The Dual Lives of a Murdered Silent Film Director
Book Review of Murder in Hollywood by Seth J.
Bookey
Murder in Hollywood: Solving a Silent Screen
Mystery
Charles Higham
Terrace Books, University of Wisconsin Press
ISBN: 0-299-20360-3
Cloth
$24.95
227 pages
The murder of silent film director William Desmond Taylor is not common
knowledge to most people today, but to devotees of unsolved crimes, it is
legend. Charles Higham's "Murder in Hollywood," not the first book about
Taylor's murder in February 1922, takes a new look at the cast of
characters involved in the bisexual director's life, and death.
Charles Higham, a Hollywood biographer, is not the first to take a crack
at solving the mystery. Silent film director King Vidor tinkered with the
idea of making amovie about it back in the 1960s. In 1986, Sidney
Kirkpatrick's "A Cast of Killers," wrote the "true story" of this murder
while doing research for a biography of Vidor, who set aside his own
investigation because some of the "cast" was still alive and he didn't
want to hurt anyone. By 1986, however, most of the "cast" was dead, and by
now, no one seems to be left.
What makes "Murder in Hollywood" an interesting book is not the "solving"
of the crime, but the anatomy of the crime and the various cover-ups that
took place immediately following the discovery of Taylor's corpse by his
houseman, Henry Peavy. First, personnel from Taylor's movie studio arrived
to remove anything that might incriminate anyone in its employ in any way.
Neighbors and strangers arrived before police could dust for fingerprints
and photograph the scene, standard procedure even in 1922. And worst of
all, a corrupt district attorney was dating Charlotte Shelby, the mother
of Mary Miles Minter, a prime suspect without an alibi who was shielded
from any real questioning. Shelby, who zealously guarded Mary's image and virginity, was also a suspect. Another was popular comedienne Mabel Normand, who dated Taylor, and whose careers was ruined by association with the murder. On the queer side of things, a former servant of Taylor's, Edward Sands, was a prime suspect, villified in the press as a "queer person" and thereby casting a shadow of "abnormality" onto Taylor in the press.
Seems Hollywood has always been a rather "busy" place.
"Murder" also provides movie buffs and gay readers with some interesting history as well, that goes beyond the murder mystery. The book is a "Who's Who" of the film colony's early days, and in the 1920s, the wholesome imagery often provided by Taylor's films--"Anne of Green Gables" and "Tom Sawyer"--covered up a subculture that reeled with illegal drinking, illicit drug use, and sexcapades of all shades. The silent era, for all of its inevitable purity, also provided titilations (eventually punished by the end of the film). Taylor's affair with set decorator and production designer George Hopkins also led to some of his films featuring the most lurid homosexual imagery every seen on film at the time. The film "The Soul of Youth" featured fallen boys sold into white slavery, with the set
inspired by Taylor's visit to a male brothel.
Having read both this book and "A Cast of Killers," as well as parts of the defunct e-newsletter "Taylorology," and other bits or Tayloriana, it is safe to conclude that we will probably never know the true story. Both books favor a particular suspect as the murderer, and make great strides
in looking at every angle, but this is as cold as a cold case can get. Even Higham's own real-life encounter with the strange, elderly Mary Miles Mintner in Santa Monica is not enough to convince us that he is definitively correct.
What remains then, for the reader, is the rather interesting exploration of silent-film-era Hollywood, which was rather lawless for modern times, and a look at the ease with which many of its inhabitants led double lives. William Desmond Taylor was born William Cunningham Deane-Tanner to
an Irish family. A falling out with a strict father eventually led him to go to America, where after several other careers, he landed in Hollywood as an actor, and later as a leading director, with Mary Miles Mintner chomping at the bit to be both the next Mary Pickford and Taylor's lover.
The book presents Taylor, and many of those around him, as having a facility for fluidly recreating themselves. Taylor's wandering life led him to be attracted to others who left their pasts behind and presented themselves completely new in Tinseltown. While having a rather superficial "romance" with Mintner and later a rather intellectual affair with Mabel Normand, Taylor was also induling his homosexual life with the criminal Edward Sands and the creative George Hopkins. Things eventually came to a head when Taylor and Hopkins daringly went to a Hollywood premiere together shortly before the murder, prompting Minter, also in attendance, to publicly humiliate them and cause Taylor to dissolve into a case of nerves.
