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Scandal and the Silver Screen: Lila Lee on Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle
From: Columbia University
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Columbia University Oral History Research Office |
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION |
Actress Lila Lee (born Augusta Wilhelmena Fredericka Appel) became a child star in 1917. She went on to appear in countless films during the 1920s and '30s, including Another Man's Wife, The Adorable Cheat and The Little Wild Girl. Such suggestive movie titles notwithstanding, Lee was not exempt from the conservative moral standards of the time. In this 1959 interview with Columbia University's Oral History Research Office, Lee discusses the social mores of early Hollywood and the scandals that surrounded stars like Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle. |
Question: What do you recall about Wallace Reid? |
 Lila Lee: Well, I suppose there isn't any woman who's ever looked at him that doesn't think he's the handsomest man who ever lived. He really was. Along with that, just as sweet and nice as he could be. I was devoted to him. I was heartbroken when he died. He was very young when he died, only around 30. |
Q: There was some kind of scandal attached to it. What is your version of that particular situation? |
Lee: I don't know too much about it. I know that he had become a drug addict--whatever the reasons, I wouldn't have the vaguest idea. |
Q: The story we get is that he had an accident. |
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| Lila Lee talks about Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle. | |
Lee: I believe that, too. I know that he used to have very bad headaches. Also, you must remember that many years ago people weren't as much aware of these things. If what happened to Wally had happened now, probably he would have been perfectly all right. I know that he was brilliant. He was a wonderful musician. He could play any instrument. I don't think he ever had a lesson. He played banjo, drums, piano, violin--I won't say that he played them all magnificently, but he played them well enough--and he loved music. He was a good father, a good husband. |
Q: The scandals in Hollywood started with that, and the newspapers just seized upon them--and Fatty Arbuckle, Wally Reid taking dope ... |
Lee: I worked with Roscoe Arbuckle too, and I was very fond of him. I think this was a most regrettable thing that happened. If I sound like a Pollyanna about these people--after all, you can only take them as you know them and have seen them. Roscoe, I'm sure, could no more have been responsible for what he was accused of doing. He was a very kindly man, very sweet. I think that the whole difficulty in that situation was--you must remember, it was during Prohibition, and we had just finished a picture called Gasoline Gus. It was a beautiful little picture, it really was. Roscoe went up to San Francisco for a vacation for a few days, and took some friends with him. Well, apparently they had a lot of liquor, etc. But you see, motion picture actors and actresses at that time were not supposed to do such things. They weren't supposed to drink. I remember, for instance, when I first started to smoke. "This is dreadful! Don't ever do that in public!" This labeled you as someone who was "not a nice woman." |
I don't know the details about Roscoe, naturally. But I do know that we were ... I don't think I've ever told this story before. He had gone up to San Francisco, and he came back, and they had a preview at Grauman's Million Dollar Theatre--not the Chinese, the one downtown. Roscoe and my mother, who had finally come out to be with me, and my sister and James Cruze, the director--the man who made Covered Wagon, one of the great directors--went to this preview. This was just a charming sweet picture--a lovely story about this man. You see, they were trying to get Roscoe away from the slapstick thing; he was really a very fine actor, very fine. |
Q: Was he an intelligent man? |
Lee: Oh, yes. And a charming man--sweet, nice. This was the story of a big, fat man who ran a gasoline station. He falls in love with a very pretty young girl, and he cannot possibly believe that she would return his affection, because he'd always had this thing about himself--that he's just a great big hunk of nothing. The fact that she does fall in love with him--he just blossoms, and he still can't believe it. That was the gist of the thing. |
Anyway, we were watching the preview, around 12 o'clock at night I think, and the usher came down. Sid Grauman was then alive, and we were sitting there, and they called Mr. Grauman out, and Sid came back and he said, "Roscoe, they want you on the phone." |
So he went out. Then finally everybody came up, and we went to Sid's office, and it was San Francisco calling Roscoe Arbuckle, saying that this young woman had died and that there was a big scandal, etc. |
The only thing Roscoe was afraid of at that moment was having bought bootleg liquor--which was considered a crime at the time. We laugh at it now, but actually it was. He said, "What shall I do?" |
The man said, "You'd better come up here." |
"Shall I bring a lawyer? What shall I do?" |
"Yes, you'd better bring a lawyer. I think it's a good idea." |
So he just took off--never thinking of any difficulty, except what now would be no scandal at all, buying bootleg liquor. |
They said, "You had a big party at the St. Francis Hotel and you bought all this liquor"--as far as we could all tell, that's the only thing he was worried about. |
I heard subsequently, when he arrived there and was taking the ferry from Oakland to San Francisco, suddenly the newsboys got on his car--they didn't know who he was--with newspapers, screaming headlines, "Roscoe Arbuckle Indicted for Murder." |
This was within eight, 10, 12 hours. |
Q: Had he not known what went on in San Francisco at the time? |
Lee: I wouldn't have the vaguest idea. |
Q: What was the scandal supposed to be? |
Lee: I don't think we could record that. |
Q: Had the woman been injured at the party? Apparently she had fallen and hit her head on something, and he was accused. But the point is, anybody in Hollywood was a sitting duck for any crackpot or newspaper. |
Lee: I truly don't know. I don't think it's up to me to discuss it. I don't know enough about it. |
Q: The point is, anything that happens in Hollywood--as with Lana Turner in recent years--if it happened anywhere else, would make a little story and blow over; if it happens in Hollywood ... |
