9 - Wife number 3: Bambina

Albert Delmont Jones (now calling himself Albert Royal Delmont) married Bambina Maude Scott on September 29, 1904. He was around 50 years old at the time and (if the 1920 census is to be believed) she was 21. A 1922 newspaper has a claim that her first husband was a Cincinnati millionaire. Cincinnati was certainly one of ADJ’s past locations. (Interview question: “Tell me, Bambie, what was it about this 50 year old millionaire that first attracted you to him?”) Bambina liked the name Delmont and kept it through several subsequent marriages, including John Hopper and Cassius Wood. In 1922 she was last heard of (under the Delmont name) planning to marry a Lawrence Johnson.

In the newspapers she is sometimes Bambina Maud Delmont and sometimes Maud Bambina Delmont and Maud sometimes has an E on the end, and sometimes not. But the “Delmont” is consistent.

Bambina liked getting married, but didn’t always finish the paperwork for her divorces and was subsequently charged with bigamy on one occasion.

In the 1920 census returns she was running her own shop in Los Angeles selling and fitting corsets.

Bambina’s claim to fame (or infamy) is her part in the Roscoe Arbuckle scandal. Fatty Arbuckle was a silent film comedian who was huge (in more than one way) in his day. He is probably remembered in film circles today as the man who gave Buster Keaton his start in the movies.

Arbuckle was savaged by the media when he was suddenly arrested and accused of rape and murder after a 1921 party in San Francisco. The victim was a small part actress named Virginia Rappe. The charge was subsequently reduced to manslaughter. Arbuckle went through two hung juries before being cleared at a third trial where the jury were out for all of six minutes, using five of them to write a statement making a formal apology to him for the injustice he had suffered.

There was little doubt that Virginia Rappe’s death was preventable. Health problems exacerbated by a series of abortions made her fragile, and she didn’t get prompt or proper care when she was taken ill. But the lurid accusations against Arbuckle all originated with Rappe’s companion who crashed the party, namely Bambina Maud Delmont. While Wikipedia cannot be called the most accurate of sources, it does quite a nice line in character assassination: “Delmont had a long criminal record with multiple convictions for racketeering, bigamy, fraud and extortion, and allegedly was making a living by luring men into compromising positions and capturing them in photographs, to be used as evidence in divorce proceedings.”  The Weekly World News in 1961 veered into alliteration by accusing her of being a “Tinseltown tart.” Her unsubstantiated testimony at the original hearing got Arbuckle indicted, but then the prosecution deliberately kept her far away from all the actual trials, because her obvious inability to tell truth from fiction would have immediately sunk their case.

So this was the third Mrs ADJ.

When you consider ADJ’s history after his “fall from grace,” it would appear that some people just seem made for each other.

Albeit briefly.