?Unlike "A Cast of Killers," this book offers much more detail of Taylor's double life and ability to compartmentalize his homosexuality. The information presented about gay themes and imagery in Taylor's films (now mostly lost) is certainly new and of interest to LGBT readers. But, it's hard to know where Higham himself stands on gay issues, when almost every reference to Henry Peavy calls attention to the man's queeny mannerisms and "hysteria," as well as his jealousy toward Taylor's affair with Normand. Considering the painstaking efforts Higham took to bring so much detail to the story of Taylor's life, and the subsequent murder investigation, it's embarassing to read about Peavy mincing down the street presented as fact as opposed to taking literary license. He also declares that Maigne, Taylor's neighbor, is a "liar" for saying he didn't hear the gunshots--based on his own hypothesizing and not facts found in the investigation
Higham also captures the media hysteria that surrounded the investigation, with suspects close to Taylor and not even remotely connected (like Chinese Tong gangs) implicated, and the movie studios working overtime to try to implicate innocents, fearful of a backlash.
The backlash was soon to arrive, though, as the next big Hollywood scandal--Fatty Arbuckle and the death of Virginia Rappe--brought out "family values" types against Hollywood, with local theatres refusing to show particular suspects' films. Eventually, self-censorship was to follow, with a brief racy period before 1934 brought about "The Code," which gave couples separate beds and all kinds of Victorian moralities (like not showing a toilet on screen until 1960's "Psycho.").
"Murder in Hollywood" is engrossing, as much for chronicling the murder as it captures the an era as rollicking as a Keystone Cops two-reeler. Higham presents a persuasive argument for his favored suspect, as did Kirkpatrick before him, and the evidence is compelling. But inevitably, is the time-capsule quality of the story telling, and a peek at "hiding in plain sight" homosexuality that makes the book so interesting.
Charles Higham
Terrace Books, University of Wisconsin Press
ISBN: 0-299-20360-3
Cloth
$24.95
227 pages
The murder of silent film director William Desmond Taylor is not common
knowledge to most people today, but to devotees of unsolved crimes, it is
legend. Charles Higham's "Murder in Hollywood," not the first book about
Taylor's murder in February 1922, takes a new look at the cast of
characters involved in the bisexual director's life, and death.
Charles Higham, a Hollywood biographer, is not the first to take a crack
at solving the mystery. Silent film director King Vidor tinkered with the
idea of making amovie about it back in the 1960s. In 1986, Sidney
Kirkpatrick's "A Cast of Killers," wrote the "true story" of this murder
while doing research for a biography of Vidor, who set aside his own
investigation because some of the "cast" was still alive and he didn't
want to hurt anyone. By 1986, however, most of the "cast" was dead, and by
now, no one seems to be left.
What makes "Murder in Hollywood" an interesting book is not the "solving"
of the crime, but the anatomy of the crime and the various cover-ups that
took place immediately following the discovery of Taylor's corpse by his
houseman, Henry Peavy. First, personnel from Taylor's movie studio arrived
to remove anything that might incriminate anyone in its employ in any way.
Neighbors and strangers arrived before police could dust for fingerprints
and photograph the scene, standard procedure even in 1922. And worst of
all, a corrupt district attorney was dating Charlotte Shelby, the mother
of Mary Miles Minter, a prime suspect without an alibi who was shielded
from any real questioning. Shelby, who zealously guarded Mary's image and virginity, was also a suspect. Another was popular comedienne Mabel Normand, who dated Taylor, and whose careers was ruined by association with the murder. On the queer side of things, a former servant of Taylor's, Edward Sands, was a prime suspect, villified in the press as a "queer person" and thereby casting a shadow of "abnormality" onto Taylor in the press.
Seems Hollywood has always been a rather "busy" place.
