Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - How to Get Cancelled in Hollywood's Golden Age

Episode Date: May 29, 2026

How do you not only lose your own reputation and career, but also tank the reputation and freedoms of your entire industry?Today we’re exploring the first real Hollywood scandal, when actor Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle was accused of assault and manslaughter.Though he was acquitted in court, Arbuckle nearly lost everything. In recent years it has been argued that this was unfair, but we aren't so sure.Kate finds out more in this episode with author and film critic Mick LaSalle.This episode was edited by Hannah Feodorov. The producer was Stewart Beckwith. The senior producer was Freddy Chick.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  You can take part in our listener survey here.All music from Epidemic Sounds.Betwixt the Sheets: History of Sex, Scandal & Society is a History Hit podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Hello, my lovely betwixters. It's me, Kate Lister. How the hell are you doing? Welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets. Hello, thank you for stopping by. Have fabulous to see you once again.

But before we can go any further together, I do have to tell you, this is an adult podcast, Pokemon, by adults, to other adults, about adult things, an adulty way you're covering around, adult, subjects. You should be an adult too. Right, let's get on with it. It's 1921 Hollywood, and we are at the home of a silent movie, icon. Roscoe Fatti Arbuckle, a master of physical comedy. The house, no, not a house, a mansion has 20 rooms, servants flitting about serving every needs of the boss and his guests. If you wanted to,

you could play with the host's trusty Pitbull Luke or wait for the opportune moment to run a bubble bath in one of his gold leaf bathtubs, no less. This place is the epitome of rich. Arbuckle, with his fleet of cars is on a million dollars a year, and that was in 1921, folks, but the good times are not going to last. Arbuckle's reputation, his entire career is about to come crashing down, and along with it, many of the freedoms of filmmakers in Hollywood. Let's find out more. Oh, and welcome back to Betwigs the Sheets, the history of sex scandal in society with me, Kate Lister. Today, we're looking at a story that not only led to the downfall of a Hollywood star, but also created such an enormous scandal

that it kicked off a new dawning of censorship in Hollywood. I mean, that's a hell of a scandal, isn't it? Today, I'm joined by Mick LaSalle to talk about Roscoe Arbuckle, known in his day as Fatty Arbuckle, though he never chose that name himself. In 1921, after rising to their very top of stardom, Arbuckle was accused of the assault and manslaughter of a young actress. And despite being eventually found,

innocent and publicly exonerated by a jury, our buckle was roundly cancelled by Hollywood. In recent years, though, it has been argued by some that this was very unfair. Well, today we're going to dig into this, into how blame came to lie at his feet and whether it should, in fact, remain there. And we're also going to look at how this scandal changed Hollywood forever. Join me, if you wish. Let's crack on. Well, hello and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets. It's only Mick LaSalle. How are you doing? I'm doing it right. How are you?

Oh, I'm so thrilled to have you back. We had so much fun talking last time. And we are here to discuss, well, this is part of our new little mini-series, how to get cancelled in. And you're here for how to get cancelled in Hollywood. And we're talking about Fatty Arbuckle. But the first thing I've learned about him is he didn't like to be called Fatty Arbuckle. He liked to recall Roscoe, because that was his name. That's fair. But what's weird about his name is that he's named after Roscoe Conkling. So his name was Roscoe Conkling Arbuckle. And Roscoe Conkling was a corrupt politician in New York. And Fatty Arbuckle was born in Kansas. And also, he was born in 1887 after Roscoe Conkling was

out of office and discredited. That's strange. Apparently, his father was annoyed with the mother. He thought that Fatty was too big to have actually been his own child. And so he named the baby Roscoe Conkling. It's like naming after somebody. It's like calling your child Donald Trump. Exactly.

Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Or Jeffrey Epstein. Yeah. Oh, my God. From birth, he's been bullied. basically.

Kind of, yeah. It is weird. I mean, his father suspected the mother of cheating on him, and that wasn't really his kid because the father was skinny. And Fatty, apparently, was big from the beginning. Wow. Yeah. Oh, God, that's just terrible.

Yeah. Trying to get myself into that mindset of, like, I'm going to pick on the chair. Anyway, right, okay. So not a good father then, by the sounds of it. No, it doesn't sound like it. They moved to Santa Ana, which is orange can. which is a nice part of Orange County, instead put him within striking distance of having a career. So he makes it in early cinema, and he's a really, really big success.

