CELEBRITY SCANDAL: `FATTY' ARBUCKLE'S BEGUILING SMILE

According to the Hearst papers, it was the "crime for all times." Never before had a Hollywood celebrity of such renowned proportions been accused of murder. In 1921, Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle allegedly raped a movie starlet in a brutal orgiastic attack in a San Francisco hotel room. The rape escalated to murder when the starlet, Virginia Rappe, subsequently died from complications growing out of the sexual assault.

Arbuckle was one of the biggest names in Hollywood -- second only to Charlie Chaplin in popularity. Chaplin was reducing his output to one movie a year while Arbuckle was doing multiple films for Paramount. He was increasingly acclaimed for his comic talent.

Arbuckle got his start in vaudeville and circus performances. In 1913, Mack Sennett, the Keystone Cops creator, was in the market for a fat comic and happened upon Arbuckle, all 285 pounds of him (later 320). Every comedy company at the time had its resident fat man -- it was an accepted casting rule that all fat men were jolly and that everyone liked them.

Instantaneously, Arbuckle was a hit. Facing the camera with a stern scowl, his visage would slowly turn into a momentary wild-eyed stare, which quickly became a disarming grin that spread from ear to ear.

Mabel Normand, who appeared with Fatty Arbuckle in dozens of films, claimed that Arbuckle's ability to establish a rapport with his fans came from his remarkable smile. Yes, he was remarkably fleet-footed and agile for a fat man. Yes, he could dash about in chase scenes and could perfectly execute the pratfalls that occurred endlessly in the frantic Sennett comedies. But above all else was his smile -- that wonderful, winning smile.

Arbuckle was so successful that in 1917 he decided to leave Sennett and form his own production company. Young Buster Keaton joined the company and played supporting roles while being trained by Arbuckle. Comedy had become a bit more sophisticated than the primitive Keystone characters, but one Arbuckle signature item always continued -- the beguiling smile.

There was another side to Arbuckle -- the side that leaned toward excess in everything he did. He overdrank, overate, overworked and overloved. He brutally abused Virginia Rappe in the San Francisco hotel and was tried for her resulting death.

By 1921, Arbuckle had made a substantial fortune. He could afford the best team of lawyers and investigators that money could hire.

Newspapers from all over the country covered the trial and eagerly reported every sordid morsel of the victim's abuse and ultimate demise. After two hung juries, Arbuckle was acquitted.

The ugliness of the Arbuckle affair caused the motion picture industry to appoint a "czar" to clean up excesses in the industry -- just as baseball had shortly before appointed its "czar", Judge Kenesaw M. Landis, to remake baseball's tarnished image in the wake of the Black Sox scandal. The film people picked Will Hays, President Warren G. Harding's close political adviser and Postmaster General. Judge Landis was a grumpy authoritarian. The film moguls wanted an accessible authoritarian.

Street-smart Hays knew that the film makers signed his paycheck, an astronomical $150,000 per year. By the end of his first year in office as "czar", Hays had to decide what to do with Arbuckle (who the studios had stopped hiring) and with a batch of unreleased Arbuckle films stored in the Paramount vault. With Paramount's approval, Hays banned the Arbuckle films.

All hell broke loose. Arbuckle -- once one of the most popular celebrities in the country -- was now a pariah. Outlook magazine wrote: "His dissolute and offensive conduct makes his name and pictured face odious to decent theatre-goers ... The loathsome details of his trial in which, though he was acquitted, he was exposed to public shame ... His offense was so flagrant, his insult to decency was so widespread."

Literary Digest wrote "Mr. Hays was supposed to act like a broom, not a whitewash ... The night given over to orgy in a San Francisco hotel, the death of an actress still have the unrelenting odor of scandal." The word went out: Arbuckle was damaged goods; don't hire him.

Arbuckle did later direct a few films under an assumed name. He was never restored to the pedestal. He never got up from his ugly pratfall. In 1933, at the age of 46, he died disdained and unmourned.

Thomas Eagleton is a former Democratic U.S. Senator from Missouri now teaching at Washington University in St. Louis.