We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
130 IT TOOK NINE TAILORS
Arbuckle, one of the most popular comedians in Hollywood. An Eastern newspaper revealed that back in 1917 Arbuckle had been the guest of honor at a movie exhibitors' meeting that had moved to a roadhouse outside Boston and developed into what was described as a sort of bacchanalian orgy. If Arbuckle had not been a Hollywood star, the newspapers would probably never have played up this four-year-old affair. They hinted that a few weeks after the party the participants raised a $100,000 fund as a bribe to stop a legal complaint from being filed against them; and this bribery of a state prosecutor was now being investigated.
In newspapers all over the country editors deplored the licentiousness of those in Hollywood who made the pictures their children viewed; and in Massachusetts a proposition calling for state censorship of movies was placed on the ballot. Hollywood began to worry, but not seriously. On Hollywood Boulevard the opinion was that people wouldn't stand for any serious censorship of movies. After all, it was a violation of the right of free speech!
But in the rest of the country civic groups and parent-teacher associations were holding more and bigger indignation meetings, while editors were still fulminating against Hollywood. And that was just the beginning; for the roadhouse scandal had hardly ceased to be front-page news when Arbuckle became involved in a still more sensational affair. Following a drinking party in a San Francisco hotel that had been attended by several people connected with the picture business, a little-known picture actress died under circumstances that required a coroner's inquest.
As a result, Arbuckle was charged with manslaughter. Then the newspapers and the wire services really went to town, painting Hollywood as a place of corruption and evil goings on and the movie makers as drunken libertines. The producers and distributors were finally frightened into action.
When the scandal broke, I was working on a picture at Paramount, where Arbuckle was under contract. The place was in a frenzy. The studio had thousands of dollars tied up in unreleased