Scandal
Drunken orgies aren't all glamorous, however, and the Hollywood revelry soon revealed its dark side. The 1920s were plagued with entertainment scandals, some of which derived from the permissive environment and others of which were perhaps disproportionately magnified by a press and public eager for tawdry gossip. First, popular comedian Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle was arrested in 1921 for rape and murder. In one of his infamous days-long parties, teeming with chorus girls and bootleg whiskey, a minor actress named Virginia Rappe died in a hotel room of peritonitis. Her ripped clothing and other circumstantial evidence suggested rape and murder, and pointed to Arbuckle as a possible suspect. He was indicted for manslaughter and the public convicted him at once, especially after newspapers revealed that the Massachusetts district attorney had received a suspiciously generous $100,000 donation after one of Arbuckle's earlier parties in that state. After three trials, the actor was acquitted, but public opinion remained so low that he was hired for only one more film after the trials.

American Film Institute Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle got his start on the stage, but made a name for himself in film working under the king of slapstick, Mack Sennett. Arbuckle acted in dozens of films, and eventually moved into directing and producing. Unfortunately, Arbuckle's career was cut short after he was arrested for the rape and murder of Virginia Rappe, who died shortly after one of Fatty's parties. Despite an eventual acquittal, Arbuckle was never able to resuscitate his scarred career.

American Film Institute Like Roscoe Arbuckle, Mabel Normand's film career blossomed after coming under the wing of Mack Sennett. Normand starred in numerous films, working with comic actors such as Charlie Chaplin and Arbuckle. However, like Arbuckle, Normand's career was damaged after she too became linked to several publicized crimes.

Next, actress Mabel Normand became linked to three criminal cases. First, her close friendship with Arbuckle put her reputation at risk. Then her lover, millionaire William Desmond Taylor, was murdered, and it was soon revealed that Normand was the last to have seen him alive. When Taylor's affair with actress Mary Miles Minter was discovered, the press speculated that a lovers' quarrel had erupted. That case was never solved, nor was the non-fatal shooting of Courtland S. Dines, which occurred after Normand visited the oil tycoon's apartment in 1924. Allegedly, Normand's chauffeur argued with and then shot Dines with Normand's pistol, but since Dines did not press charges, Normand did not go to trial. Her career, however, suffered a fatal setback.

In addition, at this time it was made public that actor Wallace Reid, known for portraying conventional, upright citizens, had died of a drug overdose after years of addiction to narcotics. Then, powerful producer Thomas Ince died under mysterious circumstances on the yacht of publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst (director Peter Bogdanovitch presented one version of the events surrounding Ince's death in his 2002 film The Cat's Meow).

Censorship
he more conservative portion of society, and set off the reform and censorship movement of the late 1920s. Although it eventually culminated in the 1934 creation of the Production Code Administration, in the 1920s the movement remained nascent, a mere tightening of the self-regulating mechanisms initiated by the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures in the early 1900s. David Cook suggests in his book, A History of Narrative Film, that the predominantly Jewish moviemakers were eager to cater to their mainly Christian audience, so when church boards and officials called for reform, the moguls responded. Hollywood set up a trade organization called the Motion Pictures Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA) in March 1922, and hired archconservative Will Hays to head it. Despite a published list of strictures, commonly referred to as the "Don'ts and Be Carefuls," the Hays Office remained essentially toothless until the mid-1930s.

Comic release
As liberated and extravagant as the day's mores were its comedies. Silent film was a perfect vehicle for visual slapstick gags, which required no dialogue to convey their shock value. The king of slapstick, Mack Sennett, reigned with his roster of comedians, including the Keystone Kops, W.C. Fields and Harry Langdon. Historian Carl Sklar notes that the comic aggression portrayed by Sennett's clowns had a cathartic effect on its viewers. Through these figures, one could criticize politics and sexuality, the rich and the poor, dignity and pretension. Sennett relied on improvisation to set up his gag-heavy sketches and parodies, and, as writer Gerald Mast states, "set a comic standard for zaniness, non sequitur, and physical activity."

Charlie Chaplin.

American Film Institute

Film poster for the 1921 film The Kid, starring Charlie Chaplin as the Tramp.

Born in Britain, Charlie Chaplin traveled with a vaudeville show that highlighted his acrobatic abilities until he began his American career with Sennett. By 1915 he left to direct his own shorts with the Essanay studio, in which he added a vital and distinctive note of pathos to his comedy. By 1921 Chaplin joined First National and made his first feature tour de force, The Kid, which portrayed the attempts of his autobiographical character, The Little Tramp, to save an orphan child. Mirroring Chaplin's own underprivileged youth, its sympathetic portrayal of the working class proved a huge hit. The tramp figure, a man with so little to lose that he could aspire to be anything and everything, appealed to viewers by representing all-potential. He not only allowed Chaplin to pursue virtually any storyline, he also served as the perfect blank slate onto which viewers could project their own dreams.

