Bit Player #6: Betty Campbell on the meaning of a “rough party”

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[In this sidebar adapted from our work-in-progress, Betty Campbell provides one of the few eyewitness accounts of what Arbuckle’s party was like for most of Labor Day 1921. The word “rough,” of course, was the 1920s euphemism for “sexual harassment” or abuse. Presumably, Virginia Rappe fell for some other variation of Sherman’s entrapment, that is, if she didn’t enter room 1219 with her consent. Incidentally, in Arbuckle first time taking the stand at his first trial, he claimed to have found Rappe in 1219’s bathroom.]

Neither the Grand Jury nor the Coroner’s Court heard Betty Campbell. San Francisco County District Attorney Matthew Brady knew that she had attended Roscoe Arbuckle’s Labor Day party late in the afternoon with her friend, the store model Dolly Clark. But he had shown more interest in Clark. Campbell though had a story too and while so many other witnesses were giving testimony, hers was published in the San Francisco Examiner.[1]

The youngest guest at the Labor Day party, Campbell was a chorus girl in the Ziegfeld Follies and Al Jolson’s traveling show. She wanted to be a motion picture actress and her photographs, taken by the Hartsook Studio, attested to that aspiration as did her being a guest at Arbuckle’s Labor Day party. Her description of the latter half of the party reveals that Rappe’s crisis in room 1219 was merely an interruption, which barely cast a pall over the rest of the afternoon. Her description also revealed the kind of activity that the press was calling an “orgy,” a “debauch,” or, simply “the weird affair” and what was meant by “rough” in the parlance of the 1920s, a word used by other Labor Day party witnesses.

Source: Newspapers.com

Despite her youth, Campbell was no ingenue and no stranger to courtrooms and being questioned by lawyers. That summer she was named as the correspondent in the divorce case between a Southern California millionaire, Guy Lewis, the so-called “Bean King of Ventura County,” and his wife. While she was caught “spooning” with a millionaire, Campbell was not so willing to do the same with just any man.

“Lowell Sherman, the actor, came over and sat by me,” she recalled, “and began to get rough in his speech and actions, so I got up and walked away. A little later he went into his bedroom, leaving the door open, and called: ‘Come in here—I want to talk to you.’”

“Like a fool, I went in,” Campbell said. “Sherman immediately closed the door

and locked it. I heard them laughing outside. I kept my head, and when Sherman stepped toward me, I said: “Wait a moment—I want to fix my hair,” and ran into the bathroom. Just as he had done, I slammed the door and locked it. He tried to get in for a time, but gave it up and went back into the parlor. I watched my chance and ran out through the bedroom. As I came through the door, Freddy Fischbach [sic] tried to push me back into the room again. I shut the door on him and a little later got out safely.

“If I hadn’t been quick and in full possession of my senses,” Campbell added, “the same thing would have happened to me that happened to Miss Rappe. Only it was not Arbuckle who tried it.” In regard to the comedian, he was a “gentleman.” Although he drank a “considerable” amount of liquor in Campbell’s presence as the afternoon wore on, he wasn’t intoxicated.

“He did little except dance,” she said, “make clownish remarks, and sit shrugging his shoulders in that funny way of his.” Campbell felt safe enough in his company to be his dance partner. She stayed at the party for supper, too, during which she overheard Arbuckle lament, “I’m not going to take any blame for anything that happened to that girl.”

“This was the only remark that indicated nervousness,” Campbell, said. Otherwise, Arbuckle was merry and showed no remorse or concern for Virginia Rappe, who, Campbell, learned from others at the party, had been in room 1219 alone with him.

The other revelation that Campbell made to reporters was that Arbuckle left the party when supper was served. He had to make an appearance at a local theater. She is the only source for this anomaly in his Labor Day schedule.

Assistant District Attorney Milton U’Ren, caught flatfooted on learning of Campbell’s newspaper story, told the press that he and his colleagues were “very anxious to locate Miss Campbell,” but she had “mysteriously disappeared.”

[1] The following is based on “Girl Tells of Revel at Arbuckle Party,” San Francisco Examiner, 13 September 1921, 1, 2; “Lewis Co-Respondent Also Arbuckle Flame,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 14 September 1921, 1; Universal Service, “Show Girl Who Told of Assault Attempt at Orgy Disappears,” [Pittsburgh] Gazette,14 September 1921, 2; and other corroborative sources.

100 Years Ago Today: Dismissing Dr. Beardslee, September 6, 1921

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Perhaps the worst decision made by Roscoe Arbuckle and whoever had his ear was to let Maude Delmont stay with Virginia Rappe in room 1227 of the St. Francis Hotel.

Although she didn’t pretend to be a real nurse, she assumed the authority of one. (Delmont’s  younger sister, with whom she lived from time to time, was indeed a registered nurse.)

When the second hotel physician, Dr. Arthur Beardslee, came to see Rappe, he realized that this wasn’t the usual patient with a stomach ache from overindulging on rich food from the hotel kitchen or alcoholic beverages—as Delmont said. What he saw was a young woman he believed needed to be taken to a hospital for immediate surgery. But Dr. Beardslee erred on the side of hospitality, being a hotel doctor, and gave Rappe morphine injections to keep her quiet.

Meanwhile, Delmont had been going back and forth between room 1227 and the reception room of Arbuckle’s suite, room 1220.

The people in that room decided against sending Rappe to the nearby St. Francis Hospital, where Dr. Beardslee was a resident. That risked “notoriety.”

Dr. Arthur Beardslee (FamilySearch.com)

Delmont never disputed this decision. She returned to room 1227 and was satisfied with the effects of the morphine. She also convinced Dr. Beardslee that the only thing wrong with Rappe was gas. She suggested having an enema bag and Dr. Beardslee ordered one.

