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Scandals of Los Angeles

Here follow general outlines of a few of the juiciest scandals that rocked Los Angeles during the ‘20s.

The Rape of the Owens Valley (1904-1913, and following)

Not a sex scandal, but a land grab.  At the turn of the century, Los Angeles found its continued growth threatened by a lack of water.  Local business and political leaders organized to do something about it.  In 1904, led by former mayor Fred Eaton, who had discovered it, LA leaders began quietly buying up land and water rights in the Owens Valley, an undeveloped agricultural community 200 miles from LA in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.  Their plan was to construct an aqueduct that would take water from the Owens River and bring it to Los Angeles.  However, at the same time, the Federal Land Reclamation Bureau was exploring the possibility of launching a major irrigation project in the Owens Valley.  The project would have brought great prosperity to the local farmers, and stymied the LA developers.  The federal government dropped their idea in 1906, and President Roosevelt gave his approval to the aqueduct project by granting right of way on the federal land the aqueduct would have to pass through.  Interestingly, the Reclamation Bureau engineer responsible for making the decision on the Owens Valley Project, J.B. Lippencott, was also working for the Los Angeles Water Commission as a consultant.  The aqueduct was completed in 1913, and began bringing water to Los Angeles.  Owens Valley farmers were outraged, and began attacks on the aqueduct, including a dynamite blast in 1924.  In 1927, the city deployed a trainload of WWI veterans to the Owens Valley to patrol the aqueduct and stamp out the farmers’ activities!

The Rape of Rappe – the Fatty Arbuckle Scandal (1921)

In 1921, silent film star Fatty Arbuckle, a gifted comedian, was at a party at the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco.  At the party, a young starlet named Virginia Rappe died of internal injuries alleged to have been inflicted by Arbuckle during a sexual assault.  Arbuckle was tried three times, and never convicted (two hung juries and an acquittal), but the court of public opinion thought differently.  Whipped into a frenzy by William Randolph Hearst’s yellow press, Arbuckle’s films were hissed and booed in the theaters.  He became box office poison, and his career was ended. 

The mysterious death of William Desmond Taylor (1922)

William Desmond Taylor was a walking scandal.  Orignally from Ireland, Taylor emigrated to the United States, where he first found work as a bit player on Broadway under the name of Pete Tanner.  He married a wealthy stockbroker’s daughter, and opened up an antique furniture business.  In 1908 he left his wife and child, and came to Hollywood, where he assumed a new name and found work as a movie actor.  Taylor was well-known for high living and throwing wild parties – he as at the center of the Hollywood social scene.  In 1922, he was found shot to death in his Beverly Hills bungalow.  The crime was never solved.  His lover at the time, starlet Mabel Normand, was a well-known cocaine addict, and some have speculated that the killing was drug-related.

The tragic death of Wallace Reid (1923)

Wallace Reid was one of the earliest leading men of silent film, on par with Valentino for charisma and fame.  He was also a well-regarded comedic actor.  Success followed success for Reid until 1919, when he was injured in a train accident while filming a movie.  While recovering from the accident, he became addicted to morphine.  His addiction was on open secret in Hollywood, but the studios kept the news from the general public.  Reid continued to work regularly despite his addiction until he finally broke down in 1922 and was admitted to a sanitarium to dry out.  His addiction was too severe, and he died from the effects of withdrawal in 1923.  Perhaps more than any other scandal, this one rocked the nation.  Reid had been regarded as a golden boy, a screen hero, by the public, and his drug-related death shocked the country.

The mysterious disappearance of Aimee Semple MacPherson (1926)

Aimee Semple MacPherson was a popular revival preacher and faith healer who brought her ministry to Los Angeles in 1923.  From her church in Echo Park, she broadcast her services across the country – a precursor to the modern televangelists.  In 1926, she disappeared while swimming at Venice Beach.  Police were baffled, and huge rewards were offered for clues of her whereabouts.  Thirty two days later, she came out of the Arizona desert, claiming to have been kidnapped and held hostage for a month before finally managing to escape.  There had indeed been a plot to kidnap MacPherson uncovered in 1925, but many elements of her story did not seem to fit.  While MacPherson had disappeared from a beach while clad in a swimsuit, she emerged from the desert fully clothed right down to her old-fashioned corset.  The LA district attorney had several witnesses who claimed they had seen MacPherson in local hotels with Kenneth Ormiston, a technician for her church’s radio broadcasts.  MacPherson stuck to her story, and she was acquitted of perjury.  Her popularity suffered no decline, although rumors persisted that she had gone to Mexico for an abortion, or to recover from plastic surgery.

The collapse of the St. Francis Dam (1928)

In March 1928, just two weeks before the date of the game, the St. Francis Dam near Saugus in the Santa Clarita Valley, collapsed.  The town of Saugus was inundated by a wall of water over forty feet high, and over four hundred people were killed.  The dam had been built to create a reservoir for the Owens Valley Aqueduct.  Some suspected Owens Valley farmers of more terror tactics, while others questioned the integrity of William Mulholland, responsible for the construction of the aqueduct.  Had the dam been built to the necessary specifications?  At the time of the game, the investigation is just getting underway.