Lee: Well, that's natural, and I think that's to be expected. I think that if you are in the limelight it behooves you to be a little careful. I'm not trying to say that is right or wrong--but that it's just a natural thing. That's like saying, if the president does something wrong, naturally it's going to be front-page stuff. |
Q: We are merely trying to get at what you recall of the social mores of Hollywood at the time. |
Lee: Oh, that I will discuss very freely with you. I have heard of all sorts of things happening. Maybe I never saw it. After all, you go with the kind of people who lead the life you lead, don't you? |
Q: We heard actresses had to get up at 5:30 or six in the morning, to get to the set and start work-- |
Q: So how much carousing could they have done, considering the fact that they had to be up at this early hour? |
Lee: I don't know. Also, in those early days you made many more pictures than people do now. A big star will make one or two pictures a year. We used to make seven, eight, nine pictures a year. Well, you cannot carouse and still get up at six o'clock in the morning. For a woman it's even more difficult. A man--what does he do? He slaps a little stuff on his face and shaves. But for a woman, she has to have her makeup on, her hair done--yes, hairdressing every morning, of course, surely--and fittings, and all the things that go along with it. |
Q: From 1919 to1922, what kind of roles were you playing? You were in Arbuckle's last film, a comedy-- |
Lee: It was a romantic comedy. They were trying to get him into a different type of picture, because he really was an excellent actor. |
Q: That film sounds a little like Marty. |
Lee: You put it very well. That's exactly the kind of thing it was. It was charming, it was just so delightful--and of course, it was never shown. Oh, no! I don't know whether it was the action of the League of Decency--maybe the company itself just said, "We'll shelve this, and that's that." |
Q: Today, it would have been released immediately, as with the last Lana Turner film, to cash in on the scandal. |
Lee: Yes, that's surprising, isn't it? People say, "What will happen to Miss Turner's career?" You can't tell. The public is very strange about this. They may be very sympathetic--and certainly I think, no matter what, that she's in a very difficult position, and I'm sure that she feels more horribly about the whole thing than anybody else. [Lana Turner's daughter killed Miss Turner's lover.] Your daughter being involved in a thing like this--it's pretty horrible. I imagine your first impulse is "Where is the nearest 16-story building?" |
But as you say, all of a sudden they've released her new picture, which I understand is doing a tremendous business. Now, this may be just right now. You can't tell what will happen later. |
Take, for instance, Ingrid Bergman. Certainly that was a tragedy that she had. [Bergman became pregnant with Roberto Rossellini's twins before getting divorced from her previous husband.] |
Q: There were programs on the radio which subjected Miss Bergman to this line of questioning: Why did you sleep with another man?, etc. I don't know that that is a valid line of questioning; I think that the valid line of questioning is this: Can't these people be judged just as artists, as businessmen are for their work? Isn't all this just their personal life, and shouldn't be discussed? |
Lee: Well, I don't know. It's very much the same. Supposing it's a banker you do business with, and you find that he is leading a life that is not quite what you thought it was. You say, "I wonder if I should deal with him? He's liable to get into trouble." Perhaps I use the wrong analogy, I don't know. |
With Miss Bergman, this is a tragedy, but as you see, years go by and people no longer care about it. |
Q: Do you think people today are more inclined to let bygones be bygones? |
Q: That they were much harsher in the old days? |
Lee: Oh, very much harsher, in the earlier years. |
Lee: Well, I think this is a matter of--I don't know whether you'd call it morality or what. Although this is a small thing, it's almost the same: then, I wouldn't have been allowed to smoke or take a drink in public. It was not considered the thing for a motion picture actress to do. |
Q: The great stars of yesterday, like you or Nita Naldi--their status was more definite; they were sort of unobtainable, they did weird and wonderful things, they were not "ordinary people," housewives, etc. Today the stars have seven children and ... |
Lee: Well, there again, there's change. There was a time when a leading man, a handsome male star, was not supposed to be married. You can go way back to the time of Francis Bushman, when it was told to the public that he had a wife and several children. This was dreadful! Well, how ridiculous! |
Q: Did you have a particular role that you played over and over? You were never a vamp. |
Lee: Oh, no, no. I was usually an ingenue. |
Q: Did you have to behave like an ingenue offstage, too? |
Lee: Naturally. Naturally. That was expected. For instance, to go into the social group ... "Mrs. Vandeveer der Vanderbilt or something goes to Europe with Mr..." and nobody thinks anything of it, do they? |
Q: No. Nobody thought anything of Lana Turner going to Mexico with this man, until it came out. And even then, it doesn't make much difference, it's the fact that her daughter punched a knife into his belly. But going away with someone for six weeks--Linda Christian does it all the time. Yet the actresses of your day were penalized for showing their ankles. |
Lee: Why, I would no more have thought of doing such a thing! |
Q: It was a very unjust thing-- |
Lee: But I don't think that's just because of picture stars or actresses, stage, screen, TV or whatever; I think it's a matter of people in general. It's a matter of universal feeling about things. It was not considered good taste or good morals to do certain things--and now people don't think about those things. But I don't think it necessarily affects picture or stage people more than anybody else. I remember, when I was a young girl--to go to a man's apartment, alone? Heavens to Betsy! That would have been a disgrace. You might just as well have put a scarlet letter on you, you know. |
Q: Even at the age of 21 or 22? |
Lee: Any age. It just wasn't done. |
Q: Not unless you were older, in your fifties? |
Lee: Maybe. I don't know. But certainly not for a young woman. |
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