When he was gone, Delmont gave Rappe the enema, apparently with expertise and little mess. But undoubtedly the experience for Rappe was no less excruciating than her ruptured bladder.

Only Dr. Beardslee suspected the true nature of the injury. On his last visit, in the wee hours of Tuesday, September 6, he catheterized Rappe and extracted a little urine and clotted blood. The results alarmed him but he suppressed any expression of urgency given, perhaps, the inconvenient hour.

Still deferential to Delmont, Dr. Beardslee could only advise that his patient—whose name he incredibly failed to learn—be taken by ambulance to the hospital. Delmont, exercising a kind of medical power-of-attorney before there was ever such a thing, elected not to do so. Rappe would be treated in her hotel room.

Later that Tuesday morning, Dr. Beardslee was informed by Maude Delmont that her personal friend, a famous San Francisco surgeon who had performed an operation on her in the past, Dr. Melville Rumwell, would take over the case.

Put some ice on it or how to forget about the Coke bottle myth

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Roscoe Arbuckle didn’t penetrate Virginia Rappe with a Coke bottle. The origin of what has become a fetish object is an idle speculation made by Kenneth Anger in Hollywood Babylon.

As headlines screamed, the rumors flew of a hideously unnatural rape: Arbuckle, enraged at his drunken impotence, had ravaged Virginia with a Coca-Cola bottle, or a champagne bottle, then had repeated the act with a jagged piece of ice . . . or, wasn’t it common knowledge that Arbuckle was exceptionally well-endowed? (28)

The family newspapers of the 1920s didn’t—and wouldn’t—print anything like this. Some did report the original story on which Anger embellishes and gets half wrong: the ice part is true.

On Saturday, September 24, Al Semnacher, Virginia Rappe’s manager, testified to an encounter with Arbuckle and his companions in room 1220 of the St. Francis Hotel on the morning after the comedian’s Labor Day 1921 party (i.e., September 6, 1921).

One of many entertaining images from Hollywood Babylon (28)

In the presence of director Fred Fishback and actor Lowell Sherman—who had shared the twelfth-floor suite—as well as Semnacher and the comedian’s chauffeur, Arbuckle shared an anecdote from the day before. After Rappe had been found on his bed in room 1219, suffering from excruciating pain in her lower abdomen and going in and out of consciousness, Arbuckle attempted to wake her up. He returned to room 1219 and pushed a piece or pieces of ice into her vagina. (A bowl of ice was on the bar-buffet table in room 1220.)

Semnacher might have been shocked by Arbuckle’s attempt to make light of what had happened and repressed the memory of it until re-experiencing it in a dream. The way this played out in his appearance at the preliminary investigation in the Women’s Court was given much fanfare. Women’s Court was a special venue of the Police Court of San Francisco that limited the number of men to ensure courtroom decorum for female plaintiffs, witnesses, and spectators. The judge, Sylvain Lazarus, was to decide whether Arbuckle be tried for manslaughter or murder in the Superior Court of San Francisco County.

The District Attorney’s office promised that Semnacher would reveal on the stand that Arbuckle himself had disclosed the manner in which he had injured Virginia Rappe. But this didn’t happen.

Semnacher, in the penultimate moment of his testimony, was pressed by Assistant District Attorney Ira Golden about what he remembered of Arbuckle’s anecdote, specifically, what word did he use in reference to Rappe’s genitalia.

Semnacher, aware of the many women around him, felt uncomfortable saying the word aloud. So, Golden gave Semnacher the option of whispering it to the court reporter.

Semnacher answered, “The word is snatch.”

Golden’s intent wasn’t to present the ice as a weapon but rather to prove that Arbuckle hadn’t been a gentleman at the party and had treated Rappe abominably. This ploy was quickly apprehended by Arbuckle’s chief counsel, Frank Dominguez. As a seasoned criminal defense attorney in Los Angeles, he knew that Golden had only made Arbuckle look like a cad and with the hope that such an outrage would sway Judge Lazarus, especially if he wanted to appease the women in his courtroom.

The next day, Sunday, September 25, after a press conference for Arbuckle’s wife, Minta Durfee, Dominguez intimated to a few lucky reporters that he intended to turn the tables on Ira Golden and his boss, District Attorney Matthew Brady. One of them was Edward J. Doherty of the Chicago Tribune. With his “Foxy Grandpa” wink, Dominguez promised that when he cross-examined Semnacher, he would bring another “startling revelation.”

Dominguez promised that the ice would be seen for what it was, the right thing to do for Rappe and much to Arbuckle’s credit. Dominguez intended to present Arbuckle not as “a coarse buffoon, boasting about a horrible thing he had done to a woman, but as a gentleman remarking casually what he had done to bring this woman out of her hysteria.” Dominguez, too, based on sound medical opinion, that what Arbuckle did with the ice, slipping it inside Rappe’s vagina,

had been not only sanctioned but practiced by physicians of all times since the days of Ancient Greece. [. . .] that Arbuckle did not mean his remark to be met with laughter. It was as if he had tried an old remedy, a bit unconventional, perhaps, a bit bizarre, maybe a tad too vulgar to speak about, if you will, but a good remedy, none the less, to cure a headache, or a backache, or a pain in the ear.”[1]

In all likelihood, the wily Dominguez had made it up—but not quite off the top of his head. As ice-making became widespread in the nineteenth century, doctors used pieces of ice to staunch the bleeding and pain of uterine hemorrhages.

Semnacher, perhaps knowing that he had embarrassed Arbuckle, took back what he said about the ice. He testified that he had used the wrong word to describe what the comedian did. He had put the ice on Rappe’s vagina, not in.

