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THE HAYS OFFICE 131
Arbuckle pictures, so of course they rushed to the defense of their star. Everybody in Hollywood did the same, for we felt that he was being made a fall guy by San Francisco, the traditional enemy of Los Angeles. But the thing that worried Hollywood most was that exhibitors all over the United States who had contracted for the Arbuckle pictures notified Paramount that they would not show the films.
After two jury disagreements Arbuckle was finally acquitted of the charge of manslaughter. But he never recovered from the experience he had gone through. He was never again the same funny fat man, and I think the effect of his boycott throughout America finally killed him.
While the Arbuckle trials were still in progress, the movie producers and distributors gathered to try to pull the fat out of the fire, for they could feel the hot breath of Federal censorship on their necks, and there was barely time to do something about it. Three months after the Arbuckle scandal had hit the front pages twelve of the leading producers and distributors signed a round robin and presented it to Will H. Hays, at that time Postmaster General of the United States. He was offered the position of Movie Czar at a salary of $100,000 a year. His job would be to make a few friends for the motion-picture industry and to influence as many people as possible to believe that the movie colony was not composed entirely of actors with loose morals who indulged daily in drunken revels.
But even before Hays could officially accept the offer lightning struck Hollywood for the third time. On the morning of January 2, 1922, while I was working at Fox Studios in The Fast Mail, William Desmond Taylor, one of the industry's leading directors, was found murdered in his bachelor's quarters. Newspaper reporters from every big paper in the country swarmed into Hollywood like ants into a jam pot, for it was by far the best murder mystery Hollywood had ever produced.
I was one of the lucky ones who knew Taylor only slightly, for almost everyone who was well acquainted with him and who