Tinseltown: Murder, Morphine, and Madness at the Dawn of Hollywood (22 page)

Oh, how he cursed Fatty Arbuckle.

If not for these cans of unreleased Arbuckle films in the studio warehouse, Zukor would have let the fat slob rot in jail.

But instead he hired Frank Dominguez, who’d handled a number of cases for the film industry, to represent the troublesome star. Dominguez was costing Zukor big bucks, and every dollar spent was a stab to his heart. Even under the best conditions, Zukor hated spending money on actors. This was absolutely sickening. If by some miracle Arbuckle managed to get through this thing in one piece, Zukor vowed, he would have to repay every dime.

Such an outcome was still possible, Zukor knew, if unlikely. So far no charges had been filed against the comedian. District Attorney Brady wanted Arbuckle charged with murder, but Dominguez thought the evidence was so lacking that he’d ask the judge to dismiss the case altogether. Dominguez believed—everyone in the industry believed—that Arbuckle was innocent in the death of Virginia Rappé. But Zukor wasn’t paying Dominguez to defend an innocent man. He was paying him to make the entire debacle go away.

Because on some deep level, Arbuckle’s plight wasn’t just about business for Zukor.

Very likely, it also tapped something very personal for the millionaire mogul, reminding him of a time when he, like Arbuckle, had been powerless, when he too had been innocent of a thing and unable to prove it.

At the age of fifteen, Adolph Zukor, dry-goods apprentice, pushed a broom across a dirty wooden floor. All he could think about was escape. If he stayed in Hungary, sweeping floors would be his lot for life. America was his only hope.

But how could he get there? He hadn’t a single forint to his name.

Zukor’s only hope was the Orphans Bureau. They might sponsor his emigration. After combing his hair and borrowing a pair of shoes, he walked the several miles to the bureau’s office. There, seated on a stool in front of a superintendent, so small that his feet didn’t reach the floor, looking far younger than his years, the young Adolph “poured his heart out,” pleading for financial assistance.

But his passion only made the superintendent suspicious. Why was the boy so anxious to leave the country? He must have committed some crime, the superintendent concluded. He must be trying to avoid punishment by escaping to America.

Zukor was astounded when he heard the charge. It wasn’t so! He did his best to persuade the doubting bureaucrat that he’d done nothing wrong. But the man was not convinced. If the superintendent denied his request to emigrate, Zukor’s life would be ruined. He’d be left to rot in Hungary, forever consigned to menial tasks. That man held his life in his hands!

Back at the dry-goods store, Zukor explained what had happened to his employer, who came to his defense, contacting the bureau and assuring them that young Adolph’s record was spotless. But until Zukor knew for sure what the bureau’s answer would be, he worried. His dreams might have been extinguished right then and there.

They weren’t, of course. The Orphans Bureau gave him the money. But if one man hadn’t been willing to stand up for him, Adolph Zukor might never have made it to America.

Languishing in a jail cell in San Francisco, Roscoe Arbuckle was just as innocent as Zukor had been all those years ago, and surely Zukor knew it. But where Zukor’s employer had saved the day for him, Arbuckle’s was not so willing.

Because even if Arbuckle wasn’t guilty of killing that girl, he wasn’t exactly innocent. He had allowed himself to get caught with booze and women in compromising circumstances. How stupid could he be, especially after all the bad press following Olive Thomas’s death?

Zukor seethed. Arbuckle had put his dreams in jeopardy. He had complicated the fight against censorship and compromised Famous Players’ defense against the FTC. For such recklessness alone, he deserved to be punished.

But not on Felony Row. Even Zukor had to concede that. For all his misconduct, Arbuckle didn’t deserve to hang.

And so he instructed Dominguez to do whatever he could to get the case dismissed.

In an aggressive public-relations campaign, the sharp attorney brilliantly co-opted the language of the reformers in the comedian’s defense. “The Christian sentiment of this God-fearing nation,” Dominguez wrote in a widely syndicated press release, “will not adjudge any person guilty of an alleged crime until the same has been proven in the spirit of our Master, who said, ‘Judge not lest ye be judged.’”

But the reformers weren’t buying it. This was just more propaganda from the film industry, which had broken its word too many times to be trusted now.