Note: Semnacher was one of the few witnesses asked to describe in detail the beverages served at the Labor Day Party. Neither he nor anyone else mentioned that Coca-Cola or champagne had been served. Indeed, the only carbonated beverages he noticed were bottles of orange soda and White Rock Soda, with the topless Psyche on the label admiring her reflection in a pool, an eerie foreshadowing of how Virginia Rappe would be found after tearing off her shirtwaist.

Source: White Rock Beverages

[1] M. D. Tracy, “Arbuckle Tortured Rappe,” Buffalo Times, 25 September 1921, 21.

100 Years Ago Today: The Garden Room, September 5, 1921

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The one time that Al Semnacher admitted to entering the bedroom shared by his charges, Virginia Rappe and Maude Delmont, was on Labor Day morning. He asked the two women if they wanted breakfast.

Between 10:00 and 10:30 a.m., the party of three took the elevator down to the lobby. If they looked in on the bar, they may have noticed Maxfield Parrish’s painting The Pied Piper over the bar, in which the piper is depicted leading Hamelin’s children to “the place of no return.”

On their way, Semnacher might have stopped at the desk to check for mail and messages. As it became clear later, he had business contacts in town and he may have notified them of his arrival. Then he, Rappe, and Delmont stepped inside the Garden Court.

The Palace’s elegant lounge and dining room on the first floor is much the same as it was a century ago. Breakfast and lunch were served daily under a vast, gilded skylight of opaque glass, which added to the soft but generous light provided by enormous crystal chandeliers. Potted palms and flowering plants were tastefully placed to give the illusion that one dined outdoors.

Amid the sound of muted conversations, the deferential voices of the waiters, the delicate chimes of plates and flatware—these met and maybe some ceased as Semnacher and his companions followed a waiter to a table set for four.Palace Hotel Palm Court 1920_auto_x2_colored_toned

The Garden Room of the Palace Hotel, San Francisco, ca. 1920 (Library of Congress)

Rappe’s presence in the great hotel was hard to miss amid a sea of white tablecloths. She stood out in a light green ensemble in contrast to Maude Delmont’s nondescript black broadcloth dress. Numerous accounts of what Rappe wore on September 5 exist in reportage and court testimony. One of the earliest described each piece as it lay in tatters before a coroner’s jury. Nevertheless, the reporter’s description of both garments reimagines the woman who wore them in life.

Just three yards of heavy crepe of the brilliant but cool green that the Chinese call jade. A two-piece skirt gathered on a belt. A little sleeveless blouse that hung in straight lines over the skirt. The wide armholes corded and a soft collar finishing the modest cut neck. For sleeves the long white ones of an ordinary white silk shirt waist that could be bought in any shop for $5.

What a contrast to the jetted and braided and embroidered and fringed atrocities of the most expensive modiste!

The sort of frock that any girl could have—if she were as clever as Virginia Rappe.

That girl knew what was becoming to her—had a fine color sense—knew the value of accessories. Her plain white Panama hat—the hat that Mrs. Delmont says Arbuckle was “clowning” in when they broke into the room, has a narrow band of jade green ribbon around the crown.

Ivory and jade—that was the color motif—as the designers would say. Just one touch of the show girl—and that hidden away under the ivory and jade. Garters of three-inch black lace, ruffled on silk elastic with a tiny green ribbon flower at the fastening.[1]

The outfit included a cape as well.

No previous narrative written about Virginia Rappe’s breakfast in the Garden Room pauses over this question: What did she and her companions have planned for the few hours that remained of their time in San Francisco? The drive from Selma to the Palace Hotel would have taken no less than four hours and for what? A night in an expensive hotel and breakfast?

According to Al Semnacher, he intended to drive back to Los Angeles in the late afternoon. Since the drive couldn’t be done comfortably in one day, he, Rappe, and Delmont would spend the night in Del Monte, California on the south end of Monterey Bay.

So, back to the question: What did they plan to do with their afternoon, a few hours really given the late breakfast? If Virginia Rappe hadn’t received a note inviting her to Arbuckle’s suite at the St. Francis Hotel, was there an alternate plan? For one to drive hundreds of miles, eight hours in each direction, without an itinerary or intention strains credulity. Without one, San Francisco was nothing more than an expensive, glorified layover, like Selma, in a long drive through the middle of California and then down the coastline. Rappe had seen San Francisco before. She had spent several days there in July 1920, during the same week as the Democratic National Convention. Even Maude Delmont had been to San Francisco. Al Semnacher often had business there.

Lastly, what did Al Semnacher, Virginia Rappe, and Maude Delmont discuss at their table in the Garden Room? That would have been the time to plan their day, the afternoon before them? If Semnacher picked up the San Francisco Chronicle and read from the front page, he could have amused the ladies with a story reporting that a “metaphysical astronomer,” with a certificate from the “Temple of Hashish,” told a Sunday crowd at Coney Island of a celestial event that would occur on Labor Day. Saturn would cross the paths of Jupiter and Mars and have such a deleterious effect on the moon’s tides that the East Coast would be submerged. Times Square could be covered by a foot of water.[2]

Fortunately, the West Coast was on the high ground and the top floor of the St. Francis Hotel a safe space.

[1] “Fate Sealed by the Dress She Made,” Los Angeles Times, 15 September 1921, 6.

[2] “New York to Be Submerged Today, Avers ‘Professor.’” San Francisco Chronicle, 5 September 1921. 1.

100 Years Ago Today: “A Lovely Time,” September 4, 1921

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Al Semnacher’s inland route north took the recently completed California Highway 4, the precursor of U.S. Route 99 and present-day Interstate 5. By the late summer of 1921, the road was concrete-paved and designed for the top speeds of trucks and automobiles.

