress, we considered the factors that led Adolph Zukor of Paramount Picturesand Famous Players–Lasky Company, to cancel the release of three finished Arbuckle motion pictures. 

In the wake of Arbuckle’s acquittal for having caused the death of Virginia Rappe on April 12, 1922, the press began to quote Zukor and Arbuckle’s manager, Joseph Schenck, that the three Arbuckle films that had been withdrawn when the scandal erupted in September 1921 would soon be released to American theaters. In the case of the New Garrick Theater in Los Angeles, posters were ready to go up overnight.

But within days, that decision was reversed. A permanent ban was announced by Will H. Hays, the new chairman of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America. It was done at the behest of Zukor, according to Hays’ autobiography, and it was a business decision that Zukor made without much resistance from his partner Jesse Lasky and other stakeholders in the comedian. To abandon three completed films ready for release at a time when Arbuckle films were earning millions at the box office sounds counterintuitive, but as it will become clear, Zukor was no fool.

One of these films, Gasoline Gus, was to usher in Paramount Week on September 4, a week of major new releases that began at the start of the Labor Day weekend. Zukor, as president of the studio, counted on actors and actresses, especially those in California and New York City, to make themselves available for personal appearances.

Arbuckle, possibly feeling he had earned a reprieve from the publicity campaign, didn’t appear at Grauman’s Million Dollar Theater in downtown Los Angeles for the world premiere of Gasoline Gus. Instead, he hosted two private partiesin his San Francisco hotel suite. The first was on Sunday, September 4, a more sedate affair, and the next day, Labor Day, September 5, an all-day affair that promised food, alcoholic beverages, and young showgirls from San Francisco’s demimonde.

Arbuckle had arrived in San Francisco on September 3 and, given his testimony from his first and third manslaughter trials, he had a purpose in mind. The first was to test out a new car on a long-distance journey. But his famous Pierce-Arrow was hardly new. He had taken delivery of it a year earlier. He changed his story. He was in San Francisco to meet up with a catered dinner cruise aboard the SS Harvard on its voyage to Los Angeles, a cruise that was loosely tied to Paramount Week. Arbuckle claimed he purchased his tickets soon after he took his rooms at the St. Francis Hotel. But in a cross-examination, he had yet another itinerary. Arbuckle wanted to drive on from San Francisco on September 6 to attend the California State Golf Championship, which began that week in Del Monte. 

Had Virginia Rappe not fallen ill at his Labor Day party, she would have been in Del Monte a day ahead of him. But Arbuckle did sail on the SS Harvard along with his automobile prominently parked on the promenade deck. He made no public appearances in Los Angeles during the rest of the week. However he did make it to Grauman’s theater by Friday night, September 9, for an emergency meeting in Sid Grauman’s office. The news had broken that morning that Rappe had died and there was a need to meet with his lawyer and the other men who attended the ill-fated party to decide how to approach the matter.

The Arbuckle case soon began to make headlines and Gasoline Gus was withdrawn as were Freight Prepaid and Leap Year, which still had working titles and release dates in the future. All three were longer, romantic comedies and, for Arbuckle, a departure from his energetic “Fatty” character. There would still be a fat man, still be some physical comedy. But now the comedy was built on gags related to a philandering man and his pursuit of young women. Naturally, he would eventually marry the girl. This had been a common theme of his comedies from 1920, after he parted ways with Buster Keaton.

Meanwhile, the September 1921 issue of Photoplay hit the stands. One of the feature articles took on a whole new meaning. Adela Rogers St. John and Arbuckle collaborated on an interview, “Love Confessions of a Fat Man,” a publicity piece to display his intelligence and sophistication which we featured in an earlier blog post). The photograph that went with this piece, which was published in depicted Arbuckle with his hair combed over, looking up, as though into a woman’s eyes, as though he might present her with an engagement ring. Another photograph, that was published in trade magazines aimed at motion picture distributors and theater owners, showed Arbuckle surrounded by young women, not as a clownish innocent but as a ladies’ man.

