Maude Delmont

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.

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.]