On September 14, 1921, Arbuckle was charged with manslaughter. Brady had wanted murder, but he had to settle for this. Dominguez pressed on, fighting to have all charges dismissed. It was up to Judge Sylvain Lazarus to decide. On the day of the hearing, more than a hundred church ladies, outnumbering the men almost two to one, filed into the courtroom. When Arbuckle was brought in, the women hissed and jeered so much that Judge Lazarus ordered the defendant returned to his cell and kept there for his own safety.

The newspapers loved it.

F
ATTY
T
HREATENED BY
M
OB OF
A
NGRY
W
OMEN

On September 28, Judge Lazarus announced that he had made his decision. Reporters scrambled to the courthouse. In New York, Zukor sat waiting for Western Union to deliver a telegram with the news.

Lazarus took his seat. He looked out into the courtroom, at the faces of the defendant, his lawyers, the district attorney, and the church ladies. Finally he announced that enough evidence existed—
“I may say barely enough”—to continue the case against Arbuckle.

A murmur rippled through the courtroom. The church ladies restrained themselves from applauding.

The judge had more to say. He saw the case in front of him broadly and emblematically. “We are not trying Roscoe Arbuckle alone,” Judge Lazarus declared. “In a large sense, we are trying ourselves. We are trying present-day morals, our present-day social conditions, our present-day looseness of thought and lack of social balance.”

Judge Lazarus was right.

This wasn’t just one man on trial.

This was a conflict for the soul of the nation.

And the reformers were itching for the fight.

On October 1, in Boston, Nathan Tufts was finally found guilty of extortion and expelled from office by the state supreme court. The national press, caught up in other scandals, barely noticed. Zukor could take comfort that one nightmare, at least, was finally over. The only one crowing over Tufts was, not surprisingly, Brother Crafts, who conflated
“that famous party in Boston” with Arbuckle’s troubles. “No one was killed in that party,” Crafts preached to his followers, “but there was adultery and the sale of liquor. What is the difference morally? None!”

Zukor and Arbuckle, equally culpable? Crafts was obviously playing to the balcony, but the suggestion cut a little too close to home for Zukor, who was increasingly cloistered in his Fifth Avenue office.

Soon after Arbuckle’s release on bail, Joe Schenck gave Zukor a letter he’d received from the troubled comedian. Zukor read the words scrawled in Arbuckle’s slightly jumbled handwriting.
“When something happens in half an hour that will change a man’s whole life,” Arbuckle wrote, “it’s pretty tough especially when a person is absolutely innocent in deed, word or thought of any wrong.”

Zukor had been there once. He knew.

“Tell Mr. Zukor,” Arbuckle added, “before passing judgement, to remember the Boston party. He knows what a shakedown is.” Of course, there was one difference: Zukor actually
was
guilty in the Boston scandal. “When it is over,” Arbuckle concluded, “I have got the guts to come back and I will come back and make good.” He vowed that Zukor would see his investment repaid.

But Zukor had already given up on that investment. He didn’t want Arbuckle to come back. He wasn’t paying the lawyers for an acquittal. Once they’d failed to get the case dismissed, Zukor’s best hope was that the comedian would be found guilty. With church and civic organizations crying for his blood, riots would surely follow if Arbuckle were exonerated. Better the comedian should pay for his reckless behavior and save them all from ruin. Better one man sacrificed than the entire industry.

At least, under a manslaughter conviction, Arbuckle wouldn’t hang.

Zukor felt no regret over the episode. As always, he was able to sidestep introspection and self-reflection.
“A man is kept busy wrestling current matters and plotting the future without reliving the past,” he was known to say.

Still, there must have been nights, in the darkness and the solitude, with only Lottie beside him, when Zukor remembered a young boy back in Hungary, whose dreams—whose entire life—had hinged on an accusation of a crime he did not commit.

Going home is never easy, and for Gibby Gibson it must have been especially difficult. But as she stepped off the train onto the windswept Colorado plateau, her hopes were high. Looking around at the landscape of her childhood, she saw those cold purple peaks enclosing the valley. Once upon a time those mountains had seemed like a barrier—an impervious wall that kept Gibby from her dreams. But she had broken through, and now she had returned to make good with a new plan for success.

