Did Witnesses for Arbuckle Get Quid Pro Quo?
As the work-in-progress progresses, this passage stands out because it may answer the aforementioned question for this woman. And, given the history of Southern California at the time, this passage also brings in its oil boom in the first half of the twentieth century. Many motion picture executives, as well as actors and actresses, who did not know what to do with their money, found companies such as Guaranty Oil Company (note the pun) that started out selling equivalent of penny stocks.
The Dr. Barnes mentioned below was considered the one witness who convinced the third trial jury to vote to acquit in less than ten minutes. He is a very curious witness who may have been convinced with other means to testify.
Mrs. Bertha Behr
After a few more memory tests, U’Ren ended his cross-examination and requested Judge Louderback to keep Dr. Barnes under the court’s jurisdiction. “We have sent East for some certain information,” U’Ren said, undoubtedly for evidence to impeach the Omaha physician. Then Schmulowitz, seeing that Mrs. Fox had not attended the afternoon session, made a counter move. He asked the court that she be kept in San Francisco as well, only to be reminded by U’Ren that she had already been ordered to stay.
Oil, water, and swimmers mix in this scene from the 1920s.
As Dr. Barnes remained seated, as the reporters were already labeling him as the “star witness” in their notes, Judge Louderback expressed his impatience as much as a reality about this third trial of Roscoe Arbuckle, now a day into its fifth week. “We have had 65 witnesses on the stand already,” he said and wanted “a definite idea when we were going to get through with this witness.” U’Ren, however, did not want the judge to forget that two other defense witnesses had been ordered to stay, namely Virginia Warren and Helen Whitehurst, to appear before the Grand Jury. And when neither responded to the bailiff as he called their names, U’Ren had the court put attachments on them, meaning they could be arrested for contempt. Then he allowed McNab to call one last witness for the time remaining, one of Milton Cohen’s people.
Mrs. Bertha Behr lived with her husband Charles, president of the Guaranty Oil Company, in the San Pedro district of Los Angeles. They lived by cliffs that had a beautiful view the derricks as well as the Pacific Fleet that needed all that oil from the lots they bought and sold. That was why it curious that such a well-dressed young woman wanted to rent a stucco bungalow at the corner of 504 N. Wilton Place from the likes of Mrs. Josephine Hardebeck and Miss Virginia Rappe. Cohen, of course, left that incongruity to the imagination. He only wanted to tell the jury that in late August of last year, she and two real estate agents, “Robert Obendorf and Miss Holly” had heard Mrs. Hardebeck’s reason for renting to her: Miss Rappe had been in ill health “for some time.”[1]
Mrs. Behr did not need to explain that Mrs. Hardebeck and Miss Rappe did not own the property—or that the real owner of 504 N. Wilshire had taken advantage of Miss Holly’s classified ad in the Los Angeles Times, which she ran throughout August 1921, with the promise that the Sunset Realty Company could “get you tenants at once” for available listings of “bungalows in Hollywood and Wilshire.” Nevertheless, Friedman knew, or presumed, that Mrs. Behr had no interest in living at 504 N. Wilshire herself, not if she was married to an aspiring oilman who sold fifty-cent shares of his company. Friedman could only work the one angle he was sure of, that Mrs. Behr, like Cohen’s other witnesses, knew that keeping Arbuckle out of prison was or would be quid pro quo. (In the trial’s wake, the comedian’s manager Joseph M. Schenck bought lots from the Behrs, who could eventually afford to live in Beverly Hills before the end of the decade.)
Initially, Friedman had Mrs. Behr describe where her conversation with Mrs. Hardebeck and Miss Rappe took place. It began in the living room. “Later on we went back to Miss Rappe’s room,” Mrs. Behr recalled, “and she then remarked again that she was sorry to give up her home, but it was because she was not well.”
If any of the jurors bought into this lie, at least they should consider that Miss Rappe was making an excuse for herself, that it was better than saying she could not afford the rent or that her own lease was up. So, Friedman had to ask the obvious.
Q. Did she appear to you to be ill at that time?
A. No, not especially.
Mrs. Behr continued to calmly, matter-of-factly relate how she told her husband about what happened at 504. N. Wilton. Then, between the first and second trial, she and Mr. Behr accidentally met Milton Cohen at a luncheon, at which she told him about Miss Rappe. Mrs. Behr, too, assured Friedman that Mr. Cohen “did not act as attorney” for her husband’s company. And as for not answering a subpoena and testifying at the second trial, she explained that her baby was sick and she could not leave him. And such a reasonable excuse made Mrs. Behr a “sturdy” witness, according to Oscar Fernbach, and “her story made the prosecution squirm,”[2] which complemented his higher opinion of Dr. Barnes.
Typical Guaraty Oil mail order offer from 1921
P.S. The Behrs ultimately filed for bankruptcy in 1938. Charles became a roustabout and Bertha a department store saleslady.
[1] People vs. Arbuckle. Third Trial, “Testimony of Mrs. Bertha H. Behr,” 3465–74.
[2] Oscar H. Fernbach, “Doctor Gives Lie to ‘Fatty’ Case Witness,” San Francisco Examiner, April 11, 1922.