10 Golden Age Scandals Hollywood Wants You To Forget

10. Fatty Arbuckle & Virginia Rappe’s Death

At one point Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle, star of such movies as Miss Fatty’s Seaside Lovers and The Baggage Smasher, was one of the most popular stars of the silent film era. That is until one fateful evening in 1921 when young aspiring actress Virginia Rappe took gravely ill at a raucous, bootlegged booze fuelled hotel party hosted by Arbuckle and died just a few days later.

Although her official cause of death was peritonitis triggered by a ruptured bladder rumours began to fly, stoked mostly by Rappe’s friend Bambina Maude Delmont who had quite a reputation for extortion and fraud in Hollywood circles and claimed that Arbuckle had raped Rappe. Arbuckle was arrested and charged with manslaughter and once the press got their greasy mitts on the story they predictably ran with it, coming up with gossip-mongering headlines that claimed the star had violated Rappe with a Coke bottle and caused her bladder to rupture with his hulking form.

After three trials, Arbuckle was eventually cleared of his charge but his career and reputation were effectively ruined. Initially subjected to a ban from the movie industry, Arbuckle’s good name was so tarnished that even when the ban was lifted Hollywood was reluctant to work with him again. He staged a brief comeback a decade later but Sod’s Law struck again and he died just hours after signing a feature film contract with Warner Brothers.

Dubbed Hollywood’s first scandal, the whole ordeal arguably set the precedent for decades of star bashing and smut dredging to come.