Downfall of a superstar

QUESTION Was Fatty Arbuckle accused of murder?

ROSCOE Conkling ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle was born into poverty in Kansas in 1887. The youngest of nine children, he weighed in excess of 14lb at birth. Despite his bulk – he ended up between 250 and 300lbs – Arbuckle was a surprisingly nimble and agile man, which gave him a remarkable comic presence. In 1913, at the age of 26, Arbuckle became one of the legendary Keystone Kops.

In 1921, he signed the first ever $1million Hollywood contract for Paramount. To celebrate, Arbuckle and some friends drove to San Francisco on Saturday, September 3, for a party at the St Francis hotel.

Among the guests was Virginia Rappe, a 30-year- old model and actress. At some point, Arbuckle and Rappe ended up together in room 1219 from where, a few minutes later, screams were heard.

Guests rushed in to find Rappe, fully dressed, writhing in pain on the bed. Arbuckle told them he had gone to the bathroom, where he found Rappe drunk on the floor. He carried her to the bed and she had fallen off, he insisted. But Rappe screamed: ‘He did this to me!’

Rappe’s condition deteriorated and when she was finally taken to hospital three days later her friend, Bambina Maude Delmont, told doctors Arbuckle had raped her friend.

A day later Rappe died from peritonitis. Despite a medical examination finding no evidence of sexual assault, Arbuckle was charged with first-degree murder, which was eventually reduced to manslaughter.

Morality groups demanded he face the death penalty and Arbuckle was blacklisted. He was portrayed in the media as a fat brute who had pinned down his prey, rupturing her bladder. His lawyers, meanwhile, painted Rappe as an alcoholic prostitute who had had numerous abortions and venereal disease.

The Rappe case was flawed, not least because Delmont had been charged with numerous counts of extortion, bigamy, fraud and racketeering. She was known as a professional ‘co-respondent’ for blackmailers and never took the stand. Furthermore Rappe was found to have suffered f rom persistent bladder problems for years.

It later emerged in court that the prosecution had used intimidation to force several witnesses to testify against Arbuckle. Even so, the actor was tried three times. The first two cases ended in hung juries. After a third trial in 1922, the jury took just a few minutes to acquit the star.

‘Acquittal is not enough for Roscoe Arbuckle,’ the jury said in a written apology. ‘A grave injustice has been done.’ Despite this, Arbuckle was frozen out of Hollywood for most of the rest of his career. In 1933 Warner Bros offered him a contract. After it was signed, he reputedly said: ‘This is the best day of my life.’ That night he died of a heart attack in the arms of his third wife. He was 46. Lucy Barnes, Warwick.

QUESTION What is the origin of the word ‘mascara’?

THE earliest eye make-up was made from antimony, a black rock with bluish tints that was crushed into a powder used to make an eye lotion, kohl. Kohl has been worn traditionally since the Protodynastic Period of Egypt (before 3,100BC) and in the Middle East, Asia and North Africa.

Mascara as we know it today was developed by a French chemist, Eugene Rimmel, around 1880, from Vaseline and coal dust. It was around this time that it got its modern name. Mascara is derived from the Italian ‘maschera’ meaning mask. Liz Warner, Oxfordshire.

QUESTION Did any serious incidents happen due to the Y2K Millennium Bug?

THE Millennium or Y2K bug was caused by the limitations of the clocks inside computers. Since the Sixties computers denoted years such as 1998 as 98 to save memory. As a result, when the new millennium arrived, it was expected many computer clocks would see 00 and Murder charge: Virginia Rappe and Fatty Arbuckle; inset, a headline from the time understand that to mean 1900. The fear was that i t would disrupt numerous day- to - day services including invoicing, delivery times, financial transactions, etc.

Some even feared Armageddon, predicting computer failures in nuclear reactors. A great deal of money was invested in preventing Y2K and it generally passed quietly.

One sad case did highlight the dangers of the bug. A Y2K computer error at Sheffield’s Northern General Hospital resulted in 154 pregnant women being given incorrect results of a Down’s Syndrome test.

As a result, four Down’s syndrome pregnancies went undetected. Two of the women gave birth to Down’s syndrome babies, while two others had abortions. Peter Graves, Bournemouth.

QUESTION How is Georgian Kvevris wine made?

THE manufacture of Georgian wine is a simple process that dates back thousands of years. The Kvevris (or Qvevris) are large fermenting vessels made of clay which are buried underground – the earth insulates the vessel and regulates the temperature of the fermenting wine.

Unlike conventional methods, Georgian winemakers harvest the grapes which are gently crushed and placed, pips, skins, stems and all into the kvevri.

The kvevri are buried in deep holes with earth and sand packed in tightly on all sides. They are sealed inside with hot beeswax and the lid of the qvevri sealed with wet clay coiled around the top and then a heavy stone placed over it. The wine is left to ferment until the following spring when it is extracted. Because the juice is left to macerate on the skins and stems for such a long time, the whites are a distinctive orange colour, tannic and show a lot of savoury notes like dried herbs. Reds are more familiar looking, but have a distinctly tannic flavour. The quality of the clay used in the making of the kvevris is important; the best clays contain high amounts of silver content, which is of note as silver has pronounced anti-bacterial properties.

Kvevri-making is an artisan craft. Each one is handmade and takes a long time to build – they are effectively giant pots holding between 400 and 800 gallons and, because of their size, can be very fragile. G. Toreli, Staffordshire.

QUESTION In 1943, US General George Patton slapped a soldier suffering from battle fatigue while visiting a military hospital in Sicily. What happened to the GI he slapped?

FURTHER to the earlier answer, Charles Kuhl was not the only soldier to be slapped by Patton. Private Paul G Bennett was admitted to the 93rd Evacuation Hospital on August 10, 1943, a week after Kuhl.

He was 21 and was suffering from nervous exhaustion. When Patton asked Bennett what his trouble was, he replied: ‘It’s my nerves, I can’t stand the shelling any more.’

The general yelled at him: ‘ Your nerves, hell; you are just a goddamned coward, you yellow son of a b****.’ He then slapped the man and said, ‘Shut up that goddamned crying. I won’t have these brave men here who have been shot at seeing a yellow b****** crying.’

He then, according to Lt Col Perrin H Long, Medical Corps, ‘struck the man again, then shouted, “Don’t admit this yellow b******; there’s nothing the matter with him”’.

Like Kuhl, Bennett also received a personal apology from Patton. David Thomas, Wolverhampton.