And, you know, like, plot it's being heaped upon him. He's funny and he's big and he's making loads of money. And then one day, it all comes crashing down. So can you tell us what happened? Okay, so he was very successful and he was liked by children a lot. But he was good. If you've ever seen him, like, you know, he did some shorts at the end of his career, talking shorts.

That's not worth seeing. But if you see him in his silent movies, he was physically amazing because he was this guy who's about 270 pounds and he was extremely graceful. You know, he was sort of like the Fat Buster Keaton. I mean, not in terms of the acrobatics, but in terms of just being physically amazing. All the silent guys like Chaplin and Keaton and Fatty Orbach were just amazing to watch because they were just so graceful. But it all just fell apart on Labor Day on 1921 when he drove up with two friends.

One was an actor named Lowell Sherman, who was pretty famous too. And they rented some connected rooms at the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco. And the headline that we can go back is that a woman got very, very sick that they were having a party with. It wasn't a woman he'd ever met, didn't really know her, but she got sick. And four days later, she died. And he was accused basically of sexually assaulting her, which resulted in her death. Because what she died of was a strange thing. It's the thing that almost never happens is that her bladder first.

Wow. That sounds horrendous. I did look this up before, and it can happen, and it can happen spontaneously, as well, a ruptured bladder. Yeah. But obviously, did they know that at the time? I mean, was an autopsy performed here? An autopsy?

Well, yeah, they didn't. I mean, they knew it. They knew it after she died because they were just guessing what was wrong with her. She could have survived, but the medical attention she got was extremely negligent. And anyway, so at the time, yeah, after the autopsy, they knew, and then they thought, well, what would cause this? And whatever happened to her? nobody knows for sure what happened.

But whatever happened was weird. You know, it was extremely unlikely. So she could have fallen down. She could have banged into something. Apparently her bladder was compromised from chronic cystitis. So she had a constant bladder infection, which was pretty bad. But it could be that he got on top of her. It could be that he kind of got on top of her when she was at a weird angle.

But there was really no reason to think that he sexually assaulted her in any way. There was nothing on her body. She didn't say anything. You know, she was alive for four days after that. But he was accused of it and absolutely convicted in the press. And it's fascinating, you know, because nobody knows exactly what happened. We don't know what kind of physical contact we have, and we sure don't know what made her bladder explode, which is a really weird thing to happen to anybody. Her name was Virginia Rappay.

Is that right? And she was a model and an actress? Yeah, it was rap, but Rappet in the movies. Ah, oh, I see what she's done. Okay. And she was, I think she was 30 when this happened? Yeah, she was 30. Her tombstone says 26, which actually she was 30.

That's very Hollywood as well, isn't it? Change name and knock a couple of years off. Yeah, change name and go from German to French. So how do we know, or at least how can we be certain with any degree of confidence that she wasn't assaulted? And who said she was? Okay, so this is what happened. It's very interesting because he was really tried in the press in a very bad way, and it was very unfair what happened to him. afterwards, afterwards, what happened historically is that everybody completely bought his story.

And the truth is probably somewhere in between. So this is what happened. So they go to the St. Francis and it's during the day. It's not like this two in the morning kind of thing. They're having drinks in the middle of the day, getting drunk, telling stories, having fun. and she shows up, he didn't know her, but she shows up with this woman, Maud Delmont, was her name. Maud Delmont got totally bombed. She said she had like eight to ten drinks, whiskeys or something.

And she goes off with Lowell Sherman into a bathroom. They're probably having sex in the bathroom. Okay. Virginia Rep. She needs to go to the bathroom, so she goes into a room. And the initial story that Fatti Arbuckle said to the press, but not on the stand, is that he never went in. He was never alone with her.

He has no idea. He was never alone with her. Yeah, that's what he says. But when he gets on the stand, he says something else. He says that he walked in, he didn't know she was there, and he found her sitting on the toilet really in pain. So he picked her up and he put her on the bed. And she was like taking her clothes off and she was in pain.

She was moaning. And she was known for taking her clothes off apparently. But even then, I don't even want to say that because she was sort of convicted in the press afterwards, not in the press, but like in the history books. And at a certain point, he opens the door after about 10 minutes. He opens the door and other people come in. And that's his story. The story of Maud Del Mons is that she says, she walks in and she's like kicking at the door

because she hears Virginia screaming. And she comes in with some other people, and she's on the bed, and she's naked on the bed. And there's water. There's like water around on one of the beds. They put on another bed because he had put ice on her to wake her up because she had passed out. She passed out.