While fulfilling his contract with First National, in 1919 Chaplin also co-founded United Artists, the first talent-run studio, with Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and D. W. Griffith. Six years later, he produced what is widely considered his masterpiece (and his personal favorite), The Gold Rush. Again, here Chaplin blended comedy and tragedy, stranding his Lone Prospector character in frozen Alaska where he pines after an (almost) unattainable dancing girl. The Gold Rush includes two of Chaplin's most famous gags: the scene in which the starving prospectors eat the tramp's leather shoe as if it were a delicious turkey dinner, and the scene in which the tramp entertains his beloved by performing a "dance" with two rolls on forks.

American Film Institute

Charlie Chaplin in a publicity photo for the film City Lights.

Over the years, Chaplin continued to champion the poor in movie after movie, leveling unabashed social criticism wherever he saw the need. Although he was one of the most popular stars in the world, this frank censure may have marked the beginning of his problems with American politicians. His tribulations intensified due to political speeches Chaplin gave during World War I in support of the Soviet Union, as well as a series of scandals involving underage lovers and former protégée Joan Barry, who embroiled Chaplin in a paternity suit. In September 1952, Chaplin and his family were granted six-month exit visa to attend the London premiere of Limelight; while away, he discovered that his re-entry permit to America had been rescinded. He moved to England and then lived out the rest of his life in Switzerland.

Many scholars have traced the evolution of Chaplin's comedy, from the pure physicality of his shorts to the inspired machinations of Modern Times to the mawkishness of Limelight. Most agree that, although a brilliant performer, Chaplin was limited as a director, preferring linked sketches with a fixed camera to intricate storytelling or inventive photography. David A. Cook calls Chaplin "a competent, conventional director with some unconventional ideas."

Buster Keaton. According to Walter Kerr in the book The Silent Clowns, Buster Keaton's comedy is, in contrast to Chaplin's, "a specifically cinematic comedy" that derives its humor directly from the use and unreality of the camera. The most famous example of this occurs in his renowned 1924 feature Sherlock, Jr., in which his character, a movie projectionist, steps into the world of the film he is showing. The film's villain repeatedly throws him out, forcing him to step in and out of the movie frame as it rapidly switches locales. (Woody Allen mirrored this conceit in his 1985 film The Purple Rose of Cairo.)

American Film Institute

Starting his career in vaudeville, Buster Keaton's first role in film was in the 1917 film The Butcher Boy, with Fatty Arbuckle.

In addition, Keaton's comedy always remains strictly credible. Each gag derives painstakingly from its narrative circumstances, rather than occurring as a series of unrelated sketches. While Gerald Mast asserts that Keaton's The General (1927) "is possibly more even, more unified and more complex … than any individual Chaplin film," Keaton's persona--the deadpan, hapless, determined Everyman--lacks Chaplin's mutability and range. Unlike The Tramp, Keaton's character is strikingly similar from one film to the next, and generally reacts to circumstances rather than drives them. His protagonist changed little from its inception, when he started in films with Arbuckle in the teens. By late 1919, he had formed his own production company, which afforded him complete authority over writing, directing and acting.

In 1928, Keaton produced his last independent film, Steamboat Bill, Jr. It contains perhaps his most famous stunt, in which, although a house topples directly on top of him, he is saved by the fact that he is standing squarely in its open doorway. As always, Keaton performed this physically breathtaking feat without a stunt man, and achieved it in a single take. The next year, however, when studios adapted en masse for sound, Keaton's company was bought out by MGM, which precipitated the end of his career. Unable to work within the confines of the studio system, he turned to alcohol, which eventually caused his dismissal.

The Epic: Cecil B. DeMille
Another auteur whose work came to define 1920s cinema was Cecil B. DeMille. His films managed to both reflect and shape contemporary ethics even as those ethics changed. For instance, when audiences desired patriotic films during Word War I, he delivered The Little American (1917) and Till I Come Back to You (1918); when the Jazz Age demanded decadence, he served it up in films such as Why Change Your Wife (1920) and The Affairs of Anatol (1921). With vivid stories and extravagant production values, DeMille's pictures reaped profits regardless of their lavish budgets.

One such extravagance was The Ten Commandments (1924), which had a budget of over $1.5 million and went on to define DeMille as the master of the epic film. Brimming with sex and violence, the Biblical retelling featured glorious Technicolor and special effects. (DeMille remade the film in 1956 in order to take advantage of improved color processes and widescreen photography.) In every genre he tackled, DeMille excelled in presenting grand spectacles guaranteed to awe the audience with the magic of the movies--a magic that was gearing up to take off.