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The 10 Most Notorius Sex Scandals in Hollywood History

Posted in: World Sex News | Oct 17, 2009 - 4:22:37 PM

We can learn a lot about shifting mores by charting the careers of those caught in the spotlight with their zippers down. From Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, silent comedy star and director to Errol Flynn, high-living action star of the 1930s and 1940s.

When Swiss police apprehended director Roman Polanski (Chinatown, Rosemary's Baby) after he'd spent more than thirty years as a fugitive from justice, they couldn't have known that the arrest would set off a fiery international debate between those who see Polanski as an important cultural figure who is being persecuted, and those who can't believe that anyone would rush to the defense of a convicted child molester.

When Swiss police apprehended director Roman Polanski (Chinatown, Rosemary's Baby) after he'd spent more than thirty years as a fugitive from justice, they couldn't have known that the arrest would set off a fiery international debate between those who see Polanski as an important cultural figure who is being persecuted, and those who can't believe that anyone would rush to the defense of a convicted child molester.

Since the arrest, some of the attention Polanski had been involuntarily hogging has shifted to David Letterman, whose confession of infidelity - delivered in front of his live studio audience as part of a damage-control strategy against an extortion plot - was actually reviewed as "brilliant television" by jaded TV critics. Both cases serve as a handy reminder that sex scandals, from Fatty Arbuckle to Charlie Sheen, have always been part of the show-business circus, and that one can tell a lot about shifting mores by charting the careers of those caught in the spotlight with their zippers down.

1) THE STAR: Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, silent comedy star and director
THE SCANDAL: On Labor Day weekend, 1921, the overworked Arbuckle treated himself to a holiday by checking into a hotel with a couple of male cronies and as many women as would respond to their wolf whistles. One of them was Virginia Rappe, a twenty-six-year-old aspiring starlet whom Arbuckle was said to have been lusting after. Two days later, Rappe checked into a hospital and died there of complications from a ruptured bladder. Subsequently, a friend who had accompanied her to the party told police that Arbuckle had raped the girl, and Rappe's manager fanned the flames in the press. Various sources claimed Arbuckle had fatally injured Rappe by violating her with a Coke bottle, a chunk of ice, and/or his bigass self.

Although police concluded there was no evidence that Rappe had been raped, the Hearst papers flogged the public into a fury. There were calls for Arbuckle's execution, and when he was finally charged with manslaughter, somebody took a shot at his estranged wife as she was entering the courtroom to show her support. After two mistrials, the third jury acquitted Arbuckle and presented him with a letter of apology.

THE FALLOUT: Arbuckle deserved his vindication, but he was considered toxic by the studios and his onscreen career was over. A few loyal friends got him jobs as a director (under the name "William Goodrich"), but he had begun to slip into alcoholism and declined rapidly, both on the set and off. Louise Brooks later described Arbuckle after the scandal as "very nice and sweetly dead."

The 10 Most Notorius Sex Scandals in Hollywood History...

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