And then what Delmont told the story later on told the police that she heard scream. and then she said that Virginia said that he had assaulted her. Right. And the thing is, is that Maud Delmont was convicted of extortion previously. This is murky. A blackmail. Well, blackmail is extortion.

Extortion and also prostitution. She was so untrustworthy that even though this went to trial, she was never put on the stand because she was considered to be. somebody who's just not to be trusted. Oh, and then there's some weird thing with ice. Yeah, I's going to say, what's the ice? I don't like the story's so strange. Like she's, she's in the bath, she's on the toilet, she's on the floor, she's taking a clothes off, now she's dressed. Oh, he didn't spend any time with her. Oh, yes, actually, he did. What ice? Okay, the ice thing was to, was to like try to wake her up so they put ice on her face.

But at one point, she's naked. Okay, and these are the two versions of the story. She's naked and they have her on the other bed Or they have maybe it's the original bed But there's ice there And they're trying to wake her up Maud Delmont's trying to wake her up And according to Maud Delmont Fadierre Buckel

Takes a piece of ice And puts it into her vagina And says this will wake her up And then when she does wake up She's moaning and groaning And Fadier R buckle says Tell her if she does a say stop moaning, I'm going to throw her out that window.

Okay. This is the more Delmont version. And then everybody agrees that he goes back into the room and the party just continues because they bring a doctor in and the doctor says she's just had too much of the drink. She'll sleep it off. Don't worry about it. Oh, God.

Because nobody cares, right? They just think she's bummed. They just think she's bombed. Now, his version is, it's not that much better for him. His version is that there's some ice there, and he does something with the ice, but he doesn't put it into a vagina. And then when she wakes up, he says to Maud Delmont, you shut up, or I'll throw you out that window. So he's throwing somebody out the window. Okay.

But the thing is that they tried to present, the prosecution tried to present this, you know, the fact that he went back and just, you know, continued with the party and just hung out and drank and had fun as evidence that he was guilty. he was a monster. But it's just as plausible that actually what happened is that he wasn't worried about it because he wasn't guilty. He hadn't done anything. Yeah, I mean, I can see that. I can see that you're at a party, you're getting drunk, you walk in on someone who's kind of on the floor, moaning and groaning, and then a doctor comes and tells you that they're just

pissed. I can see that, like, you would, that maybe it's conceivable at least, that you might go, well, I'll just go and talk to my other guests and they can sleep it off. I don't think that's a very good thing to do. I think that's a bad call, but I can see how you might do that. Yeah, it's definitely a bad call. What's probably happened? What do you think happened, Mick?

Because this is weird. This is a weird story. What probably happened is that she walked in to the room because they were talking before that, so they were kind of getting along. And so she walked into the room and he followed her in, and they probably started kissing and, you know, like fondling each other. Door was shut. The door was locked.

Door was locked. And they probably got onto the bed. And maybe he got on top of her and her bladder burst. And then she passed out. And he's like saying, ooh, she just passed out. What hell's going on here? And then he opens the door and people come in. It's quite like, you know, he was married.

Oh, he was married. Yeah. He had a, he was. kind of a wholesome sort of image. You know, this is, you know, it's bad enough, let's say, to be caught masturbating in the theater, but if you're Peeby Herman, it's worse, you know, and, you know, so it could have been a little bit like that, like, you know, he's, he's in there with this woman in a kind of sort of an unsavory sort of situation.

be back with Mick after the short break. I've got to be honest, that does sound like the most plausible thing to me. Now, I'm not a medical doctor and I don't have any kind of medical training, but just having looked into rupturing bladders is they can happen spontaneously, but normally what happens is there's some kind of external force. And normally the person has had urinary tract infections, or they've had a series of ill health in the bladder urethral area, which it sounds like she did have.

So you've got to kind of ask yourself, if they were in a room together, a locked room together, how did her bladder suddenly explode? Yeah, and also if they're in a locked room together, you know, the guy who's a movie star, and there's this pretty woman there, and he's drunk and she's drunk. I mean, it doesn't, it, it almost seems more likely that they were- It was an accident. Yeah, it's more likely they were kissing and that it was an accident. The thing is, is that aside from Maud Delmont, nobody says that she says,

that she said that she was assaulted. She said she had three days in some kind of clinic of some kind, where she really wasn't getting the best care. She was just sort of getting monitored. She really... But she could talk. She could have said if she was viciously assaulted. Yeah, she never said I was viciously assaulted.