We looked at this new, carefully crafted, image that was folded into the real person accused of murder at an “orgy” in the St. Francis Hotel, whose indiscretions threatened an entire industry. The sudden change of Arbuckle’s public persona from light to dark is the one obvious reason for Adolph Zukor to withdraw his motion pictures and disassociate Arbuckle from Paramount entirely. Though the comedian had been handed an unprecedented apology from the jurors for what the prosecutors had done to his reputation, the gesture was wasted on Zukor. 

This brings us back to Will Hays. Zukor and his peers felt it was necessary that Hays be seen as an authority to be feared. Hays was to police the content of movies as well as the personal lives of actors. That he was essentially an employee of Adolph Zukor didn’t mean that he was subservient. Zukor delegated responsibility and Hays provided the proper image and insight to not only manage the morality of Hollywood but promote its image among the various women’s clubs and religious communities across the country. He was a church deacon from Indiana and , as such, he was the antidote for any blatant (or latent) antisemitism that might be felt toward the men who ran the studios. 

The timing of Arbuckle’s trials couldn’t have been worse. Hollywood scandals in one form or another had been mounting and concerns were growing among politicians and investors that it was an industry getting out of hand. The need for a powerful spokesperson had become obvious. So when Hays was hired, he needed to set an example and Arbuckle served that purpose. Hays knew that a large contingent of American pastors and clubwomen weren’t happy with the acquittal. They had to be appeased—but it wasn’t to honor the memory of Virginia Rappe. Though she was the victim, she was also seen as a symbol of Hollywood’s immorality. The prosecutors didn’t succeed in their effort to present her as a sympathetic and innocent victim. As one doctor said, she had the sexual organs of a “married woman”—a euphemism meaning she wasn’t a virgin.

In Arbuckle’s eyes, Rappe was the antithesis to the roles played by his recent co-stars, like Lila Lee and Mary Thurman. Rappe, like the other women at the Labor Day party, was attainable, consumable, and off-screen, where making eyes, honeymoons, flirting, and a little spooning wasn’t consummation, but rather coitus. Rappe may not have realized that her status changed the moment she walked into the Arbuckle suite. She was undoubtedly there to get back on-screen. But off-, she was a creature of other possibilities not limited to talking and dancing with her host, possibilities the other young women at the party were expected to service. Rappe also had to know she had as good a chance as any of being Arbuckle’s girlfriend, with all its rewards, even being the next Mrs. Arbuckle, since his publicity as this eligible bachelor might need to be grounded in fact one day. 

While his career may have required that he stick with the body-shaming moniker “Fatty,” Arbuckle had contemplated losing weight. He was also no longer directing his own films. His past specialty, the frenetic succession of dazzling, often acrobatic, sight gags, appealed to all ages. But audiences were becoming more sophisticated and wanted to see longer films, five to six reels, and the sweet, naïve, fat boy character was aging well enough, the boy had to grow up and Arbuckle knew it. Scripts and direction were being handed specialists, like the seasoned director James Cruze, whose work on the latest Arbuckle vehicles was intended to keep the comedian a close second to Charlie Chaplin, whose latest film, The Kid (1921), was the bar to meet, and ahead of Keaton, Harold Lloyd, and other rivals.

Then there was the growing perception that Arbuckle’s work in 1921 suffered from uneven quality. This had to trouble Paramount’s executives, all the way up to Adolph Zukor in his Manhattan skyscraper. In speculating what Arbuckle and Rappe might have talked about if they talked shop during the early afternoon of September 5, she had to be aware of the comedian’s immediate situation. She had a good source of information: her manager, Al Semnacher, who drove her to San Francisco. He was a veteran press agent and knew Arbuckle was getting panned on a regular basis. The Dollar a Year Man (1921) was called a “dismal effort,” “hokum,” “weak humor,” and so on in Motion Picture News for weeks in the spring. Theater owners said it fell short of fans’ expectations. Ticket sales were off. The Traveling Salesman (1921), which didn’t have the slapstick and chase scenes, made up for this lapse. But Arbuckle, in Crazy to Marry (1921), according to Wid’s Daily in early August, opined that he “seemed to be getting away from the sort of stories necessary to make his five-reel comedy offerings go over the way they should.” There wasn’t “sufficient genuine comedy” to make the laughs consistent or frequent enough. Such an overview cast a pall on everything. It didn’t bode well for the future, when his contract came up for review.

