It didn’t take long for things to go sideways.
Arbuckle awoke on Labor Day to a rager already in full swing. Two of the guests enjoying themselves: Virginia Rappe, a 25-year-old actress and reputed party girl, and Maude Delmont, a lady known to some as a madame with a penchant for blackmail. Arbuckle soon joined them and the rest of the partiers, enjoying the music and illicit cocktails.
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What happened next depends on whose testimony you believe. If that’s Maude Delmont, the situation was horrific. Here’s her version (or at least one of them): After sharing a few drinks with Rappe, Arbuckle pulled her into a room with a sinister “I’ve waited for you five years, and now I’ve got you.” Fast-forward half an hour and Delmont says she heard screaming. She kicked at the door, soon opened by a sheepish, pajama-clad Arbuckle wearing Rappe’s hat “cocked at an angle.” Rappe was behind him on the bed, moaning in pain.
Doctors were called and Rappe was taken to another room. The young actress stayed at the hotel for a few days before being transferred to a hospital. On September 9, Rappe died of a ruptured bladder.
Arbuckle was about to make a dubious kind of history: The subject of the first celebrity sex scandal. Newspapers still ruled back in 1920, with many publishing multiple editions a day. And no story, not even the sinking of the Lusitania, sold papers like the Fatty Arbuckle shocker.
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The assumption was that Arbuckle forced himself on the young woman, his weight leading to a fatal injury. The New Yorker rounded up headlines that epitomized the breathless coverage, very little of it based in factual reporting: The Los Angeles Times reported unfounded plans “to send Arbuckle to death on gallows.” The San Francisco Call and Post snarked, “Arbuckle dances while girl is dying, joyous frolic amid death tragedy.” The Oxnard Daily Courier called him “Arbuckle, the beast.”