She never said she was assaulted. The only thing that she was concerned about, and this is consistent with the idea that she was, you know, kissing Arbuckle, that they were like some kind of pre-sex kind of thing going on, is that she was very concerned that her boyfriend was going to find out that she was in the room with Arbuckle. Ah. So she didn't want to, you know, she didn't want her boyfriend who was also kind of, he was,

he was kind of a emotional guy. And she was, I think she was a little afraid of them. And so she didn't want that to happen. But, you know, the fact that she was saying, oh, I don't want him to find out, That's like, you know, she felt guilty about something. It's not like she said that she was the victim of anything. She had a few days to say something and she didn't. Yeah.

So anyway. You said that there was an autopsy and they could tell. They knew that she hadn't had sex. There was no semen. There was no signs of assault that you would normally find there as well. So you can, I mean, whatever happened in that room, it seems that the medical evidence can rule out that sex, full penetrative sex happened. Full penetrative sex absolutely did not happen and an assault.

I mean, something that would rise to the level of you'd call an assault. It's possible, you know, it's possible they were getting a little bit rough in a sort of normal way, you know, but not like her saying no, no, no, and him saying yes, yes, yes. It doesn't seem like that happened. It's conceivable, but only if you believe Maud Delmont, which the prosecution did, didn't believe enough to put her on the stand. But I do believe the nurses. And the nurses said that she was worried about her boyfriend, finding out.

So I think we've solved this, Mick, then. You all welcome everybody. Me and Mick have solved this one. But if that's like, that seems like a logical thing, but that isn't what happened. That's not what the investigators saw. So how did it go from this situation, which is bad enough? It's not a good situation. But, I mean, the press devoured him alive.

And he was put on trial not once or twice, but thrice for this. Yeah, three times. It was bad. Okay, so what happened is that the doctors ruled that it was probably some kind of external force which caused the bladder to explode. I mean, that's the thing that anybody who says that Fatty Orr Buckel had absolutely nothing to do. He was completely innocent. He was nowhere near the room.

All that stuff. You have to account for the fact that this woman's bladder exploded. And bladders, you know, they're not like. going off like the drummer in spinal tap or something. No. They're just blowing up. It's something happens. So you have to say, well, what are the more likely things to happen?

She could have fallen down. But you have to fall down like on a particular spot to rupture or bladder. I guess you could have fallen off the bed and landed on something. But like something's happened between them, hasn't it? That seems to be. I think so 10 minutes are plenty of time. I mean, you're, you know, he's a drunk guy. there's a pretty woman there

and he's a movie star and she doesn't seem like she's unwelling. And the room was locked. They were locked in a hotel room together. The room was locked. He could have been going and to go to the bathroom but if you're going in to go to the bathroom, you don't lock the hotel room, you just lock the bathroom. Right. So I think something

happened there, but anyway, the doctor said it was some kind of external force. And then the district attorney who's had dreams of becoming governor you know, latches onto Maud Delmont, and they just, and then the press goes crazy. The Hearst press goes completely crazy in San Francisco, and they start writing these articles,

and then somehow it's, first, it's, everybody said that he raped her, first off. Then they said that he raped her with a bottle, which is crazy. I don't know how that got started, actually. I mean, that would be easily disprovable because that would there be considerable, internal damage or something like that. Yeah, there wasn't. Yeah, there wasn't. By the time it went to trial, I mean, everybody had heard this stuff, they would take a picture of him and then put bars over the picture to make it look like, like it was like he was in jail. And so basically, he's just minding his own business. And four days later, he hears that this woman died and he has to go to

San Francisco to testify. And his first story is untrue. His first story is untrue. His first story is I was never in that room. That's not good. I've watched enough true crime to know that when people's story starts to change, that's not a good sign that someone's telling the truth there. Yeah, so he was concealing something. But what he was probably concealing was not a terrible something. It was an unsavory something.

And he probably thought that he could just sort of movie star his way out of it by saying, oh, yeah, I was nowhere near the room and everything. and then all of a sudden he has to really come, you know, come up with a version of the truth. So anyway, so that's what happens. So they put him on trial. It goes to, you know, it goes to the jury. It's 11 to 1 in favor of acquittal. And it was a woman who voted to convict, you know, refused to get her picture taken.

