A Bright and Guilty Place: Murder, Corruption, and L.A.'s Scandalous Coming of Age by Richard Rayner Read Free Book Online Page A

story, but then William Randolph Hearst’s Examiner started to dig, accusing Arbuckle of rape and murder. He was a “beast,” “a moral leper” who drove “freak cars” and once held a “wedding for his dogs.”
    At the time of the Arbuckle scandal four other daily papers, in addition to the Examiner , served the L.A. market: the Evening Express , the Evening Herald , the Evening Record, and the Times. A frenzy of gloves-off coverage quickly ensued, each paper vying to top the other. There was no television, of course, and radio news coverage was barely beginning. Movie newsreels appeared days or weeks after big events, whereas newspapers ran brash stories and lurid images only hours after the events they depicted. It was a golden age for the press, which ran the spectrum from great writing to gutter journalism, often in the same story and under the same byline. In its coverage of the Arbuckle scandal, the Examiner featured photographs of Rappe’s innocent face and her torn clothing. The Express noted that for Arbuckle “death would be too swift a penalty” and movie houses around the country dropped his films. Although a jury finally acquitted Arbuckle, noting that he was “entirely innocent and free from blame,” the damage and the injustice had been done. Arbuckle’s career was in ruins and would never bounce back. It was perhaps the first perfect mass-culture news story—involving sex, death, and the misdemeanors of a movie star.
    L.A. newspapers sold by the million, and a pattern emerged. Sensational crimes—some involving Hollywood, others not—would result in circus trials and days of gleeful headlines. Competing papers sold the news in a series of editions that were published throughout the course of the day: the morning and afternoon papers (“AMs” and “PMs,” Leslie White soon learned to call them) added “sunset” editions, “bulldog” editions, and “extra” editions if needed. When a big story hit, editors demanded fresh angles hourly and writers couldn’t afford to be scrupulous about how they provided them. One top reporter recalled hiring a messenger to deliver an anonymous murder threat in the course of a trial so he could write about the recipient’s reaction. Such shenanigans were the norm, and to study an entire day’s outpourings from the L.A. press during this period is to see an ongoing and ever-changing crime epic in progress. The detail is more than novelistic; it’s microscopic.
    “L.A. was the hottest news city in America, probably the world,” said Matt Weinstock of the Daily News , the tabloid that featured Gene Coughlin and had been launched in 1923 by twenty-year-old Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jr. The News —located in a building at the corner of Pico Boulevard and Los Angeles Street, downtown but farther south than the other papers—was new and fresh and different. Vanderbilt, the rich son of a famously rich family, loved the swift, jazzy tabloid style; but he tried to break away from the sensationalism that usually went with that style. He envisioned a penny paper that “may safely enter any home” and ordered his editors to look for international stories and human interest stuff that the great New York tabloids would ignore (“FOUR HUNDRED CHICKENS DISAPPEAR,” ran one News headline). Circulation rose to 200,000 within a year but then slumped. The News foundered in 1926, and was plucked from the bankruptcy court by Manchester Boddy, a former book publisher and sales manager for Encyclopaedia Britannica. Boddy had $750 in his pocket, but proved to be the perfect man to put the young tabloid back on the map. He immediately removed Vanderbilt’s quixotic ban on sex, scandal, and violent death, and circulation began to rise again.
    “Los Angeles had the finest murders ever ,” wrote Carey McWilliams with a hint of pride. There was Walpurga Oesterreich, who kept her lover imprisoned in the attic for over fifteen years and then one day goaded him into killing