Sacred and Profane Love: The Mystery of William Desmond Taylor
As far as the police were concerned, it was routine. On the morning of February 22nd, 1922, they arrived at the home of William Desmond Taylor in a wealthy suburb of Los Angeles to find the prominent film director dead on the floor of his study. With the agreement of 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 neat bullet hole in the back of the head, the case was re-opened, and it remains so today. The identity of the doctor was never discovered, nor was he seen again and serious doubt was eventually cast on his very existence: he formed just the first of many mysteries concerning the murder of the man described in the memoirs of Special Investigator Ed C King as “a cultured, dignified gentleman with a charming personality and considerable magnetism.” The unsolved 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.” Risque stuff for 1922; the murder became one of the first instances of trial by tabloid and reveals a Wild West Hollywood almost forgotten today.
The real mystery to me is how this fascinating case has become so forgotten. Mention Fatty Arbuckle, Charlie Chaplin, Rudolph Valentino to anyone who doesn’t have a particular interest in film history, and the names will ring a bell. They might even have a rough idea of their scandals that made such an impact on the fledgling movie community during the 1920s, but William Desmond Taylor? Almost invariably nada. In fact, a few months ago I visited Los Angeles, and was determined to visit the site of Taylor’s death (typing this, it occurs to me for the first time that it could be construed as somewhat macabre – I prefer to think of it as a keen interest in history!) – his bungalow at Alvadoro and Maryland in Westlake, part of a complex that was home to a host of stars of the day including Douglas and Faith MacLean and Chaplin's leading lady Edna Purviance. I knew that the original complex had been torn down in the 1960s – the demolition is featured in Sidney Kirkpatrick’s A Cast of Killers – but expected something to remain to commemorate Taylor’s place in Hollywood history. My lovely friend D (he does have a full first name, but I’ll go with the initial in case he decides to sue me one day) agreed to drive me to the site, and so – following a 1920s map which I now see was somewhat short sighted – we set off. After a good 40 minutes trawling the streets of downtown Los Angeles getting confused by unexpected freeways not featured on my map, we finally found Alvadoro and excitedly counted down the streets towards Maryland to discover… a parking lot. How horribly indicative of America’s regard for history to find that such a site – which would surely feature at least a plaque in London – had been turned into a place to stick cars.
Despite numerous false leads and unsubstantiated confessions - in 1964, a former silent star who had worked with Taylor for six months in 1914, Margaret Gibson, claimed on her deathbed to have killed Taylor - and an investigation spanning decades, the case has never been conclusively solved. The most popular theory, favoured by Ed C. King and director King Vidor, was that Charlotte Shelby, mother of actress and Taylor admirer Mary Miles Minter, killed Taylor.
For further reading on the case, I highly recommend Bruce Long’s online newsletter, Taylorology at http://www.angelfire.com/az/Taylorology/