She refused to be interviewed. And supposedly, I'm not, I wouldn't swear to this because some of these. things are rumors too, but supposedly she was affiliated with Maud Delmond and she knew and she knew the DA. So I don't know if that's true or not, but in any case, it was 11 to 1, she refused to look at the evidence, she just refused. She didn't look at the evidence. What kind of jury members that? Well, she refused to have conversations about the evidence with the other jurors. She just said, that's it. No, no, no, that's it. God, the jury system's so weird, isn't it? It can be, yeah. It's the best. It's the best.

that we've come up with, but that's just nuts. Yeah, it's definitely, I mean, I guess she thought she was in 12 Angry Men before it came out. She was going to be Henry Fonda, only the other way around to convict. So then they have another trial, and the other trial was weird because the defense attorney was very confident. It was like, you know, this is ridiculous. And so he was overconfident because when they go to do the summation, he says,

don't need a summation. everybody knows the facts. Oh, that's a risky move. It's a very risky move because what they thought, what the jury thought that meant was that everybody knows he did it. They just missed. Shit. Yeah.

And so that was a close call. He almost got convicted on that one, but he wasn't. And then it went to a third. And meanwhile, you know, usually when they can't convict, right, they just give up prosecuting. They really want him. They want him. And they want to stretch out the story. want, you know, the DA wants to look like a tough guy. So it goes to the jury and the jury is out

for like 10 minutes and they come out and they say that he's not guilty, but then they do something very rare and they say that, you know, not guilty. What means is it doesn't mean you're innocent. It just means you're not guilty. But they said a not guilty verdict they had read into the record is not enough for Roscoe Arbuck, but we feel that he's been the victim of a terrible thing that's happened and that just if anybody has any doubt about this, just know that in the opinion of 12 people who have heard all the evidence, we think he is absolutely emphatically innocent. So that goes out. And so he's all happy. He's going to resume his career. And a couple of days later, a day later, Will Hayes, who has just become head of this new, the motion

picture distributors of America. That may not be the name of it yet. Eventually becomes that. But in any case, the newly organized, like, moral police or the censorship. Hayes code. The Hayes Code. There was no code yet, and there was very little censorship, but whatever it is, the organization that he's heading, he bans Fatty Arbuckle from the screen. Oh, even though he'd been found innocent and got a letter signed by all the jurors going, Not only is he innocent, he's really innocent, and they still, why did they do that? Well, what happened is that in the interval, first of all, after Fatty War Buckel gone in trouble,

and this was in the newspapers, everybody, not everybody, but a lot of people, especially in the middle of the country, which is much more conservative than the coast, started saying that Hollywood needed to be cleaned up, that it was really immoral. And then there was another case, William Desmond Taylor was a director, and he was found dead. Somebody shot him. Nobody knew. Nobody knew, sure, but some of the suspects were, was an actress, was a suspect. Anyhow, said, this was another total scandal. I'm not sure if it came out that he was gay, but it was definitely in minds of people and savory. There was also drug addiction things happening. There's a guy named Wallace Reed, who died. And he was like

the fair-haired, all-American boy. And it turns out he, you know, he was a drug addict, he died. And So some people were feeling like Hollywood was just getting out of control. And that's why they brought Hayes in because what Hayes is known for the wrong things. I mean, he's known as being like this Mr. censorship, but he wasn't. He couldn't kill us about things like that. His job was to protect the studios. And that's what he did. And so when the first thing he did in his new job and then he had other things,

he did that were quite interesting too, but the first thing he did was to ban Fatty Arbuckle from the screen. Now, not everybody knows that, but I mean, that's something that's known, but what's little known is the fact that eight months later, he unbanned Fatty Arbuckle from the screen. I didn't know that. Yeah. Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah. So he did unbanned Fatty Arbuckle from the screen, but I suppose banning him in the first place implied that there was something wrong with him. And so when they unbanned him, like half the public went crazy and said, why are you, you know, unbanned this rapist? Why are you doing this? And so Fadio O'Buckel had a real hard time.

