1. Minnie Ha Ha (1891 - 1984) (photos) - Born Minnie Provost (a.k.a. Minnie Devereaux and Princess Minnie) in Canada, she was a natural comedienne who enhanced the films of the greatest comedians of the day. Her best known roles were in Fatty and Minnie-He-Haw (a.k.a The Squaw's Man) (Keystone, 1914), starring Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle Mickey (Mabel Normand Feature Film Company, 1918), starring Mabel Normand; and The Paleface (Comique Film Corp, for First National, 1922), starring Buster Keaton.
2. Fatty Arbuckle, a classic of the era, caught up in this system
a. Born 1887 in Kansas, poor family, overweight child given nickname Fatty, and it stuck.
b. Makes his name as a vaudeville singer.
c. In 1912, he meets Mack Sennet, who has just started the Keystone Film Company.
i. Sennet was to become America’s foremost maker of slapstick film. Keystone, an independent film company, became famous for the Keystone Kops.
ii. Sennet sees the makings of a slapstick comic in Arbuckle.
d. Arbuckle became a standard performer in the Keystone Kops, and in a series called Fatty and Mabel, which co-stared Mabel Normand, who was Sennet’s girlfriend.
e. 1916, he moves from Keystone to Paramount and gains both an unprecedented amount of control over his films and an unprecedented salary, $1 million a year, starting in 1921.
f. That year, he made 9 feature films for Paramount in 8 months.
g. On September 3, he decides to take a break with some friends in San Francisco
h. What happens next is unclear.
i. They rent a suite at the St. Francis hotel
ii. They spent Saturday and Sunday drinking
iii. They were joined by a party of three including Bambina Maude Delmont, Al Semnacher, and Virginia Rappe.
iv. On Monday, with everyone very drunk, Rappe goes to the bathroom, and Arbuckle follows her in. They emerge 15 minutes later.
v. Rappe became very sick, screaming in pain. The guests try to calm her but keep her in the hotel room Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.
vi. On Friday they take her to the hospital, where she dies of peritonitis caused by a ruptured bladder.
i. On Sept 10, Arbuckle is charged with murder. His case thus becomes America’s first Hollywood trial, and still one of its best.
i. Arbuckle was tried once in 1921 and twice in 1922
ii. The first two trials ended in mistrial and he was acquitted in the third one.
iii. But the lurid details in the press set a precedent for stuff we see today.
(1) The newspapers particularly W. R. Hearst’s San Francisco Examiner portrayed Rappe as a innocent young girl and Arbuckle as hideous and debauched.
(2) It was said that Arbuckle ruptured her bladder while on top of her.
(3) It was said that Arbuckle violated her with a champagne bottle.
(4) Hearst is said to have boasted that the Arbuckle story sold more papers than the sinking of the Lusitania.
iv. In fact, Rappe was almost certainly a prostitute, and probably a junkie as well. Arbuckle probably had nothing to do with her death.
j. The Arbuckle case becomes a cause celebre for the enemies of Hollywood. Theaters are boycotted nationally.
i. In response Hollywood creates the Hays Office, led by Will Hays, which not only censored film, but censored the lives of the actors.
ii. One of Hays’ first acts was to ban Arbuckle from film.
k. Even though he is acquitted, the trials destroy Arbuckle’s career. He is banned in the early 1920s.
i. In the late 20's he works as a director under the pseudonym William B. Goodrich (or Will B. Good as suggested by Keaton).
ii. In the early 30's he has a very short-lived comeback, but he dies in 1933 at age 46.