Room 1219

July 8, 2013
“This is a mystery story,” states Hollywood historian Merritt in the introduction. And like an investigator on one of TV’s acronymic crime shows, Merritt meticulously examines silent-film legend Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle’s role in the 1921 death of model/actress Virginia Rappe, a tale distorted by time and innuendo. (The title is a nod to the scene of the crime, Room 1219 in the exclusive St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco, where the star hosted Rappe and others in his liquor-stocked Prohibition-era suite.) Merritt follows Arbuckle from his impoverished origins and meteoric rise through his arrest; three trials for manslaughter; and banishment from Hollywood. The author-detective examines medical records, court proceedings, newspaper archives, and pop culture books to construct a fuller picture of the scandal responsible for the morality code that followed. What emerges is a multifaceted portrait of not only Arbuckle but the early days of a burgeoning industry and the players (Griffith, Sennett, Chaplin, Keaton, etc.) who helped shape it a century ago. Lovers of film history, media studies, and true crime will enjoy the parallels between the film boom of the early 20th century and the tech boom of today. Photos.

Starred review from June 15, 2013
What really happened between Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle and Virginia Rappe in that San Francisco hotel room on September 5, 1921? A few days after their encounter, Rappe, a movie bit player, died, and enormously successful film comedian Arbuckle was arrested for murder. Later charged with manslaughter, he survived two hung juries (one favored acquittal, the other conviction) before a third acquitted him. Merritt (Celluloid Mavericks: A History of American Independent Film, 2000, etc.) displays great compassion for all involved, especially the two principals, both of whom have suffered at the hands of both formal and informal biographers. (Among other things, he traces, and dismisses, the egregious, pervasive story about rape-by-bottle.) Merritt begins with the Labor Day weekend when Arbuckle drove his lavish Pierce-Arrow to San Francisco for a hotel party. Although Prohibition was the law of the land, liquor flowed freely; Arbuckle had a huge stash back in his mansion. The author intercuts the stories of the weekend with the biographies of Arbuckle and Rappe, alternating chapters until he arrives at the trials. He provides necessary cinema history, including the history of film censorship, and ends with his own evaluation of the evidence and his conclusions about what probably occurred--though only Arbuckle and Rappe were present, so certainty is elusive. Merritt charts the sad arc of Arbuckle's career after his acquittal, emphasizing the loyalty of friends like Buster Keaton, and discusses his subsequent work behind the camera and on the vaudeville stage, where audiences often received him warmly. The author notes that the Arbuckle case was one of the earliest in America's culture wars. Arbuckle emerges as a sympathetic figure, but many others, including movie moguls, don't fare as well. The definitive account of one of Hollywood's most notorious scandals.

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