He never was like destitute. He always made a living because there was always a large portion of people who thought he was innocent or maybe they didn't care. He did get a fair amount of directing work. So he was directing comedies under a pseudonym. but he was also appearing on vaudeville everywhere and he he made a decent living he started a nightclub in partnership with some people and that became successful because he was able to bring in a lot of talent into his nightclub who performed there because people felt like he just got a raw deal because he had eventually eventually he was asked to make movies to sometimes I guess maybe to

right to direct them too, but mainly to be in a series of shorts for Warner Brothers. And he signed the contract and he was really happy. And he went out on the town and he got drunk and ate a lot and had fun and came back and died when he was 46 years old. He just dropped out of a heart attack. That's just as things were getting good for him. I'll be back with Mick after the short break. So not entirely cancelled then, moderately cancelled, and then he was going to come back and he died.

This was like he could make a living, half the people thought he was innocent, and then eventually he was going to be allowed to do what he did, which was to be on screen. I don't know what it would have done for him. I watched some of the shorts. He was never going to be what he was. His style of comedy was from,

10 or 12 years earlier. And also it was just weird hearing him talk, I have to say. He's, yeah, it just sounds like some guy from Kansas. It's just, it's kind of funny. When you go from silence to talk is you get sort of literalized, you know, as like a specific person. But anyway, one thing is certain. He absolutely should not have been tried for anything because he had no evidence. You know, they just had innuendo. Yeah, from a purely legal point of view and evident. point of view is it wasn't there. They had nothing actually. What did they have? They had this maud person saying that it was an assault and that was it. They had the mod person saying it was assault but they couldn't use her on the stand because she was too disreputable. So nothing.

No, you just had doctors who would say something did it. We don't know what, but something did it. And it could have been a big fat guy. That's one. They had their own version of the timeline. They sort of had an argument saying, well, if it wasn't a big fat guy, what was it? I mean, I understand that. I think there's something in that argument, but purely from like a legal police framework, is that isn't enough evidence to take something to court, is that it might have been a big fat guy. It's just not. It's not fair to bring it to court because there really is no evidence.

Nobody ever thought Kevin Spacey was a nice guy. You know what I mean? He always played a bad guy on screen. He always was kind of, you know, creepy, whereas Faddy Arbuckle always played this sweet, lovable, you know, big teddy bear of a guy, and this would wreck him, you know, this going on trial when it did. I was about to ask you, what do you think the psychological toll of this would have been? I mean, you know, he wasn't a health nut, but it probably didn't do anything for his longevity.

Yeah. Because he, people talked about for years after this. how messed up he was, how vacant he looked in his eyes. Buster Keaton was a very good friend of his. And he was also from Kansas, of all things. But Buster Keaton was a really good friend. They made some movies together. And originally Buster Keaton started out on screen as Faddy R. Buckel's sidekick.

That's how he started out. Yeah. And he loved him. He thought he was a great guy. But Buster Keaton hired, hired him to direct. and then had to fire him because he just, he just was like too angry and he was like just off his game. He just, yeah.

So he, he wasn't, he wasn't in a funny space, put it that way. I can understand that. So anyway, I mean, I think getting his heartbroken probably didn't do wonders for his cardiovascular system. But on the other hand, I mean, he was a guy who was, you know, 100 pounds overweight for his entire adult life in the days before anything existed like statins or something for him to take. So, you know, he may have just died anyway. But I don't know, 46 is a little bit young, even for that. That is very young, isn't it? That is young. See, I thought that you were going to

come on here and you were going to be like, he's completely innocent. He definitely didn't do it. It's all a stitch up because I've certainly heard people giving that take before. But you've actually complicated it a little bit for me because I'm coming away from it thinking, I don't believe that he intentionally killed her, which is the argument that some people put out. But he was, I think there's enough circumstantial evidence there that he was covering something up. Something happened. He was definitely covering up something like because he told one story to the cops and then told one story to another story to the jury. So he was definitely covering up something.

But actually, I thought I was going to come on and say he was totally innocent too. and then I started researching it. There were two books that are very good on this. One's David Yallop's book, who's more like the traditional, he was innocent, he was absolutely innocent of everything. But it's a good book. It has a lot in it that's useful. But the most useful book, I have to give credit.

Otherwise, this guy will find me and want to kill me for taking a lot of stuff out of his book in this conversation. It's a guy named Greg Merritt. But if you want to know everything about this case, he really presents a strong argument for the timeline, for all the, he goes through all the possibilities. And he, and his conclusion is, is the conclusion that I think anybody would reach after, you know, reading a number of books, is that something happened, but he, he didn't, he did not, you know for sure he didn't rape this woman.

