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Kissing cousins
Arbuckle’s tale illustrates how a sex scandal can destroy a person, even if he’s innocent. You have to be a particularly ornery cuss to survive such things. Especially if you did it.

Jerry Lee Lewis couldn’t understand what all the fuss was over about his marriage to Myra Gale Brown. When he arrived in England for a British tour in 1958, he found out.

Myra was Lewis’ cousin, and when they married in 1957, she was only 13 years old and he was still married to his second wife. The British tabloids did what they do, and in the ensuing frenzy, Lewis’ tour was canceled, his record contract was torn up and his songs disappeared from the radio. He had to return to small clubs and detour into pure country music to make his comeback, and even then it took him almost a dozen years to resume making hit records. But he did it.

Sarah Martone / AP If anything, Jerry Lee Lewis was even more colorful than his nicknames: “the Killer” and ”the Ferriday Fireball.” He once married his 13-year-old cousin and allegedly tried to assassinate Elvis Presley.

Often the scandal — like Lewis’ and Jackson’s — explodes because the object of a star’s affection (or alleged affection) is just a kid. Over the years, many celebrities have been hounded by the press and the cops because of their involvement with sweethearts young enough to be in high school:

• Elvis married 22-year-old Priscilla Ann Wagner Beaulieu in 1967. They began dating, however, when she was 14, and she moved into Graceland at 17.
• Salvatore P. Bono never would have hit the big time had he not fallen in love with and married 16-year-old Cherilyn La Pierre in 1963. They were better known as Sonny and Cher.
• Chuck Berry spent a year and a half in jail for transporting a 14-year-old girl across state lines in 1961.
• Roman Polanski became a fugitive when he was convicted of the statutory rape of a 13-year-old girl in 1979, when he was 42. While living in Europe, he was linked to actress Nastassja Kinski, who was 15 at the time.

Then there was Errol Flynn.

AP Errol Flynn was acquitted of the statutory rape of two teenage girls in 1942. His career purred along smoothly.

The movie hero who buckled more swashes than any real-life pirate was tried on charges of statutory rape involving two teenage girls in 1942. He was acquitted — not so much by arguing that he was innocent, but by arguing that he was Errol Flynn, and what redblooded American girl could resist?

If anything, the scandal only added to his reputation as a devilish ladies’ man, so much so that the phrase “in like Flynn” was coined, for all the reasons you would think.

The rich are different
There was one famous man, however, for whom scandal was never a real obstacle.

William Randolph Hearst lived perhaps the most remarkable American life of the 20th century: congressman, press baron and movie mogul (in fact, he hired Arbuckle to direct a film after Arbuckle’s descent). His story was told in “Citizen Kane,” only thinly disguised. One of the characters in that film, Susan Kane, was based on Marion Davies, Hearst’s mistress.

Marion Davies — a shrewd, talented actress unfairly lampooned as Susan Kane in “Citizen Kane” — lived with William Randolph Hearst for more than 30 years even though he was married. She was Hollywood’s most famous hostess and once wrote a $1 million check to save Hearst from bankruptcy.

It is a testament to the sheer power Hearst wielded that he could openly live with a former showgirl for more than 30 years — installing her as hostess at his palatial San Simeon estate and starring her in dozens of his films — while remaining married to his wife until his death in 1951. The notoriously combative Hearst never bothered to respond to gossip about his very public affair, the sort of gossip that could be professionally fatal in the 1920s. He was so rich and so powerful that it didn’t matter.

Hearst eventually lost most of his fortune, but it was not his affair with Davies that did him in; indeed, Davies bailed Hearst out on more than one occasion, once with a $1 million check. And while Davies’ career was sometimes ridiculed as being the product of her relationship with Hearst, the affair certainly didn’t hurt her: Among those attending her funeral was former President Herbert Hoover.

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