Arbuckle’s next film, had the Labor Day party not ended the way it did, was to have been Thirty Days, after a popular 1915 Broadway play. This was Jesse Lasky’s project, to be directed by Cruze. Arbuckle would have played a character in keeping with the new image, this composite of on- and off-screen—a wealthy, young society lion. But, in Thirty Days, his philandering becomes the central plot driver. The thirty days was a probation period requested by his fiancé, to be played by Wanda Hawley, in which Arbuckle’s character would work alongside her in a settlement house. The role might have opened opportunities for dramatic roles. Unfortunately, his ongoing trials forced Lasky to cast Wallace Reid, a true dramatic lead with an athletic build. Reid managed to play the comedic role but without Arbuckle’s deft touch. Thirty Days (1922) would be his last film, but not because it was panned. Reid had a morphine addiction that resulted in his death in January 1923—yet another problem for Paramount to contend with.

That same month, songwriter and theater owner Arthur Hammerstein offered a million dollars for the last three completed Arbuckle films—Gasoline Gus, Freight Prepaid, and Leap Year—but Zukor refused. Gasoline Gus had proved itself during its aborted run in late August/early September 1921 and for a brief run in April 1922. In the January 1922 issue of Paramount Pep, a special west coast representative M. H. Lewis reported screening Freight Prepaid. He called it Arbuckle’s “best picture since Brewster’s Millions.” But he cautioned that this would be the case “under ordinary circumstances.” He noted it would be a “knockout” in event of an acquittal. A film about Arbuckle and Lila Lee as newlyweds on a boxcar honeymoon was, to the Paramount stringer, a “great comedy” and “absolutely clean [. . .] Mr. Lasky deserves great credit for uniform high-quality present and future releases.”

Despite the glowing endorsement from inside Paramount, Freight Prepaid (1922) was only released in 1923 in France, Germany, and other European countries. The titles, unlike the intended American releases, almost always included the inescapable “Fatty.” A handful of other Arbuckle vehicles, both released or unreleased, were also exported. So, if Americans traveling in Europe during the Roaring Twenties weren’t discomfited by, say, the German, they could have seen Gasoline Gus as Der Benzinkönig. But comedy aside, part of the experience of seeing these films was what Hays and Zukor didn’t want: to feed a kind of morbid fascination in a man’s downfall. Hays was there for the moral argument and Zukor the law of diminishing returns, for a large proportion of Arbuckle’s audience would walk away once they had enough of his train wreck. 

To the Weimar film journalist Egon Jacobsohn, writing in his aptly titled magazine Filmhölle (Film Hell) after the second trial’s hung jury of ten to two for conviction in February 1922, the lust murder dynamic of Arbuckle’s case was a given. Rappe was perceived as the victim of a rape (“Notzucht”), a sex killer (“Lustmörder”) by the lack of proof itself that by the same token made him an innocent bystander, a victim of circumstances.

“Fatty is already finished,” Jacobsohn observed from Berlin. “American motion picture audiences are shouting we don’t want to have to watch a murderer! Every comedy in which Fatty appears lies unexploited, like garbage. Even if he is acquitted, if his innocence is proven: Fatty, the beloved movie star, is dead, remains dead!” Zukor didn’t need this prophetic pronouncement from abroad. He could be on the same page of Filmhölle—which he could read in the original—the moment Arbuckle turned himself into police. Other stakeholders held out hope and a lot of money was spent to defend the comedian.

Nothing would shake Zukor from sitting on Arbuckle’s films. Even the classic Keystone shorts with Mabel Normand, which still got laughs in 10-cent movie houses, were pulled from distribution after a few trial runs. In December 1922, Hays lifted the ban to at least allow Arbuckle the opportunity to work behind the camera rather than in front of it. But the films remained in their cans.