He probably didn't jump on top of her and try to hurt her. or manhandler. He just basically, if you think from a man's point of view, he goes into a room, he starts kissing this woman, gets on top of her, she passes out, and four days later, she dies, and everybody says he did it. You know, I mean, this would be like, this is a terrible thing to happen to the guy. Absolutely, what happened to her was worse, but what happened to him is like, it's just an unbelievable, ridiculous nightmare of, you know, he kisses this woman probably for about

five minutes and next thing, you know, she's dead and he did it. It's just so crazy. God. I don't know how I feel about it because it's like it shouldn't have gone to court, but also, I don't know, like he's done, like I'm not, I'm not impressed with how he behaved, but I guess I can understand it as well. And like something happened, what happened? And maybe you should have been a bit more honest about that. But I could also, I guess I can understand why he wouldn't. Yeah. And what's like, you know, if he's going to, you know, if he's going to, If the San Francisco Chronicle calls him about this and says what happened, and on the day after this happened, he says, oh, well, you know, I was kissing this woman

and I did this and then we fell onto the bed and she passed out and I don't know why. And that was so weird and why she's dead. It's not a good conversation. No, it's not. Is it, God, what a mess. What a hot mess. Mess, yeah. So as a sort of a final question to this and the listeners will draw their own conclusions

as to what they think happened here. But what was the impact of this? I mean, Faty Arbuckle dead at 46, poor old Virginia repay dead at 30, but this had lasting impact in Hollywood this case. It did have lasting impact because it brought in Will Hayes and

the reason why Will Hayes was brought in is because as a result of this scandal, but then two subsubstant scandals, the different states in the United States, the 48 states in the United States at the time, started coming up with censorship boards to censor movies in the individual states because as your American listeners know, the state law, the laws are different in different states in the United States.

It's not like all the same kind of thing. And so the studios were terrified that they were going to have to come up with 48 different versions of every movie they made. Wow. Yeah. And so what they did was they brought in Hayes. and they paid him $100,000, which was money then. That was real money because that would be like a salary of about $2.3 million.

It's a really good, good salary. He was making $12,000, he was a postmaster general, and they hired him to do this. And what he did was he went to all the different states. And he said, don't censor your movies. We'll censor them ourselves. We'll take care of it. And it was persuasive.

He was able to speak their language, and only seven states out of the 41 had censorship boards. But anyway, as a result, they brought in Hayes, and then that brought in the possible, like a structure for censoring movies, even though he never did. He never really, you know, he would come up with, like, little guidelines that nobody would pay attention to. The real menace for censorship was a guy named Joseph Breen. When he got in, he started just making, he just did every tactic in the book. book. He was terrible. I think we've talked about him the last time. But Will Hayes was just a figurehead who was working for the studios and was getting paid by the studios. Jack Valenti was another guy like that. He was the head of the MPAA in the 60s and 70s. And Jack Valenti, like Will Hayes,

he even cared about morality. He cared about the studios. He cared about what could get the studios in trouble. And so when he banned Faddi Arbuckle, he wanted to demonstrate. straight that he was a tough guy, that look at this, you know, there's a new cop on the, on the block and we're getting stuff done. He knew it wasn't right. And eight months later, he unbanned him because he, you know, he didn't need to have him as an example. But anyway, the short answer is that it provided the structure for censorship down the line. So what can we learn from this case then of how not to get canceled in 1920s Hollywood? I think that maybe a takeaway is if a guest at your party passes out, don't fuck off.

How about that? That's quite a call a doctor. I don't even know what we can say about this. It's just such a hot mess the whole thing. But Nick, you haven't been a hot mess. You have been an absolute treat. And if people want to know more about you and your work, where can they find you? They could just Google me.

I've written a few books. And also they could go to the San Francisco Chronicle.com. I could read my column Ask Miclisal, which comes out every week. Thank you so much. You have big marvel. Thank you, Kate. You're marvelous always. Thank you for listening.

And thank you so much to Mick for joining me. And if you like what you heard, don't forget to like review and follow along whatever it is. You get your podcasts. Coming up, we are exploring sex and pleasure in the ancient world, if you very much please. And we'll be meeting my favorite type of history hero, the super sluts. Women who have embraced their sexuality and everybody else. as well. And if you want us to explore a subject, if you just wanted to say hello,

then you can email us at betwixtat history hit.com. This podcast was edited by Hannah Fyodorov and produced by Sophie G. The senior producer was Freddie Chick. Join me again, Betwixta Sheets, The History of Sex Scandal and Society, a podcast by History Hit. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sound.