Here we go again ...

It may be near the top on the “ick” meter, but the trial of Michael Jackson on charges of molesting a 13-year-old boy is hardly unique, or even unusual, really. It’s simply the latest installment of that beloved American sit-com, the Hollywood sex scandal.

Sex scandals, of course, have been with us ever since Sodom and Gomorrah. And while notable figures throughout history got themselves entangled in hangups over sex — Pope Alexander VI had an illegitimate daughter, who grew up to be Lucrezia Borgia, for example — the sex scandal as thrilling public entertainment didn’t come into its own until the 20th century and the birth of the movies.

It all started with a man almost nobody remembers now, even though at his height he was among the biggest stars on the planet — both literally and figuratively.

The original tabloid victim
Roscoe Arbuckle was one of the most popular comic actors of the silent film era. Better known as Fatty Arbuckle for his 266-pound frame, he was the original star of the Keystone Kops. He’s credited with discovering Buster Keaton and with making the pie in the face the apotheosis of film slapstick. Hollywood legend has it that it was a pair of Arbuckle’s enormous pants that Charlie Chaplin put on, giving him the inspiration for the Little Tramp. He’s generally believed to be the first Hollywood star to win a million-dollar contract, and the first to be given complete artistic control over his films.

In September 1921, however, Arbuckle was arrested in a San Francisco hotel and charged with rape and manslaughter in the death of a minor starlet named Virginia Rappe.

Prosecutors said Arbuckle, whom they portrayed as a lecherous drunk, tried to force himself on Rappe, whom they painted as the ultimate flower of chaste virtue. Arbuckle’s enormous bulk caused internal bleeding, they charged. Rappe, 26, died three days later of peritonitis.

The newspapers ate it up — the biggest star of the day was charged with killing a beautiful young actress in their alleged love nest. And they were spoon-fed the scandal, thanks to details freely distributed by the prosecutor, Matthew Brady, who was known to aspire to higher office and thought he could get there on the back of Fatty Arbuckle.

Big, fat injustice
Biographers and film historians agree that it was a bum rap. The first two trials ended in hung juries, but Brady was driven to win. His eagerness to convict Arbuckle was so immense that more than 30 years later, when it came time for the authors of the play “Inherit the Wind” to give a fictionalized name to the obsessed prosecutor modeled on William Jennings Bryan, they chose “Matthew Brady.”

The third jury took six minutes to acquit, releasing a statement, which is reprinted in Stuart Oderman’s biography “Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle: A Biography Of the Silent Film Comedian.” It said: “Acquittal is not enough for Roscoe Arbuckle. We feel that a great injustice has been done him.”

That didn’t matter. The Hays Office, Hollywood’s censor at the time, banned Arbuckle from films, and while the ban was soon lifted, he was not able to return to the screen except for a few token appearances almost a decade later. By then, silent film slapstick was dead.

Arbuckle was a broken man, making ends meet by directing minor comedies under the assumed name William Goodrich. For the movie history “Hollywood: The Pioneers,” actress Louise Brooks told author Kevin Brownilow that Arbuckle “made no attempt to direct this picture” — “Windy Riley Goes Hollywood,” which was released in 1931, a year before he died. “He sat in his chair like a dead man,” she said.

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