So, was this a marketing decision on Zukor’s part? Milton U’Ren grandstanded repeatedly during jury selection that Arbuckle was washed up in November 1921. Since assistant district attorneys aren’t film critics but rather the “bad cops” of their high-toned district attorneys—we had to consider whether U’Ren had evidence of his claim, that Arbuckle’s popularity was declining. Was he just predisposing the jury to view Arbuckle as a decadent entitled has-been? U’Ren’s animus toward Arbuckle probably began the night Arbuckle turned himself into police. Arbuckle was evasive in answering his questions and finally assented to his lawyer’s request that he say nothing more. U’Ren visibly scoffed during Arbuckle’s courtroom testimony.

Adolph Zukor trusted his instincts for making financial decisions but he also had accountants who could reassure him he was doing the right thing. Arbuckle’s salary was in the stratosphere and though he had earned his employers exponentially more he had the potential for trouble. He had a drinking problem and was a womanizer. He was also rumored to have a drug addiction. 

Zukor, going by his balance sheets, knew that if the law in San Francisco didn’t catch up with Arbuckle’s indiscretions, the law of diminishing returns could. As gifted as Arbuckle was, would a character actor with limited range survive as a leading man in feature films? Would he be able to keep up with audience tastes? Zukor wasn’t ignorant of the risks Arbuckle posed and he wasn’t sentimental about the salad days of the past. 

Although Arbuckle wasn’t directly involved in the 1917 Mishawum Manor scandal. It was, to use a contemporary phrase, a “girl-and-wine” afterparty that followed a formal dinner given in a Boston hotel in honor of Arbuckle. He had just joined Paramount. Zukor and his top brass spent the night in a brothel and the underage girls who entertained the men talked. This led to hush money, a corrupt prosecutor, a trial, and years later, just weeks before the Labor Day party, it finally surfaced in the press. Zukor, a man who had been meticulous about his public reputation for propriety, was embarrassed by the attention he was getting. The Mishawum scandal sent a message of caution to everyone at Paramount. Everyone save Arbuckle. So when he flaunted his entitlement as one of Paramount’s moneymakers by hosting an afternoon party with booze and showgirls, just weeks after Zukor’s public shaming, he crossed a line. 

Virginia Rappe just wanted her hospital bills paid. There was pathos in that. Would a little kindness and what was probably a $75 hospital bill have saved Arbuckle’s career? By the time of the trials, all the world had discovered that Arbuckle still had a wife, Minta Durfee. Durfee would stand by him throughout the trials and until the Hays ban at which point she promptly returned to New York City. Durfee didn’t leave him because they had another falling out or because he could no longer be the highly-paid star he had been. She was under no delusions about the state of their relationship, though she continued to defend Arbuckle for attention in her dotage. As for Arbuckle, upon Durfee’s departure, he picked up where he left off with Doris Deane, the young actress he had met aboard the Harvard twenty-four hours after he had been seen tête-à-tête with Rappe. 

Just prior to the Labor Day party, Zukor and Paramount had agreed to a multimillion dollar multiyear contract with Arbuckle and cancelling it after Arbuckle had been acquitted would pose legal problems. Yet Zukor, who had felt squeezed by Arbuckle’s lawyers during the contract negotiations, had had enough. He needed to cut his losses and protect the Paramount brand. Hays was well aware of this contract and 10,000 others with companies and individuals who had a stake in making good on the banned motion pictures. He mentioned this sacrifice when he made the ban public one week after Arbuckle was acquitted.

Paramount, the biggest studio at the time, had scores of actors and actresses under contract and all posed an existential threat to his company. What better way to get their attention than to erase one of them off the books with a mysterious, indefinable, legally defensible blackballing—where the economic rationale could be concealed behind the moralistic kabuki of Will Hays. And was there a moral or sentimental one on the part of Zukor that made it difficult for him to square Arbuckle? Perhaps. Zukor had a daughter. She was the mogul’s favorite.

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P.S. Zukor’s problem with Arbuckle does have its book. But the problem isn’t quite the one imagined in Andy Edmond’s 1991 tell-all, Frame Up! That book is unsourced and what is quoted in her text has a lot of fairy dust and special sauce that makes it yet another “good read,” which it is. There is a lot about Zukor’s motivations, a lot of his wires and letters, but without sources—sources that we have to think are factoids at best—Edmonds is a dead end for us, a bad influence like many good reads on the Arbuckle shelf.