Highway 4 burrowed through the Newhall Tunnel and then up into the mountains past old Fort Tejon and then on to the oil fields and farmland of Kern County before riding along the majestic Castaic-Tejon Ridge and then twisting down to the first major town, Bakersfield. The rest of the way to Fresno traversed the so-called “Garden of the Sun” of California’s prime, irrigated farmland, the San Joaquin Valley, where, to either side of the road, were miles and miles of croplands, producing raisins, grapes, peaches, figs, nuts, olives, oranges, and other crops. The distance between Selma and Los Angeles is a little over 200 miles or almost halfway to San Francisco via Route 5 out of Stockton. The traffic would have been light in the morning, with occasional trucks and horse-drawn wagons, which Semnacher could easily pass in his Stutz motorcar, which shared the same engine with the two-seater Bearcat. Even though the first rains of the dry California summer had recently fallen, the weekend weather was expected to be fair with temperatures in the upper 70s.

Maude Delmont had a friend in Selma, Mrs. Anna L. Portnell, a divorcée, who was well-known in Fresno County society as a prominent member of the Woman’s Relief Corps and a celebrated bridge player. She later testified at the second Arbuckle trial in January 1922 under the name “Annie Portwell.” As a witness for the defense, she acknowledged that Delmont, Rappe, and Semnacher visited her ranch outside of town and that she took them sight-seeing in her car. During the excursion, Rappe allegedly begged, “Please stop the car if you do not want me to die.” Then Rappe left the car doubled up and drank “a quantity of dark colored liquid from a gin bottle. She said it was an herb tea.”[1]

Mrs. Portnell kept the bottle and produced it for the court. That she had kept such a souvenir of Rappe’s visit for nearly five months aroused no incredulity, at least none that was reported in the press. The purpose of having Mrs. Portnell testify was to further pile on that Rappe, despite being made sick by alcohol, drank it nevertheless. For that reason, as Arbuckle’s lawyers insisted, her getting sick at his Labor Day party was nothing unusual for this woman. Gavin McNab and his colleagues, however, must have had to choose between Rappe’s alcoholism or another of their theories, that she suffered from cystitis. Herbal teas were often prescribed to treat the disease before antibiotics. Alcoholism, of course, was more compelling. (Maude Delmont admitted to bringing a bottle of whiskey with her. She also testified that Rappe and Semnacher didn’t partake.)

Semnacher and Delmont never described what they and Rappe did in Selma, even though it was their only destination and the original plan was to return to Los Angeles. Perhaps they played bridge, since Mrs. Portnell made four and Rappe was herself a skilled player. That changed on Sunday morning, September 4, when Semnacher and his two passengers departed Selma for the long drive to San Francisco. He testified that the new itinerary was Rappe’s idea.

Before leaving Selma, Rappe dropped a postcard in a mailbox informing her “Aunt” Kate Hardebeck that she was having a “lovely time” and that she wasn’t coming home yet.

On Sunday evening, Semnacher and his party checked into the Palace Hotel. He took two adjacent rooms with a connecting door. Rappe and Delmont were to sleep in one room and Semnacher in the other. In the morning they would dress and have breakfast.

Meanwhile, Arbuckle and his party were already ensconced in a corner suite of the St. Francis, rooms 1219–1221, the same suite he occupied in June, with a view of the city that gave him pause. “I’d like to spend the rest of my life just looking out at Geary and Powell streets,” he said then to a reporter. “I’d have to give up a lot of palm trees and flower gardens to do it—but it would be well worth while.”[2]

Neither Roscoe Arbuckle, an inveterate violator of speed limits, nor Al Semnacher got ticketed on their way to San Francisco (Private Collection)

[1] “Selma Woman Testifies at Actor’s Trial: Mrs. Anne Portwell Tells of a Visit of Party During Trip,” Fresno Morning Republican, 26 January 1922, 1.

[2] “Parade Honors Fete Beauties Today,” San Francisco Examiner, 18 June 1921, 13.

100 Years Ago Today: Rappe leaves for Selma, September 3, 1921

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On a Saturday morning in September, Virginia Rappe’s new manager—indeed, her first despite being in motion pictures since 1916—arrived in his late model Stutz Model H touring car to pick her up for a weekend trip. She likely placed great hope in him—and in the journey on which they would embark, for Semnacher was one of those people in Hollywood known as an “operator,” who could make small things happen that led to bigger things. He knew a lot of people. He knew Fred Fishback and Roscoe Arbuckle. Whether he knew they too were traveling north to San Francisco, a day ahead of him, will never be known. But it was certainly his business to know as he was always hustling work for his clients and Arbuckle and his entourage were in a position to help.

Al Semnacher was hardly a novice at his work. He had helped aspiring actors and actresses get their starts, first arranging for photography shoots for casting directories, a kind of Sears & Roebuck catalog of talent and faced, with such Hollywood photographers as Fred Hartsook, and then finding work for them as extras or in minor roles.

In 1919, Semnacher opened his first agency with Harry Lichtig as “personal representatives of players and other” in “a general casting business.”[1] The pair represented Lillian Walker, Kenneth Harlan, Pat O’Malley, and Zazu Pitts. Wid’s Daily, the daily newssheet for the motion picture industry,called Semnacher a “hustler Harry” and warned other booking agents to keep an eye on him if they wanted “their laurels.”[2]

Semnacher worked for a time at the John Lancaster booking agency and, in the spring of 1921, went out on his own. Despite his marital problems over the past months—his wife, Lucille, the former personal secretary of the actress Olive Thomas, had left him in a troubled marriage that saw three separations—Semnacher represented a small stable of actors such as the British comedian Fred Goodwins, to which he added Virginia Rappe and her friend Helen Hansen.

A few days earlier, on August 31, Semnacher had encountered Bambina Maude Delmont in front of the Pig ‘n Whistle in downtown Los Angeles.[3] He greeted her with familiarity, as a friend or professional colleague.

