There are a plethora of revelations that will be uncovered in the work-in-progress, but this one we felt should be shared before we see her name rendered incorrectly again.

We begin with Andy Edmonds’ Frame Up! The Untold Story of Roscoe Arbuckle (1991). Edmonds cites an interview given by one Caroline Rapp, identified as Rappe’s grandmother, in the Chicago Examiner. But upon investigation, no such interview turns up. More likely, Edmonds is referring to an interview given by Chicago midwife, abortionist, and paid witness for Roscoe Arbuckle during his manslaughter trials, namely Josephine Rafferty Roth.

Mrs. Rafferty Roth began peddling the story of Rappe’s origins—almost all of it a fable—just days after her death on September 9, 1921. Edmonds probably digested the interview during her research and later misremembered the source in her finished book —spinning one fable into another.

The first name of her Rappe’s grandmother —and her surrogate grandmother too— was Virginia. So, in keeping with naming conventions, Virginia was the middle name given to the younger Rappe, in honor of the grandmother and for being the first granddaughter. But what was the full name?

Greg Merritt, in Room 1219 (2013), set the precedent with his revelation that “Virginia Caroline Rapp” was on her birth certificate. However no birth certificate or other document with that name from the 1890s has surfaced. That said, various writers have picked this name up and used it. It is also found in Rappe’s Wikipedia entry.

Rappe’s real name, as it turns out, was more exotic, and worthy of being a stage name in its own right. Her mother, Mabel Rapp, had her daughter christened as Zelliene Virginia, possibly adapted from and pronounced like Celine. The name is documented, too, in Rappe’s entry in the 1910 census and further corroborated with the variant “Zealine” by Rappé in September 1921. (Mabel also touched up her name as well, going by Mabel Rappé for her billing as a Broadway chorus girl.)

Variety, and a handful of newspapers that published the same story, relied on an unnamed informant who knew that Rappe lived with her grandmother and mother on W. 50^th Street in Hell’s Kitchen, just off 8^th Avenue, between 1900 and 1905. This person also knew that Rappe was nicknamed “Gasoline Zealine” by the neighborhood children—for Mabel Rapp had access to an automobile and her daughter—whom she called her kid sister—had the rare privilege of getting to ride in these new machines during the first years of the new century.

The unusual (and probably often misspelled) name, however, likely didn’t sit well with Rappe. She discarded it, first in favor of the stage names, Zola and Zaza, which she used during her brief sojourn into the theater and vaudeville, and later in favor of the name we know her by today which she adopted when she became a fashion model in 1912.