The Murder of
William Desmond Taylor
William Desmond Taylor
On the night of February 1 1922, someone shot Hollywood director William Desmond Taylor in the back, between neck and shoulder, leaving him dead on the floor of his duplex at the Alvarado Court Apartments. There appeared to be no sign of a break-in or burglary, and cash was found in the house and on the body.
English born director William Desmond Taylor had seemed to be one of Hollywood's finest minds. Forty-nine years of age, he had directed over forty films since 1914, including several with Mary Pickford. As head of the Motion Pictures Directors' Association, he appeared to give the movie colony that touch of class that the denigrated "vulgarians of the gutter" - like Sennett or Arbuckle - lacked.
The murder of Taylor seemed at first glance incomprehensible, once the obvious robbery motive had been ruled out. The first ominous fact agreed by most witnesses to Taylor's last hours was that Mabel Normand had been the last person to see him alive. She said she had dropped in briefly that evening to pick up two books, one a study of Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarathustra, and been regaled by Taylor's worries about his secretary, Edward Sands, who had disappeared after forging his cheques, and his butler, Henry Peavey, whom he had to bail out of jail after his arrest for soliciting young boys in the park. Mabel also had a copy of Freud's Interpretation of Dreams with her, thus tying two highly suspicious Germans, and one of them a Jew to boot, into the tale.
The second peculiar fact was that the police had not been called to the scene until twelve hours after the death. Later gossip suggested that they had arrived to find some of Hollywood's finest, including Paramount bosses, burning papers in the fireplace. A crime of passion seemed most likely. Mabel was in the hot seat, as was Mary Miles Minter, another actress who had allegedly been Taylor's lover. Then rumours of drug dealing and sex perversions surfaced, and dark whisperings that tied both Mabel and Taylor into the occult practices of the "Ordo-Templis-Orientis" cult of drug-fiend satanist Aleister Crowley. Taylor had been seen in opium dens where men smoked the pipe and had sex with each other. Some said there were obvious clues, in the death-room, to a homosexual revenge killing.
Mabel Normand - Mabel AND Mack - Mack Sennett
The strangest, and most verifiable fact, however, emerged within two days of the murder: William Desmond Taylor was not William Desmond Taylor at all. He was in fact William Cunningham Deanne-Tanner, one time travelling thespian, Yukon prospector and antiques dealer in New York in the early 1900s. He had been married to one of the Floradora Sextette, Ethel May Harrison, who was now, the New York Herald revealed on February 5, "the wife of ELC Robins, owner of Robins Restaurant and other hostelries". They had a daughter, Ethel Daisy, born in 1903. Mr Tanner had deserted his wife on October 23 1908 and she had neither seen nor heard from him until a chance viewing of a movie in 1919 revealed to her that the actor named in credits as William Desmond Taylor was her missing husband. To make things worse, or even better, there was a brother, Dennis Deanne-Tanner, who had also disappeared from New York, in 1912.
There was no shortage of suspects. Mary Miles Minter's mother, Charlotte Shelby, had been known to be enraged with Taylor because he had deflowered her daughter. Mabel Normand confessed that there had been a stack of love letters, which became known as the "Blessed Baby" letters, after his pet name for her, but which had gone missing. Mack Sennett was questioned, along with anybody who had known the victim, and was, for a while, a prime suspect, for the press, if not the police.
Mary Miles Minter, and her mother Charlotte Shelby
In the ensuing press hype, three hundred people, across the United States, walked into police stations and confessed to the murder. Mack himself, one Canadian writer has written, confessed on his deathbed to having been the man in women's clothing, and having shot Taylor because "he was queer" and "stole Mabel by giving her drugs".
The one certain fact about the Taylor murder, however, is that the case was never solved. Still today, speculation on this most mysterious of all Hollywood scandals abounds, despite director King Vidor claiming to have established, once and for all, that Charlotte Shelby committed the murder to avenge her daughter's seduction, and that, in the code of the time, the police hushed it up.
William Desmond Taylor
William Desmond Taylor Filmography
Top of New York, The (1922) (as William D. Taylor)
Green Temptation, The (1922)
Morals (1921)
Beyond (1921)
Wealth (1921) (as William D. Taylor)
Sacred and Profane Love (1921) (as William D. Taylor)
Witching Hour, The (1921)
Furnace, The (1920)
Soul of Youth, The (1920)
Jenny Be Good (1920)
Nurse Marjorie (1920)
Judy of Rogue's Harbor (1920)
Huckleberry Finn (1920)
Anne of Green Gables (1919)
Captain Kidd, Jr. (1919)
Johanna Enlists (1918)
How Could You, Jean? (1918)
Mile-a-Minute Kendall (1918)
Up the Road with Sallie (1918)
His Majesty, Bunker Bean (1918) (as William D. Taylor)
Huck and Tom (1918)
Spirit of '17, The (1918)
Tom Sawyer (1917)
Jack and Jill (1917)
North of Fifty Three (1917)
Varmint, The (1917)
Big Timber (1917)
World Apart, The (1917)
Out of the Wreck (1917)
Happiness of Three Women (1917)
Redeeming Love (1916)
Her Father's Son (1916)
House of Lies, The (1916)
Parson of Panamint, The (1916)
Davy Crockett (1916)
American Beauty, The (1916)
Pasquale (1916)
Heart of Paula, The (1916) (as William Taylor) (unconfirmed)
Ben Blair (1916)
He Fell in Love with His Wife (1916)
Last Chapter, The (1915)
Peggy Lynn, Burgler (1915)
Soul of the Vase (1915)
Tricks of Fate (1915)
Woman Scorned, A (1915)
Lonesome Heart, The (1915)
Diamond from the Sky, The (1915)
High Hand, The (1915) (as William D. Taylor)
Eye for an Eye, An (1915) (unconfirmed)
Judge's Wife, The (1914)
Criminal Code, The (1914) (uncredited)
Back To
theNSAisWATCHIN
The Frances Farmers Revenge Web
Portal
Google Labs
International Search
Site Translate
Google Advanced
Yahoo! Advanced
Ultimate
Email Address Finder