“What are you doing?” he asked, according to Delmont.

In the course of telling him, she mentioned that she wanted to go to Fresno, actually, a ranch in the nearby town of Selma, for the weekend. She needed to hitch a ride with someone going north, friendly people who might make for a “pleasure trip.” Semnacher offered his time and car—just like that. “Why, I think I can drive you Saturday,” he said, meaning September 3.

It’s unlikely that Semnacher, a busy man with young actresses in need of work, intended to spend his weekend in Selma or Fresno. This enigma confronts anyone attempting to write about the Arbuckle case because it’s the story that both Semnacher and Delmont recounted later as their original intention. The only really good book thus far, Room 1219, presents Semnacher’s journey as a pleasure trip for himself and his passengers. But this speculation seems almost too careful. Then there is Semnacher’s past relationship with Delmont. She spoke familiarly of Semnacher’s young son, Gordon, suggesting or kidding that the boy come along. How far back did she and Semnacher go?

The “pleasure trip” theory doesn’t take into account that Virginia Rappe was eager to find work and didn’t really have the time to relax in a small town—the “boondocks” to film colony people. She needed to replace the income she had lost as the former live-in mistress and occasional actress for the director Henry Lehrman.

When Semnacher arrived to pick her up, Rappe had packed a suitcase with much more than would be needed for a daytrip to Selma. Rappe’s adoptive “aunt” Kate Hardebeck saw the stuffed suitcase but accepted that “Tootie”—Rappe’s pet name—would be back in a day or two. A lunch basket was also packed for the drive, a little over 200 miles, which could be done in five hours or less.

The only thing left to do was pick up Maude Delmont, at her aunt’s apartment building on Orange Street. Though the two women hadn’t yet met, Delmont’s joining them surely came as a relief to Rappe. It solved the awkward problem of a married man traveling alone with an unmarried woman—for Helen Hansen had, at the last minute, bailed on Semnacher. Delmont as a traveling companion also made Rappe feel more comfortable in a personal way. Since childhood, older, knowing women like Delmont had served as her guardians, chaperones, and mentors in lieu of a mother.

A 1920 Stutz touring car similar to the one that Al Semnacher drove (Library of Congress)

[1] “New Coast Agency,” Wid’s Daily, 9 July 1919, [3].

[2] Harry Burns, “Chit, Chat, and Chatter,” Camera!, 29 June 1919, 7.

[3] The following account is largely based on B. M. Delmont, “Mrs. Delmont Gives Detailed Account of Rappe Tragedy,” San Francisco Chronicle, 12 September 1921, 4; Semnacher’s testimony in the transcript of People vs. Arbuckle; and other corroborative sources.

100 Years Ago Today: “Fatty” leaves L.A. for S.F., September 2, 1921

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Roscoe Arbuckle and his companions set out from Los Angeles on Friday, September 2, the day before Al Semnacher left with his party of Virginia Rappe and Maude Delmont. Arbuckle, his chauffeur, and, perhaps, the director Fred Fishback took turns driving. The actor Lowell Sherman enjoyed the view from the backseat.

Greg Merritt, in Room 1219, was the first to posit this route, which began on Highway 2 North, the future U.S. Route 101, built atop the old Spanish royal road known as the Camino Real. But this route is conjectural. Arbuckle could have taken the more picturesque coastal route or the quicker inland route to the east that Semnacher took (present-day I-5). The Camino Real, however, would have allowed him to spend the night in Paso Robles, the approximate halfway point between Los Angeles and San Francisco, as he had done in June when he drove his custom purple Pierce-Arrow for display in the new San Francisco showroom of its builder, Don Lee.

Such a layover was quite different from the humble Selma ranch where Semnacher’s entourage stayed. Paso Robles boasted a beautiful hotel and curative hot springs. Arbuckle and Sherman could also sample some of the booze they’d packed for the trip. (Fred Fishback didn’t drink. He was, however, a kind of “cheerleader” to paraphrase Malcolm Lowry’s Consul in Under the Volcano.)

Roscoe Arbuckle using a grease gun on his Pierce-Arrow, ca. late 1920 (Newspapers.com)

Bit Player #5: Harry Barker: The “Sweetheart”

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. . . a man and a gentleman who tried to clean himself and keep all around him clean.

Gavin McNab, Chief Defense Counsel[1]

Harry Beaconsfield Barker was one of the most effective witnesses called by Roscoe Arbuckle’s defense lawyers during the first Arbuckle trial. His testimony, too, resulted in their first defeat. Two jury members, including its only woman, wouldn’t vote to acquit.

Barker knew Rappe “intimately” for almost five years, from 1910 to 1914, and had not lost touch with her, even after he had moved to San Francisco in 1918 and married in July 1920. For a time, he even lived in the St. Francis Hotel and may have seen her there, a year later, when his wife was about six or seven months pregnant—that is, about June or July 1921. In other words, they were on good terms.

Barker was considered a surprise witness. Arbuckle’s lawyers, led by California’s Democratic kingmaker, Gavin McNab, surely learned of the connection between Rappe and Barker from their colleagues in Chicago. Best of all, Barker was conveniently in San Francisco.

Barker, like Rappe, had gone West. He was called a “Stockton rancher.” Barker, however, had already made a considerable fortune in northern Indiana real estate and, together with other investors from Chicago, hoped to make more speculating on farmland in the San Joaquin Valley.

