13. Fatty Arbuckle’s Wild Partying
Fatty Arbuckle was a superstar comic actor of the silent film era. Weighing about 300 pounds, he made a career out of tumbling, throwing pies, and being a lovable and jolly fat guy. He also liked partying with loose women, which ended up destroying his career and reputation. In 1921, Arbuckle and friends rented adjacent luxury suites in a San Francisco hotel, and invited several women, including prostitutes and aspiring actresses. An invitee, Virginia Rappe, was found acting strangely in a suite. A hotel doctor determined that she was extremely drunk, and gave her a shot of morphine to calm her.
Two days later, she was rushed to a hospital, and a friend told doctors that Arbuckle had raped Rappe. She died the next day of peritonitis, caused by a ruptured bladder. Newspapers had a field day, with some claiming that Fatty Arbuckle had crushed Rappe with his excessive bulk while raping her. Others alleged that Arbuckle had penetrated Rappe with a piece of ice, or a bottle of Coca-Cola, or a bottle of champagne. Arbuckle denied any wrongdoing, but he was arrested and charged with essentially having raped Rappe to death. After two trials ended in hung juries, he was eventually acquitted. Although exonerated, his reputation never recovered, and his career was over.
