Arbuckle’s defense team had the stronger hand. During their closing argument, the name of every witness who testified that the victim had a pre-existing condition was repeated. Arbuckle’s attorney emphasized his client’s innocence by saying the prosecutors had no evidence of murder. No evidence of any object used on Miss Rappe. No witness to what happened to Miss Rappe. It was tragic, but tragedy did not make Roscoe Arbuckle a murderer. Arbuckle was painted as a man who used his talents to make people happy. His reward for his gift was unjust.
The jury was dismissed to deliberate. They returned six minutes later. Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle was found not guilty. The jury, along with two alternates, did not stop at just acquitting the man, they also issued an apology to him.
Acquittal is not enough for Roscoe Arbuckle. We feel that a great injustice has been done him. We feel also that it was our only plain duty to give him this exoneration. There was not the slightest proof adduced to connect him in any way with the commission of a crime.
He was manly throughout the case and told a straightforward story on the witness stand, which we all believed.
The happening at the hotel was an unfortunate affair for which Arbuckle, so the evidence shows, was in no way responsible.
We wish him success and hope that the American people will take the judgment of fourteen men and women who have sat listening for thirty-one days to the evidence that Roscoe Arbuckle is entirely innocent and free from all blame.
Arbuckle was found guilty of one crime: possession of alcohol during Prohibition. He paid the maximum fine allowable, $500. After the trial he had faced, they might as well have told him to sit in the corner.
He was a free man but his freedom came with a seven-hundred-thousand-dollar price made payable to his attorney. Arbuckle had lost his home and the car he loved. A jury found him innocent, but segments of the public felt he had gotten away with murder. Letters of complaint poured into the studio, and theaters that projected Arbuckle’s movies had their screens damaged. Arbuckle was told public perception would have to cool down before he could star in pictures again.
Arbuckle found an ally during his career depression in a woman named Doris Deene. She became his second wife in 1925. Deene told Arbuckle he had a gift, and it would be a sin to waste it. Maybe he needed to come back as a different person, but he needed to come back. Arbuckle did come back, this time as a director using the pseudonym William Goodrich. He had talent behind the camera just as he did in front of it. Yet, when the true identity of “B. Good” was revealed, the complaints rolled in again.
Arbuckle traveled to the East Coast and performed in a play called Baby Mine. It was a hit, leaving Arbuckle to wonder if the tide was beginning to change. He began a stage tour that stopped dead in its tracks in Minneapolis. The protestors came out again, and his show was canceled. The rejection was huge. Arbuckle’s drinking became heavier. He divorced his wife and was arrested several more times, usually for speeding or partying.
Another attempt for a comeback was made when Arbuckle opened the Plantation Club in Hollywood. No one protested the comic performing in his own club. Business was even profitable … until the stock market crash. The doors to the Plantation Club closed.
Arbuckle was married for a third time to an actress named Adie McPhail. His love life was getting another chance, as was his movie career when Jack Warner approached him to start working in two-reel comedies again. Warner Brothers studios would even let Arbuckle work under his real name. The films were a success, and on June 29, 1933, Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle signed a contract to make a feature-length movie. Arbuckle said it was the happiest day of his life. It was also his last. Roscoe Arbuckle died of a heart attack that very night.
A script for a film about Arbuckle’s life exists. Over the years, a variety of actors have been associated with playing the role of Fatty: John Belushi, John Candy, Chris Farley, standup comedian Jim Gaffigan, and Jackass stunt person Preston Lacy. However, filming never began with any of the proposed leads, and the project is said to be shelved. Fatty just can’t win.
2
Gable Loves Older Women. Gable Also Loves Married Ladies. Hitler Loves Gable. Dillinger Wouldn’t Miss It.
DURING THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD THERE have been two men who could wear the pencil mustache without being thought of as creepy kid touchers. One being the infamous Baltimore director John Waters, who is also known as the Pope of Trash. The other is Clark Gable, who was also known as the King of Hollywood. But before Clark Gable could be King, a womanizer, or even grow a mustache, he had a long road with many obstacles to overcome.
On February 1, 1901, William Clark Gable was born at home in a small coal mining town in Ohio. Ten months later his mother died. Clark’s father, Will Gable, was said to be a womanizer and a heavy drinker. Will Gable eventually remarried. His bride, Jennie Gable, was introduced to young Clark as his stepmother. Clark would be her only child, and she spoiled him constantly.
While Clark Gable was finishing up grade school, World War I was erupting. When Gable was a teen, the war was still raging on. Gable paid his father $175 for his Ford and moved to Akron, Ohio, to work in the factories. At seventeen he saw the stage play The Bird of Paradise and was so taken by the story and the actors that he finagled his way into working behind the scenes and eventually got his first taste of the stage with one line, “Your cab is here, madam.” That one line was all it took to hook young Gable.
Clark Gable was twenty-three years old. Josephine Dillon was forty-one.
Although Gable wanted to stay in Akron, his father persuaded him to move out West to work on the oil fields. At age twenty-one, Clark Gable left the business of drilling for black gold permanently. He spent time working with traveling theaters and performed physical labor when the theater troops didn’t pan out. During this time, Gable was introduced to the woman who would be his first wife, Josephine Dillon, an acting coach. She was able to bring out his strength and abilities, making him a full-fledged actor.
Gable and Dillon moved to Los Angeles together to chase their acting dream. In December of 1924, they married. Clark Gable was twenty-three years old. Josephine Dillon was forty-one.
In his early Hollywood years, Gable mainly appeared as an extra in silent movies and worked his way into more prominent roles in live theater. During one of his tours with live theater, Gable began an affair with a wealthy actress named Pauline Frederick. Like Gable’s wife, Frederick was much older than he was–eighteen years older. Though his wife seemed willing to look the other way, Gable moved out of their home. This would be the beginning of the end for their marriage.
Gable continued to tour and struck up another affair with an older woman, Ria Langham, a wealthy widow who was seventeen years older than Gable. Langham felt Gable had what it takes to be famous and offered to support him in New York City with the stipulation that he marry her. One problem: Clark Gable’s current wife wasn’t ready to let go, and to prove her support and love for her husband, she made a bee line to the big city to track down roles. Using this to his advantage, the future King of Hollywood didn’t bother giving Josephine Dillon the final boot until he was situated.
Ria Langham was seventeen years older than Gable.
With Dillon out of the picture, Ria Langham moved to New York to be with her man. She kept her word by buying him expensive clothes and paying his bills to live in expensive apartments. Gable attempted to keep his end of the bargain, but Dillon stretched out the divorce for as long as possible … can’t really blame her.
With Dillon finally out of the picture, Gable and Langham claimed to have married on March 31, 1930. The legitimacy of their nuptials would eventually be scrutinized, but we’ll get to that in a minute. Though Gable was