Barker was no stranger to courtrooms. He was mired in another legal battle at the time he was called to the stand to describe his relationship with Virginia Rappe. He and his close friend Albert Sabath, the Chicago lawyer who worked for Arbuckle’s defense, were named in a lawsuit and accused of fraud and conspiracy by a group of Chinese American investors over a large tract of farmland on Mildred Island in the San Joaquin River delta. Their lawsuit amounted to $400,000 in damages (over $6 million adjusted for inflation). The case had progressed from the lower courts and would soon make its way to the California Supreme Court. Making this problem go away may have induced Barker to take the stand and discuss his personal life with Rappe.

Barker’s testimony substantiated the assertion that Rappe had a long history of becoming hysterically ill after only a few drinks, that she suffered excruciating abdominal pains, and, of course, tore her clothes off. He described a handful of incidents. These as well as similar episodes of Rappe’s past behavior that other defense witnesses described seemed to follow the same script, a predictable formula not unlike that of slapstick comedies, such that Rappe’s drinking and stripping and going wild uncannily foreshadowed what happened in room 1219 of the St. Francis Hotel on Labor Day 1921.

Harry Barker dated Virginia Rappe on and off those years in Chicago. He was about twenty-six years old when he met Rappe in the spring or early summer of 1910, after her brief foray as a chorus girl and vaudeville performer. At the time, he still lived with his widowed mother Rebecca on Michigan Avenue in Groveland Park. She and Barker’s late father were both Russian Jewish emigrants who still spoke Yiddish in the home. The son, however, was born in Chicago in 1885 and had already established himself at the age of twenty-one in 1906 as a real estate broker whose business was largely based in and around the Indiana Harbor region. There he was responsible for many of the new homes “for workers,” as the newspapers described them, built for The Gary Works, the massive steel mill on Lake Michigan. His attention to detail and price almost resulted in his being lost at sea. In 1916, he had traveled into the interior of Panama to inspect the timber holdings of a Chicago syndicate. On his return, however, his motor launch sailed too far out into the Pacific Ocean, ran out of fuel, and went adrift for eighteen hours.[2]

Barker would have appealed to Rappe’s grandmother–guardian. He was the kind of prosperous, middle-class man Rappe might have been attracted to if she were to “settle down” in Chicago rather than pursue a career of her own. But Barker’s appeal to Virginia may have been that he wasn’t so settled and was willing to move to where the opportunities were including having lived out of a suitcase “for a time at the Gary Young Men’s Christian Association.”[3]

It could be said that he lived dangerously and took risks, which also appealed to Rappe. He drove fast cars. He attended the early Indianapolis 500s and drove a fast car himself, described as a “40 horsepower flyer.” In all likelihood, it was in his car that Rappe learned to drive and compete in auto races herself. He also had nothing against the drinking of alcoholic beverages.

Barker’s business partner was Adolph Joachim Sabath, the powerful Chicago Democrat who represented the 5th District in Chicago and chaired the Alcoholic Liquor Traffic Committee. Legal and illegal alcohol sales were no mystery to Congressman Sabath, who, with his brother, Judge Joseph Sabath, once operated a saloon in Chicago. Adolph was, unsurprisingly, a “wet” congressman and was a leading opponent of making Chicago and the country “dry”. He rightly predicted that Prohibition would only lead to bootlegging on a national scale—and some of his knowledge came from Harry Barker who, in 1916, served as one of Sabath chief agents in monitoring illicit alcohol sales in the border region between Indiana and Illinois. Adolph’s nephew, the son of his brother, Judge Joseph Sabath, Albert, was his law partner and Arbuckle’s chief lawyer in Chicago. He had likely been retained in the last week of September 1921, if not earlier, to begin the discovery process into Virginia Rappe.

Although none of Barker’s original testimony of November 25, 1921, is preserved in any length, the content and tenor can be pieced together from the reportage.

The surprise witness of the entire case was Barker [“one-time ‘sweetheart’ of the dead girl”]. It revealed a romance of the early days of Virginia Rappe in Chicago. Barker, who now has a ranch in California, and a real estate business in Gary, Ind., was then “on the road.” He met Virginia Rappe, he said, in 1910—when the state contends she was but 13 years old—and “a warm friendship sprang up which lasted four and a half years.”

Barker “made Chicago often” and when he did he “went with Virginia.” Her grandmother usually accompanied them to dinner and the theater, he said. He described dinners ranging from an Italian restaurant where Virginia partook of too much red wine, to the LaSalle hotel, where he met her the last time he saw her in Chicago. He declared [that] he had seen her the last two months before [her] death.

At that time, he admitted on cross-examination, “she was looking her old self—always bright, high spirited and full of fun.”

Barker underwent a grilling cross-examination. The state scored when they brought out that all the times to which he testified that Virginia tore her clothes were while she lived with her grandmother, now dead, and none of them after she went to live with her “aunt,” Mrs. Hardebeck, now living. Barker will likely be questioned further today.[4]

Despite Rappe’s seeming intolerance for alcoholic beverages, despite the “high maintenance” of dating her, Barker still took her out drinking hundreds of times.” In addition to the wine incident, he also described seeing Rappe become hysterical and tear her clothing when she had partaken of liquors in small quantities.

“She had one attack after dinner at Rector’s café in Chicago,” he said.

“Virginia and I were dining together. It was about 7:30 p.m. She drank gin and orange juice.

“Another attack occurred at South Haven, Mich. Her grandmother was with us at the summer resort there. I had not seen her drink anything.

In Chicago I frequently took her to dinner. She often drank liquor at these dinners.

“I took her several times to the Bismarck gardens in Chicago.”

He was asked if he took her with a Mrs. Katherine Fox of Chicago and a “gentleman from Australia” in the Bismarck gardens in 1913.

“I don’t remember,” he said.

“I tried to keep Virginia from drinking,” he said when asked if he had refused to permit Virginia to drink at that party.

In answer to a question as to his visits to cafes with Miss Rappe[,] he declared he had taken her “hundreds of times.”

