Virginia Rappe was a successful Hollywood actress when she passed away from a mysterious internal injury days after attending a party with actor Fatty Arbuckle in 1921.
Wikimedia CommonsVirginia Rappe, a promising Hollywood actress in the 1910s.
Virginia Rappe was an up-and-coming actress and successful model when she died at age 30 on September 9, 1921, shortly after attending a party in San Francisco. Her sudden death — and the events leading up to it — soon stirred up a media frenzy in early 1920s Hollywood.
An autopsy revealed her cause of death to be a ruptured bladder and peritonitis, an inflammation of a thin layer of tissue inside the abdomen. At the time, the public theorized that Rappe was the victim of a violent sexual assault from Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle, a prominent silent film actor who attended the party. A trial would later acquit him of manslaughter.
But even today, over 100 years after the tragic incident, the public is still discussing what truly happened to Virginia Rappe. Did she die of a pre-existing bladder condition, or did Fatty Arbuckle play a role in her death? The full truth is difficult to unravel.
The Early Life And Career Of Virginia Rappe
Virginia Rappe was born on July 7, 1891 in Chicago. Her mother passed away when she was only 11 years old and she never knew her father, so she was left in the care of her grandmother.
At age 16, Rappe began working as a model in fashion shows at department stores. By the time she was 25, she’d found enough success to move to San Francisco in 1916. There, she developed her career further and even had a short relationship with dress designer Robert Moscovitz, who was tragically killed in a trolley-car accident.
Soon afterward, Rappe moved to Los Angeles to work for film director Fred J. Balshofer. She appeared in the silent film Paradise Garden, which was released in 1917.
Metro PicturesVirginia Rappe in Paradise Garden (1917).
From there, Rappe appeared in other silent films, totaling a little over a dozen. By 1919, Rappe began a relationship with director Henry Lehrman and was engaged to him at the time of her death.
Throughout her career, Rappe made headlines for spearheading proto-feminist causes, posing in tuxedos for an article that called for women to have “equal clothes rights with men,” encouraging women to “be original — every girl can be that,” and celebrating the idea of independence.
Aside from modeling and acting, she also dipped her toes in fashion design. According to the book Room 1219 by Greg Merritt, Rappe was designing pieces by 1914 and even had some of her creations exhibited at the 1915 World’s Fair. A newspaper article detailed how Rappe was “a young woman who has lifted fashion designing to the plane of fine art.”
Unfortunately, Rappe succumbed to an early and painful death that cut both her acting and fashion design career short and left the public with more questions than answers.
The Ill-Fated Party In San Francisco
Wikimedia CommonsRoscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle, one of the biggest stars of the silent film era.
In 1921, Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle was the highest-paid actor in Hollywood. He had recently signed a deal with Paramount Pictures for a whopping $1 million (equivalent to over $16 million today), a nearly unheard-of salary for the time. Posters for his movies billed the 266-pound comedian as “worth his weight in laughs.”
But before the year was over, he was accused of a crime so monstrous that his career would be ruined and his reputation would be destroyed.
The conflicting accounts, tabloid exaggerations, and general furor surrounding the alleged crime that ended Arbuckle’s acting career make it difficult to determine what actually happened that fateful day.
Even today, publications re-examining the scandal often come to completely different conclusions regarding Fatty Arbuckle’s guilt or innocence.
Virtually the only indisputable facts seem to be that on September 5, 1921, there was a party at the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco where alcohol was in abundance, despite Prohibition laws, and that both Arbuckle, then age 34, and 30-year-old Virginia Rappe were in attendance. (Rappe often claimed to be younger than she was, so some publications published articles saying that she was in her 20s.) Then, at some point during the revelry, Arbuckle and Rappe were briefly in the same hotel room together. But when Arbuckle left the room, Rappe remained lying on the bed “writhing in pain.”
Whatever happened that night, Virginia Rappe’s condition had still not improved three days afterward. It was then that she was taken to a hospital where doctors originally thought she had alcohol poisoning from the bootleg liquor. But as it turned out, she had peritonitis resulting from a ruptured bladder. These ailments ultimately killed her on September 9, 1921.
PartyGoers’ Accounts Mount Suspicions Against Fatty Arbuckle
Los Angeles Public LibraryWorkers transport Virginia Rappe’s body for burial.
What fueled the scandal at the time and what has remained a mystery ever since is just what role, if any, Fatty Arbuckle played in Virginia Rappe’s death.
First, a partygoer accused Arbuckle of raping Rappe.
In the years before she died, Virginia Rappe had a reputation as something of a party girl. One journalist described her as an “amateur call-girl… who used to get drunk at parties and start to tear her clothes off.” Rumors spread that she dabbled in sex work and had as many as five abortions.
