Hollywood shaken to core by man’s murder
L.A. Times reported silent film director may have been slain in vengeance plot
William Desmond Taylor is forgotten today. But when the silent film director was shot and killed 98 years ago, it was front-page news.
“MURDER STIRS FILMDOM,” read a giant headline in the Feb. 3, 1922, edition of The Vancouver Sun. “Slain After Talking to Movie Star.”
“AVENGER MAY HAVE SHOT TAYLOR,” said the banner headline in the Vancouver Daily World. “WAS AT SNOW PARTY.”
The World’s “Special” story out of Los Angeles was incredibly convoluted and filled with innuendo.
“Giving the greatest consideration to the theory that he was slain in a love vengeance plot, presumably by a man, at the instigation of a woman who was jealous of attentions he showered on a widely known screen actress, the police today are bending every effort to solve the mysterious murder of William D. Taylor, film company director,” said the story, which had no byline.
“It was now reported that Taylor attended several so-called ‘snow’ parties at which narcotics were served. The slaying, the detective pointed out, may have been the aftermath of such a party.”
A snow party is 1920s slang for cocaine.
Actress Mabel Normand was the movie star who had been seen talking to Taylor the night he died, and she was supposedly very fond of “snow parties.”
Normand was an incredibly popular comic actress in her day, and The Sun ran a front-page photo of Normand and another big silent star, Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle, beside its Taylor story.
The headline for the photo was “Screen Stars in Limelight.” Arbuckle was on trial at the time for manslaughter in the death of actress Virginia Rappe, who had died a few days after he had allegedly raped her.
Taylor’s murder was announced the day the jury in the Arbuckle trial was deliberating his fate. Ten members of the jury found Arbuckle guilty, but two found him innocent, so a mistrial was declared.
Soon, another female star’s name popped up in the Taylor investigation: Mary Miles Minter. Taylor had directed her in Anne of Green Gables in 1919, and the newspapers speculated there had been some hanky-panky going on between Taylor and Minter.
It made for good copy, because Minter was a waifish 17-year-old when they met in 1919, and Taylor was 46. Love letters from Minter to Taylor show she was smitten: one reads “Dearest, I love you. I love you. I love you … xxxxxxxxxx! Yours always Mary.”
The initial press reports speculated that Taylor had been shot by a man who waited for him in his home. The Los Angeles Times ran a “photodiagram” of the murder showing a hood in an Andy Capp hat and trench coat shooting Taylor in the back in his living room, helpfully placing an “X” on the floor to mark where Taylor’s dead body had been found.
The photodiagram doesn’t really add up — Taylor was found lying on his back by his servant, which means he would have had to have done a spinarama to land where X marked the spot.
But then a lot of stuff in the Taylor case didn’t add up. His body was found about 7:30 a.m. on Feb. 2, and a doctor was called who said he had died of natural causes.
The Los Angeles Times reported that “it was not until the remains were taken to the Ivy Overholtzer undertaking establishment that discovery was made that Mr. Taylor had been shot.”
The Times also speculated somebody went through Taylor’s apartment after his death, removing letters from Normand, among others. It may have been Charles Eyton of the Famous Players-lasky studio, who had Taylor under contract.
A couple of days later came another bombshell: Taylor’s real name was William Cunningham Deane-tanner, and he had left a wife and young daughter in New York in 1908, vanishing into thin air.
After spending time in Calgary promoting oil stocks, Taylor moved to Hollywood, where he thrived as an actor and director. He had success with adaptations of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, directed stars like Mary Pickford and Constance Talmadge, and was a three-term president of the Motion Picture Directors’ Association.
His wife and daughter discovered he’d moved to Hollywood when they spotted him in a movie about 1919. He reconciled with his daughter and left his estate to her when he died.
The Sun reported 30,000 people attended his funeral on Feb. 7, 1922, in Los Angeles. Mabel Normand fainted after viewing his body in the casket.
There are many theories about who killed him. One is that Mary Minter’s mother shot him because Taylor had slept with her daughter. Another theory was that a drug dealer killed him for trying to get Normand off cocaine.
But the case was never solved.