He denied he had been engaged to Miss Rappe and [that] she had terminated the engagement.

Reverting to the question of liquor[,] he said he could not remember any Chicago café refusing to serve Miss Rappe liquor.[5]

Katherine Fox, for whom Rappe served as a “protégé,” as Gavin McNab sarcastically put it, was Barker’s chief foil for the prosecution. In the following reportage, she responds to Assistant District Attorney Milton U’Ren here, while tracing Rappe’s life at the time of her association with Barker.

Mrs. Fox repeatedly denied she had ever seen her in pain or in the care of a physician, and had never seen her tear her clothing nor take an intoxicating drink. Mrs. Fox testified she was intimately associated with Miss Rappe during all that time.

“Do you know Harry B. Barker?” U’Ren asked her. She did.

“Was he engaged to Virginia Rappe?”

“Yes, he was.”

“Was that engagement broken?”

“Yes.”

“She broke it?”

“Miss Rappe did.”

“How do you know she broke the engagement?”

“I was present.”[6]

bismarck-gardens-postcard-frontIn addition to denying Fox’s assertion of an engagement, Barker also denied that he had said what Fox overheard in a restaurant ten years before, that “Miss Rappe has not taken a drink yet.”[7] The reportage doesn’t include the context for this remark—also via Mrs. Fox—but it implies that Rappe didn’t drink at the time and may have only started while in Barker’s company, that he introduced her to alcoholic beverages and continued to ply her despite her alleged bizarre behavior that so clearly resembled what happened to her at Arbuckle’s party.

Barker “enumerated at least six occasions where, in his presence, the dinner was disturbed by Virginia becoming hysterical, shrieking in pain and tearing her clothing.”[8] That she had even had two gin and orange juices—the same concoction, coincidentally, that she allegedly imbibed at Arbuckle’s party—surely must have seemed to the prosecution too good to be true for Arbuckle.[9] Such detail surely incited the heated “wrangle between Deputy District Attorney Milton U’Rren and Attorney Milton Cohen, whom the prosecutor charged with ‘coaching’ defense witnesses.”[10]

Coaching aside, the picture that Barker paints shows a man who had invested much time and money into enjoying Rappe’s company hundreds of times. The restaurants he did mention—Bismarck Garden at Broadway and Lake, and Rector’s, an oyster house at Clark and Monroe—were popular, fashionable, and expensive. Barker obviously “courted” the grandmother by attending Thanksgiving Day dinner at her Fullerton Avenue apartment and having her in tow for dinner “usually” means a certain commitment if not patience and suffering on the man’s part.

The South Haven incident would have been an expensive vacation, which included two long day cruises across Lake Michigan and the expense of putting Rappe and her grandmother up in a hotel as well as entertaining them at the town’s many attractions, including theaters, a casino, an opera house, and an amusement park. Even if it wasn’t an engagement ring in testimony, Barker had given Rappe a diamond ring. He did everything that a man might do if he were in love.

Barker’s testimony as to the length of their relationship suggests that it began to fade in 1913, when Rappe’s modeling career was at its height and she had sailed to Europe to attend the autumn fashion shows in Paris. When Rappe returned to Chicago in January 1914 and the LaSalle Hotel, she and Barker distanced themselves further. The Chicago Tribune reported on the marriage of Albert Sabath later that same month. Harry Barker was in the wedding party. If he attended the reception with Virginia Rappe, her name wasn’t mentioned.

Barker’s testimony had a profound effect on the only woman juror, Mrs. Helen Hubbard, who apparently took offense at what probably seemed his caddish betrayal. The resulting hung jury forced a new trial for late January 1922.

Barker was not called to testify at that trial or the third one. The defense found other witnesses who had seen Rappe’s drinking and striptease. Instead, Barker went back to running his businesses. Nevertheless, his name was often invoked during those trials and, especially, the last one, when Arbuckle was acquitted in April 1922.

What Barker had said on the stand at the first trial was not lost or forgotten by Milton U’Ren. In a fiery address to the jury, in which he blasted that they would be just as guilty as Arbuckle if they voted to acquit, he referred to Barker “as a ‘buzzard, snake, skunk and blackguard.’”[11] To this, Gavin McNab responded that Barker was

a man and a gentleman, who tried to be clean himself and keep all around him clean. This man whom the prosecution calls a blackguard was the only mourner at the funeral of Miss Rappe’s mother [sic] and he sacrificed himself financially to pay the expenses of that funeral. Where were Mrs. Fox and others who professed in this court to be such good friends of Miss Rappe? They were not there.[12]

In late December 1921, Barker and the Sabath family enjoyed a small legal victory in the California Supreme Court. But the Mildred Island case, due to the tenaciousness of the plaintiffs, dragged on in the courts until 1932.

[1] “Arbuckle Case Near Jury,” Sioux City Journal, 12 April 1922, 2.

[2] “Harry Barker Home from Panama,” Munster Times, 14 February 1916, 2.

[3] “Says Arbuckle Not Accused by Movie Star,” Fresno Morning Republican, 26 November 1921, 1.

[4] “Arbuckle Case Closes Monday, M’Nab Declares: Rancher and Former Friend of Miss Rappe on Stand,” Oklahoma City Times, 26 November 1921, 16.

[5] “The Past of Virginia Rappe Inquired Into,” Stockton Daily Evening Record, 26 November 1921, 1.

[6] “Impeachment of 2 Arbuckle Witnesses Looms,” Philadelphia Inquirer, 30 November 1921, 1.

[7] “Defense Will Close Monday for Arbuckle: Stockton Rancher Resumes Testimony,” Sacramento Bee, 26 November 1921, 1.

