Hollywood Timeline: 1921

Scandal once again consumes Hollywood in 1921 with the arrest of Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle for the manslaughter of actress Virginia Rappe at a party in San Francisco. Meanwhile Charlie Chaplin's first feature, The Kid, is released to universal acclaim, and Rex Ingram's The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse makes a major star of Rudolph Valentino ...

San Francisco Police Department booking photograph taken after his arrest for the manslaughter of Virginia Rappe

Date	Event
1^st January	Gloria Swanson’s new contract with Famous Players-Lasky sees her salary rise to $2,500 per week for three years, rising to $7,000 in year five if the contract is extended. In return, she must make four pictures a year.
21^st January	Two days before it premieres at the Randolph Theatre in Chicago, the National board of Review host a charity showing of The Kid, Charlie Chaplin’s first feature. Six-year-old newcomer Jackie Coogan and Edna Purviance co-star.
5^th February	Loew’s State Theatre in Cleveland opens. Its first program features Ina Claire in Polly With a Past and the Buster Keaton short, Neighbors.
6^th March	Rex Ingram’s The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse premieres at the Lyric Theatre in New York. Rudolph Valentino, Alice Terry and Wallace Beery star in the tale of a family who finds itself on opposing sides during the great War.
31^st March	D. W. Griffith’s Dream Street opens at the Central Theatre on Broadway. It features a spoken prologue by the director, making it the first feature film to include sound.
31^st March	Actress Bebe Daniels is sentenced to ten days in prison for speeding after driving at 56mph on Irvine Boulevard on 8^th January.
19^th April	Douglas Fairbanks appears with several writers in The Non-sense of Censorship, a short film that mocks censorship.
21^st April	The Cocoanut Grove nightclub opens in the Ambassador Hotel on Wilshire Boulevard.
7^th May	Millers Theatre in Los Angeles halts its showing of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari following picketing and riots by members of the American Legion over the showing of German films.
	Charlie Chaplin and Jackie Coogan in The Kid (1921)
10^th May	Abel Gance holds a screening of the American version of his acclaimed J’Accuse for press and cinema owners in the ballroom of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in New York.
18^th May	Adolph Zukor forms the European Film Alliance in Berlin to manage German production and distribution.
31^st May	Buster Keaton becomes the brother-in-law of actresses Norma and Constance Talmadge and studio executive Joseph Schenck when he marries Natalie Talmadge.
May	Charles Sheeler’s and Paul Strand’s Manhatta, an avant-garde documentary featuring the poetry of Walt Whitman, is released. It is screened with the title New York, the Magnificent.
7^th June	Max Linder gives a private showing of his new film, Be My Wife, at the Aeolian Hall. Linder wrote, directed and produced the feature-length comedy.
8^th June	Serial star Pearl White arrives in Paris claiming to have been lost in the Pyrenees for two days after being overtaken by a storm while descending on horseback.
19^th June	The animated short The Goose that Laid the Golden Egg, the first of cartoonist Paul Terry’s Aesop’s Film Fables, is released.
22^nd June	Twenty-one-year-old Spencer Tracy makes his stage debut in the Clyde Fitch play The Truth at Ripon College.
24^th June	Share prices in Famous Players-Lasky rise following Adolph Zukor’s announcement that he intends to cut production costs by 25 per cent.
16^th July	Lee De Forest files a patent application for a sound-on-film system.
	Douglas Fairbanks with Leon Bary, George Siegmann and Eugene Pallette in Fred Niblo's The Three Musketeers (1921)
29^th July	Unions claim that four hundred members have gone at strike at Famous Players-Lasky following its decision to cut wages by 25 per cent. Goldwyn and Fox advise their union members have also gone on strike following similar cost-cutting measures.
16^th August	W. J. Reynolds, secretary of the Motion Picture Producers Association declares that the workers strike is effectively over because all those on strike have been replaced.
28^th August	Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford attend the premiere of his latest film, The Three Musketeers, at the Lyric Theatre.
29^th August	A host of Hollywood stars attend the opening of Loew’s State Theatre at Forty-fifth Street and Broadway.
31^st August	The Federal Trade Commission claims Famous Players-Lasky is forbidding films by independent producers from being shown in its theatres, placing it in violation of anti-trust laws. The company denies the charge.
10^th September	Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle is held in custody following the death of 30-year-old actress Virginia Rappe at a party held by the comic at his suite in the St. Francis hotel, San Francisco.
21^st September	In the wake of the Arbuckle scandal, Universal announces it will include a ‘morality clause’ in all of its contracts.
25^th September	Cecil B. DeMille’s film version of Arthur Schnitzler’s scandalous 1890’s play, Anatol, is released. The Affairs of Anatol stars heartthrob Wallace Reid and Gloria Swanson.
28^th September	Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle, charged with the manslaughter of Virginia Rappe, is released on bail of $5,000.
	Oliver Hardy and Stan Laurel meet on-screen for the first time in Jess Robins' The Lucky Dog (1921)
October	Reelcraft release The Lucky Dog, a short comedy noticeable only for the fact that it marks the first pairing of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. Hardy plays a thief who robs Laurel at gunpoint.
6^th November	George Melford’s romantic Arabian saga The Sheik is released. Wids Film Daily reports that it “smashes all attendances at the Rivoli and Rialto Theatres” in its first three days of release.
13^th November	Alfred E. Green’s Little Lord Fauntleroy, starring Mary Pickford, is released.
14^th November	Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle’s trial for the manslaughter of Virginia Rappe begins.
17^th November	The Granada Theatre, reputed to have cost $2,000,000, opens with a screening of the Marion Davies film, Enchantment.
21^st November	Henry King’s adaptation of Joseph Hergesheimer’s short story Tol’able David is released. Richard Barthelmess stars in the title role opposite Gladys Hulette.
4^th December	The jury in Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle’s manslaughter case is discharged after failing to reach a decision.
25^th December	A Sailor-Made Man, Harold Lloyd’s first feature-length film, is released. Mildred Davis co-stars.
28^th December	D. W. Griffith’s Orphans of the Storm is released. Lillian and Dorothy Gish star as orphaned sisters caught up in the French revolution.
December	Ernst Lubitsch arrives in America to promote his film The Loves of Pharoah, and to consider offers from Hollywood producers.
	The Marx Brothers film their first short Humor Risk. It is previewed once but not released.

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