Gibby always had a new plan.

This one came courtesy of independent producer Charles Seeling, who had hired her for a western; Gibby’s equestrian skills continued to serve her well. They were both determined that the picture they’d come to Colorado to make,
Across the Border
, would break through the domination of the big chains and bring theater owners running to them. Seeling was optimistic that a government-mandated breakup of Famous Players–Lasky was imminent. When that blessed event occurred, he and other independent producers would have hundreds of previously off-limits screens available for showing their pictures. Then, he and Gibby were convinced, the cash would come pouring in.

She had to believe it would happen. Otherwise, how could she go on?

And so, as always, Gibby threw herself into making the film, playing the feisty heroine opposite Guinn “Big Boy” Williams. Wouldn’t it be wonderfully ironic to grab success on the same roads where she had first promised her mother those nice things?

Shooting lasted about a week. Then the company trekked back to Los Angeles . . . where the film they’d all worked so hard on sat tightly spooled in its tin can, waiting for Seeling’s state’s rights distributor to find a theater, any theater, to show it.

Weeks passed. Then months. As 1921 drew to a close,
Across the Border
had not been screened anywhere. Seeling was advertising the picture in the trades, but the number of independent theaters was dwindling, and there were no takers for his film.

Another plan gone bust.

Gibby despaired. It was a low period for her and her friends. One week they’d be flush with cash from their bunco schemes, the next they’d be broke. Sometimes the dry spells went on for months. Don Osborn had given up trying to mount an independent feature, having failed at the same quixotic mission as Seeling. Now he laughed at Gibby’s determination, her naiveté in thinking she could still make it on the level. Didn’t she understand that the only reliable cash came from the unsuspecting patsies who fell for their con jobs and blackmail schemes?

Gibby wasn’t averse to taking cash where she could get it. But she refused to give up on her dreams, despite all her setbacks, even if Osborn had.

She sat in the backseat of Osborn’s car, no doubt still gloomy over her failed attempt with
Across the Border
. But Gibby wasn’t so depressed that she would turn down an invitation to a party. Sometime late in 1921, a carful of locusts headed out to the desert town of Blythe. Of course Osborn’s niece Rose came along; she was never far from Don’s side. Also on board were George Weh and a new acquaintance, a handsome Scottish-born actor named James Bryson.

Gibby probably had no designs on Bryson—he was a struggling actor without a bank account or any connections—but even if she did, she would have quickly noticed the way the Scotsman kept looking over at Rose. Osborn noticed the flirtation as well. He wasn’t pleased.

Exactly what kind of hold his niece had over Osborn wasn’t yet clear to Gibby, but it was plain as day that when Bryson started flirting with Rose, Osborn seethed.

After returning from their trip to Blythe, Osborn brooded. He’d seen the way Bryson and Rose had made eyes at each other all weekend, and he’d hated watching as Bryson drove her back out to Pasadena, where they were both staying at Osborn’s mother’s place. But he’d become even more steamed when he heard from his mother that the two had never showed up. Where had those double-crossers gone?

From George Weh he learned that
Bryson and Rose had spent the night together at the Cadillac Hotel in Venice Beach. Osborn raged.

What a fool he’d been to let Bryson into his group of friends. The Scotsman had seemed like a good fellow, an actor hoping for a break but running out of ideas. They were all in the same boat. Bryson had even picked up one of Osborn’s tricks: writing bad checks. Osborn had seen Bryson cash a check for $10 at the Yule Café, without any funds to back it up.

Speeding across town toward the Cadillac Hotel, he remembered this little bit of information. Osborn knew an awful lot about Bryson. About Rose, too.

Didn’t they know what he was capable of? Surely they remembered how thoroughly he had destroyed his wife, Rae, during their divorce proceedings. Before Rae had had a chance to expose his affair with his niece, Osborn had staked out her hotel room and claimed he’d witnessed several men going in and out. Rae was devastated by the
“dirty filthy evidence,” but Osborn’s charges shut her up.

Bryson and Rose must have known he’d do even worse to them if they resisted him.

Bounding up the stairs of the hotel, Osborn forced his way inside Bryson’s room. When he saw Rose there, he threw a fit. But he was too late, Bryson told him.
They were leaving for San Diego to get married.