At Rappe’s last party, Arbuckle initially claimed that Rappe became “hysterical” after drinking and that she “complained she could not breathe and then started to tear off her clothes.” He also claimed that she had done this in public and he had not been alone with her at any point (his story would later change).
Those who were unsympathetic about Rappe’s fate claimed this was evidence of her wild ways, while her defenders pointed out that she had a bladder condition that was exacerbated by alcohol and used to cause her such discomfort that she would drunkenly take off her clothes in an attempt to alleviate her condition.
Wikimedia CommonsOne of the rooms occupied by Arbuckle and other party guests in the days after the infamous party.
As for the events of September 5, 1921, the accounts of the night vary widely.
According to party guest Maude Delmont, after a few drinks, Arbuckle strong-armed Virginia Rappe into his room with the sinister utterance, “I’ve waited for you five years, and now I’ve got you.” Delmont claimed that she became concerned upon hearing screams from behind the closed door of Arbuckle’s room and started knocking.
Los Angeles Public LibraryMaude Delmont, the key witness accusing Arbuckle of raping Virginia Rappe.
According to Delmont, Arbuckle answered the door wearing a “foolish screen smile” and Virginia Rappe was on the bed, moaning in pain. Delmont claims that Rappe managed to gasp “Arbuckle did it,” before she was taken away into a different hotel room.
At Arbuckle’s trial, however, he would testify that he had gone into his bathroom and found Rappe already there on the floor, vomiting. After purportedly getting her water and helping her onto the bed, other guests summoned the hotel doctor, who determined that Rappe was just heavily intoxicated and took her into another hotel room to sleep it off. Notably, this version of Arbuckle’s story did have him alone with Rappe for a period of time, which he had denied earlier.
While Rappe was in the hospital, Delmont told a doctor Arbuckle had raped Rappe. And shortly after Rappe’s death, Arbuckle was arrested and charged with murder, which would later be reduced to manslaughter.
The Trial Of Fatty Arbuckle And Its Aftermath
Los Angeles Public LibraryFatty Arbuckle was acquitted of manslaughter, but his reputation was ruined.
Newspapers across the country went wild. Some claimed that the overweight Fatty Arbuckle had crushed Virginia Rappe while trying to have sex with her, while others offered up increasingly outrageous stories consisting of various depravities supposedly carried out by the actor.
Both Fatty Arbuckle and Virginia Rappe’s names were dragged through the mud in the competition to print the most salacious rumors. Publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst gleefully noted that the scandal had “sold more papers than the sinking of the Lusitania.” By the time Arbuckle went to trial for manslaughter, his public reputation was already ruined.
Delmont was never actually called to the stand because prosecutors knew her testimony would never hold up in court due to her ever-changing stories. At some points, she claimed to have known Rappe for years; at other points, she said she’d just met her a few days before the party. And she also had a dark history of criminal fraud and extortion.
Nicknamed “Madame Black,” Delmont already had a reputation for procuring girls for Hollywood parties and then blackmailing wealthy male celebrities who went to those same parties. It also didn’t help Delmont’s credibility that she’d sent telegrams to attorneys saying “WE HAVE ROSCOE ARBUCKLE IN A HOLE HERE CHANCE TO MAKE SOME MONEY OUT OF HIM.”
Meanwhile, although Arbuckle’s lawyers showed that the autopsy had concluded that there “were no marks of violence on the body, no signs that the girl had been attacked in any way,” it took three trials before Arbuckle was acquitted after the first ended with deadlocked juries.
But by this time, the scandal had so devastated Arbuckle’s career that the jury who acquitted him felt obliged to read an apologetic statement that concluded with “We wish him success and hope that the American people will take the judgment of fourteen men and women that Roscoe Arbuckle is entirely innocent and free from all blame.”
But it was already too late.
Hollywood’s once highest-paid star was now box office poison and his movies were pulled from cinemas. Arbuckle was able to stay in film by doing some directing under a new name, but even behind the camera, his career didn’t have a chance of finding its footing again. He died of a heart attack in 1933 at age 46, having never fully restored his reputation.
As for what really happened to Virginia Rappe, that remains a mystery. While her autopsy did find that she did have inflammation of her bladder, medical experts also noted that spontaneous ruptures of the bladder were extremely rare. But one thing is certain: Her death at age 30 was a terrible tragedy, ending what could have been an impactful acting career.
After this look at Fatty Arbuckle and the Virginia Rappe case, read up on other old Hollywood scandals including the murder of William Desmond Taylor and the tragic downfall of Frances Farmer.