[8] “Booze Parties Hold Stage in Arbuckle Case: Former Sweetheart of Virginia Rappe Testifies Woman Would Tear Clothing after Drinking Liquor,” Salt Lake Telegram, 27 November 1921, 1.

[9] Some narratives use the term “orange blossom” to describe “Rappe’s drink.” She herself called it a “Bronx Cocktail,” which she preferred made with very little gin as she did not like its taste. See A.P. Night Wire, “Defense Is Contradicted,” Los Angeles Times, 7 April 1922, 1.

[10] “Miss Rappe Often Crazed with Pain, Witness Asserts,” Philadelphia Inquirer, 27 November 1921, 1.

[11] Oscar H. Fernbach, “Arbuckle’s Fate Is with Jury Today: Closing Argument in Third Trial of Comedian Now Under Way; McNab Yet on Argument,” San Francisco Examiner, 12 April 1922, 15.

[12] “Arbuckle Lawyers Flay Alleged Bully Methods Used by Prosecution,” Billings Gazette, 12 April 1922, 8.

The Game Lady: Lobby card images

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One of the last films in which Virginia Rappe appears and which was in theaters in the summer of 1921, was A Game Lady (1921), directed by Henry Lehrman for First National Pictures. Like other photographs, these publicity photos from that film tell a story.

There is no extant copy of A Game Lady, but Rappe likely appeared in as many scenes as needed to show that she was the hunters’ quarry rather than game birds. There is no synopsis, but the two-reel comedy likely was formulaic, like other Henry Lehrman films, in which the sheer momentum of the action—scenes of the hunters’ misadventures as they seek the hand of Rappe’s “game lady” — was the point rather than story or character development. These photographs are from a series of lobby cards that were included in a Los Angeles Record article in the days after her death. Rappe doesn’t appear to be a comic performer in these photos but rather an object of desire.

A Game Lady lobby card image, Jimmy Savo (l), Virginia Rappe (c), and Billy Engle (r) (IMDb.com)

The actor on the left is Rappe’s uncredited costar, the comic Jimmy Savo in hunting attire. Savo was making the transition from vaudeville to motion pictures at the time. The actor on her left (in the middle in the second photo) is Billy Engle, an old Lehrman standby.

A Game Lady is one of the films that shows Rappe after she had regained her figure following a regimen of diet and exercise that was supervised by her masseuse at the Los Angeles Athletic Club. She is dressed in a “riding habit” like the one she wore when she accompanied her manager Al Semnacher and his friend Maude Delmont on the drive to San Francisco and Arbuckle’s ill-fated Labor Day 1921 party.

A Game Lady was still showing in theaters as late as the third and fourth week of September. But like Roscoe Arbuckle’s films, it too was pulled from screens for cultivating the morbid curiosity of American moviegoers.

A Game Lady lobby card, 1921 (Private collection)

Two photographs of Maude Delmont

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A photo insert in a nonfiction book provides a visual reference for readers. They have a face in mind—or faces as the subject evolves throughout the text. But very often one image will serve as the emblem for that person.

Maude Delmont, Rappe’s companion at “Fatty” Arbuckle’s Labor Day party, is a case in point. We are fairly certain that she sat for newspaper photographers twice, before and after her testimony at the San Francisco Coroner’s inquest on Wednesday, September 14, 1921. No other photographs of Delmont were used to identify her, as far as we know (save for an ersatz photograph used in Kenneth Anger’s Hollywood Babylon that is really of Arbuckle’s estranged wife Minta Durfee).

Maude Delmont with Policewoman Katherine Eisenhart (Calisphere)

In the above photo we see Delmont, presumably in the office of District Attorney Matthew Brady or the Detective Bureau.. She is in a black outfit, worn in mourning for Rappe, as described by reporters. There are also details that suggest this image, with the water glass and the police matron, was taken before her testimony. This testimony would be the only time she faced Arbuckle in a courtroom setting. While on the stand Delmont asked for warm water and a coffee cupful was procured, thus delaying the proceedings. The image below, from the Daily News, credited Underwood, has a coffee cup near Delmont’s left hand. Apparently, she brought the cup back with her to this office setting afterward.

Maude Delmont, originally published in the Daily News, September 1921 (Newspapers.com)

Each image can be read differently. The first image features a gesture with the left hand that seems staged, theatric, connoting a “troubled heart” and the like. (That Delmont worked as an extra in motion pictures still needs to be confirmed.)

The second image shows a more relaxed woman, who looks as though she were falling asleep. If one knows that she had been given an injection to help her remain calm through her morning testimony before a coroner and his all-male jury, this photograph may have caught Delmont at the moment the drug was wearing off.

What occurred immediately following the taking of this photo is revealing and worth telling. In the Detective Bureau, Delmont confronted Rappe’s manager, Al Semnacher, and hit him in the face with her purse (visible on the table in the first image). She berated him for not bringing Rappe’s adopted aunt to San Francisco to accompany her “niece’s” body back to Los Angeles. She further embarrassed him by shouting that he wasn’t a man if he didn’t pay her $250 hotel bill ($1,600 adjusted for inflation), which may have included Rappe’s final expenses at the same hotel.

As she weakened in her hospital bed, Rappe repeatedly expressed her wish that Arbuckle take responsibility for paying her expenses. It seemed to be the only thing she held against him. The wish never reached Arbuckle. If it did, even having an inkling or intuition that she wanted money, Arbuckle likely discharged himself from any debt, doing what any good lawyer or manager would advise. To admit any responsibility invited “notoriety.”

Both Rappe and Delmont were of limited means at the time and were financially unprepared for the events that unfolded. Neither woman ever received money from Semnacher or Arbuckle.

[Needless to say, we are looking for additional photographs, especially original or reproductions suitable for our work-in-progress. We would enjoy hearing from anyone with leads to relevant materials and images.]