Reportedly, in 1928, the dying words of film comedienne Mabel Normand, a close friend of Taylor’s and the last person to have seen him alive, were, “I wonder who killed poor Bill Taylor?”
Despite numerous leads, suspects and unsubstantiated confessions the case has never been conclusively solved. The most popular theory, favoured by Special Investigator Ed C. King and director King Vidor, was that Charlotte Shelby -- mother of Mary Miles Minter, a Paramount star who has been identified at various times as Taylor’s lover, fiancée, unrequited admirer and protégé – killed Taylor. Charlotte Shelby was, however, never charged nor arrested and was even publicly exonerated by Prosecutor Asa Keyes in 1928.
In private papers made public after his death, director King Vidor remarked of the case: “Before we can make accurate speculations on the case and guilt of those involved we must know something of the community in which the victim lived, and in which he died. It is my first contention that the murder itself and its consequent lack of solution had its roots buried deeply in the inner character of the community. I am convinced of this. I was there!”
The community Vidor speaks of is of course the “movie colony” – Hollywood. A community founded as the 20th century dawned by filmmakers running from New York in order to escape paying patent rights on filmmaking equipment – so it was, perhaps quite rightly, immediately awarded the image of a haven for the wanton and wicked. Writer Adela Rogers St. Johns cheerfully remembers in Kevin Brownlow’s Hollywood: the Pioneers: “Oh, we kept having scandals right along. If you throw into one small town and one small industry, the people who can impress the world with their drama, their sex appeal, with their lovemaking, with all of the big emotional dramatic things that can happen, and you put them all together in one little bowl, you're going to have some explosions. I'm only surprised we had so few.”
By the time of Taylor’s death in 1922, Hollywood had been rocked by the fatal heroin overdose of starlet Olive Thomas in Paris, Charlie Chaplin’s marriage to child star Mildred Harris, and Fatty Arbuckle’s first trial for the rape and murder of Virginia Rappé. Shortly after Taylor’s murder, the drug addictions of matinee idol Wallace Reid and comedienne Mabel Normand were exposed. One of the many rumours that circulated regarding Taylor’s murder was that he had been helping Normand kick the habit, and a drug dealer, furious at losing her very lucrative trade, shot Taylor in revenge.
Almost as soon as Hollywood started having scandals, the tabloid press realized the money to be made in reporting them: publishing tycoon William Randolph Hearst once boasted that he had sold more newspapers on the Fatty Arbuckle case than on the sinking of the Lusitana. Eminent Hollywood historian Kevin Brownlow commented of the press reports at the time, in the foreword to The Humour of a Hollywood Murder (serialised in the online newsletter Taylorology), “how (the press) got away with their repellent stories, gory photographs and sanctimonious hypocrisy while women’s clubs got steamed up about the charming love-making of silent films, is beyond me.”
The murder of William Desmond Taylor was a tabloid editor’s dream. There was the debonair British director’s murky past: shortly after his death it emerged that he had been born William Deane Tanner, and had disappeared from New York abandoning his wife and young daughter in 1908. Then there was the fact that celebrated comedienne Mabel Normand was the last person to see him alive – and the investigation revealed her hitherto covered up cocaine addiction. Following that, were rumours that Famous Players-Lasky manager Charles Eyton, head of Paramount Adolf Zukor and Normand herself were already at the death scene raking through and destroying potentially crucial evidence with the police arrived; not to mention the love letters – and lingerie – supposedly from a plethora of female stars which were found by the police in Taylor’s bungalow, did much to fuel the fires of intrigue and prurient gossip. The suspect list grew daily and totalled at least 49 within months. The potential involvement of Edward Sands, the mysterious valet who had disappeared weeks prior to the murder having robbed Taylor – and who supposedly bore a striking resemblance to the slain director’s brother Dennis Deane Tanner; or of Henry Peavy, the man servant who discovered the body, and whose trial for public indecency Taylor had been due to testify at, was ripe for lascivious editorials to speculate over. Not to mention the large sum of money that Taylor withdrew from the bank on his last day alive… the salacious details kept readers rapt for months following the murder. An editorial in the Salt Lake Telegram on February 11, 1922 opened: “With each succeeding day producing new gossip concerning life California’s film colony, it is to be hoped that the Taylor murder mystery, which has baffled the coast police for a week, will soon be solved.“
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William Desmond Taylor, world’s greatest director, British Army captain, art connoisseur, traveller, dilettante, divorcée, bon vivant, occultist, et cetera, et cetera, as well as sole proprietor of the finest, best appointed, most frequently visited and most generously occupied love nest in the city of Los Angeles – William Desmond Taylor, Love Avalanche of Alvadoro is found dead! - Seattle Union Record, 15 February 1922
On the morning of February 2, 1922, the Los Angeles police arrived at the home of William Desmond Taylor in a wealthy suburb of the city to find the prominent film director dead on the floor of his study. With the agreement of Police Lieutenant Ziegler, a doctor from the crowd of onlookers made a preliminary examination of the body and declared death from natural causes, possibly heart trouble. The case was closed.
However, moments later when the body was turned over to reveal a pool of blood and a neat bullet hole puncturing his left lung, the case was re-opened, and it remains so today. The identity of the doctor was never discovered, nor was he seen again and ultimately his existence was questioned. He formed just the first of many mysteries concerning the murder of the man described in the memoirs of Los Angeles Special Investigator Ed C King as: “a cultured, dignified gentleman with a charming personality and considerable magnetism.” The investigation into the untimely death of this ‘cultured, dignified gentleman’ spanned decades; it ruined the careers of two of the most prominent actresses of the day, left countless reputations in tatters and caused the Seattle Star to remark: “every time there is a shooting scrape in the movie colony some screen star finds out where the rest of her clothes are.” Risqué stuff for 1922: the murder became the first instance of trial by tabloid and reveals a Wild West Hollywood almost forgotten today.
