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Famous Historic Figures’ Public Image vs the Reality of their Lives

Khalid Elhassan June 3, 2020 34 min

John Ford - The Searchers — John Wayne. Pintrest

26. A Media Feeding Frenzy

Fatty Arbuckle’s mug shot. Cinema Classico

Police investigators went with the theory that the heavy impact of the overweight Fatty Arbuckle’s atop Virginia Rappe during intercourse caused her bladder to rupture. Arbuckle denied any wrongdoing, but was arrested and charged with essentially having sexually abused Virginia Rappe to the point of death. It was a major media event – the OJ Simpson criminal scandal of the day.

Arbuckle was regarded by those who knew him as good-natured and shy with women – “the most chaste man in pictures“, as some put it. Charlie Chaplain, for example, “knew Roscoe as a genial and easy-going man, who would not harm a fly“. However, newspapers went with a far different image, depicting him as a gross pervert, who routinely used his massive bulk to overpower and abuse innocent girls. The damage to Arbuckle’s public image was irreversible.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.