"Murder" also provides movie buffs and gay readers with some interesting history as well, that goes beyond the murder mystery. The book is a "Who's Who" of the film colony's early days, and in the 1920s, the wholesome imagery often provided by Taylor's films--"Anne of Green Gables" and "Tom Sawyer"--covered up a subculture that reeled with illegal drinking, illicit drug use, and sexcapades of all shades. The silent era, for all of its inevitable purity, also provided titilations (eventually punished by the end of the film). Taylor's affair with set decorator and production designer George Hopkins also led to some of his films featuring the most lurid homosexual imagery every seen on film at the time. The film "The Soul of Youth" featured fallen boys sold into white slavery, with the set
inspired by Taylor's visit to a male brothel.
Having read both this book and "A Cast of Killers," as well as parts of the defunct e-newsletter "Taylorology," and other bits or Tayloriana, it is safe to conclude that we will probably never know the true story. Both books favor a particular suspect as the murderer, and make great strides
in looking at every angle, but this is as cold as a cold case can get. Even Higham's own real-life encounter with the strange, elderly Mary Miles Mintner in Santa Monica is not enough to convince us that he is definitively correct.
What remains then, for the reader, is the rather interesting exploration of silent-film-era Hollywood, which was rather lawless for modern times, and a look at the ease with which many of its inhabitants led double lives. William Desmond Taylor was born William Cunningham Deane-Tanner to
an Irish family. A falling out with a strict father eventually led him to go to America, where after several other careers, he landed in Hollywood as an actor, and later as a leading director, with Mary Miles Mintner chomping at the bit to be both the next Mary Pickford and Taylor's lover.
The book presents Taylor, and many of those around him, as having a facility for fluidly recreating themselves. Taylor's wandering life led him to be attracted to others who left their pasts behind and presented themselves completely new in Tinseltown. While having a rather superficial "romance" with Mintner and later a rather intellectual affair with Mabel Normand, Taylor was also induling his homosexual life with the criminal Edward Sands and the creative George Hopkins. Things eventually came to a head when Taylor and Hopkins daringly went to a Hollywood premiere together shortly before the murder, prompting Minter, also in attendance, to publicly humiliate them and cause Taylor to dissolve into a case of nerves.
?Unlike "A Cast of Killers," this book offers much more detail of Taylor's double life and ability to compartmentalize his homosexuality. The information presented about gay themes and imagery in Taylor's films (now mostly lost) is certainly new and of interest to LGBT readers. But, it's hard to know where Higham himself stands on gay issues, when almost every reference to Henry Peavy calls attention to the man's queeny mannerisms and "hysteria," as well as his jealousy toward Taylor's affair with Normand. Considering the painstaking efforts Higham took to bring so much detail to the story of Taylor's life, and the subsequent murder investigation, it's embarassing to read about Peavy mincing down the street presented as fact as opposed to taking literary license. He also declares that Maigne, Taylor's neighbor, is a "liar" for saying he didn't hear the gunshots--based on his own hypothesizing and not facts found in the investigation
Higham also captures the media hysteria that surrounded the investigation, with suspects close to Taylor and not even remotely connected (like Chinese Tong gangs) implicated, and the movie studios working overtime to try to implicate innocents, fearful of a backlash.
The backlash was soon to arrive, though, as the next big Hollywood scandal--Fatty Arbuckle and the death of Virginia Rappe--brought out "family values" types against Hollywood, with local theatres refusing to show particular suspects' films. Eventually, self-censorship was to follow, with a brief racy period before 1934 brought about "The Code," which gave couples separate beds and all kinds of Victorian moralities (like not showing a toilet on screen until 1960's "Psycho.").
"Murder in Hollywood" is engrossing, as much for chronicling the murder as it captures the an era as rollicking as a Keystone Cops two-reeler. Higham presents a persuasive argument for his favored suspect, as did Kirkpatrick before him, and the evidence is compelling. But inevitably, is the time-capsule quality of the story telling, and a peek at "hiding in plain sight" homosexuality that makes the book so interesting.
Posted: Wed - November 2, 2005 at 01:29 PM
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