Tinseltown is a series of ‘society’ columns supposedly in an Ohio newspaper: a fictional-non-fiction eye witness account of 1920s Hollywood. The columnist, Mary-Beth King, is a young Midwestern girl, with pretensions to be in with the in crowd of Hollywood, and who isn’t above moral - some might say bitchy - editorialising on occasion. Tinseltown will form her first three years as a gossip reporter, from 1921-1924, and will follow her from a star struck wannabe to a society gatekeeper who can make or break a star at will, as she mingles with - then cheerfully tears apart - luminaries of early cinema including Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, Fatty Arbuckle, William Desmond Taylor, Mabel Normand, Wallace Reid, Rudolph Valentino and many more along the way. Her personal journalistic oath involves telling “most of the truth, some of the truth and a bit of the truth, so long as it suits me,” and through her, Tinseltown will expose the blithe lack of integrity that dogged the baby tabloid press and ruined the careers and lives of many who came under their fire.
Stylistically, think Louella Parsons meets Dominic Dunne with an occasional twist of today‘s celebrity gossip tomes; Miss King will twist the facts to suit her opinions. For example, jealousy over Mabel Normand’s friendship with William Desmond Taylor (for whom she has a bit of a soft spot) will motivate her to tear the comedienne’s reputation to shreds at every opportunity. She will dismiss any contradictions or gaps in the chronology of the versions that she prefers - even glaring contradictions like the discovery of the telegram Maude Delmont sent to a friend as Virginia Rappé lay dying, reading “We have Roscoe Arbuckle in a hole here. Chance to make some money out of him” will hardly suffice to change her pronouncement of “guilty whether proven innocent or not”. She will gleefully expose the day-to-day chinks in the armour of some of cinema’s greatest heroes - legend has it that Chaplin wasn’t a great fan of personal hygiene, and Mary-Beth, having once been snubbed by the Londoner who was known not to suffer fools gladly, will rarely miss an opportunity to highlight his “curious odour” in print.
The Tinseltown columns will give salacious and gleefully bitchy insight into flapper society and the then-fledgling juggernaut of the celebrity gossip industry.
Primarily though, the columns will explore the unsolved mystery of the death of William Desmond Taylor. Rather than attempt to solve the unsolvable, the columns will draw on the press of the day to reveal the social climate and explore why the murder was never solved. The victim was high profile, a witness observed a person leaving the scene of the crime moments after shots were heard, and the might of the Los Angeles Police Department was thrown into the investigation, yet 84 years later we are yet to learn who fired the shot that killed the director. The position the book ultimately represents, is that the wild stories, gossipy asides and slanderous accusations that the tabloid press - in particular agenda-driven columnists such as our very own Mary-Beth King - circulated and perpetuated so much blinding smokescreen to whatever truth might have otherwise been revealed, that the investigation was severely hindered. Ultimately, the press and gossips of the time assisted the real killer to remain undetected.
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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.
