The sordid murder of this Hollywood director took the fun and sex out of Tinseltown
Drugs, bisexuality, and a stage mom on a mission, the killing of William Desmond Taylor had it all
Late on the night of February 1, 1922, a woman came home to her swank bungalow in the Westlake neighborhood of Los Angeles and noticed her next door neighbor’s light was still on. William Desmond Taylor was arguably the most famous director in Hollywood and was “often given to burning the midnight oil,” according to a Los Angeles Times article that ran a few days later. But early the next morning the woman awoke to a terrible scream. “Mr. Taylor is dead! Mr. Taylor is dead” shouted Henry Peavey, Taylor’s cook and valet, as he ran up and down the yard.
Peavey had arrived at work in the early morning hours and saw Taylor lying on the floor. He had been shot in the back. Neighbors would recall hearing what they thought was a car backfiring around nine the night before. One couple, alarmed at the sound, had looked out their window to see a man leaving Taylor’s home.
A sordid suspect list was drawn up by the police: a deranged stage mother, drug dealers, a love-lorn teenage cinema star, and members of a gay opium cult, were just a few of the convoluted leads. “Jealous Man Hunted as Slayer of Taylor!” read one headline and “Taylor Murder One of Most Baffling Cases Ever Given to the Los Angeles Police” read another. Tales of vice in Taylor’s private life surfaced. Pornography was supposedly found in the bungalow, as was “a large collection of women’s lingerie.’’ Another revelation: Before coming to Hollywood, Taylor had abandoned his wife and daughter in New York and headed to Klondike to pan for gold during the gold rush. His wife and daughter had no idea where he was until one day, they went to the movies and he appeared onscreen while they sat flabbergasted in their seats.
It was like an over-the-top crime flick, replete with a star-studded cast. But the murder signaled the beginning of the end for liberated Hollywood. Until the industry was more tightly regulated in 1934, Hollywood was producing racy and irreverent silent films like Flesh and the Devil and The Temptress. Female leads could be delightfully subversive, such as in Warner Brothers’ 1933 film Female about an ambitious woman auto executive who is unapologetic about her casual flings. America, in all of its complicated, thrilling, and bawdy glory was on display in darkened theaters across the country, but Taylor’s murder had set in motion a chain of events that would stamp all of it out.
As far as the police knew, the last person to see Taylor alive was Hollywood “it girl” Mabel Normand. Some said he was madly in love with her (though others argued he was gay). Normand was addicted to cocaine and Taylor had tried repeatedly to help her get treatment. Eventually he went straight to the source, attempting to report her dealers to the police. Many began to suspect that Taylor had been killed by someone in the drug ring in an attempt to thwart his efforts.
Another theory was that the man seen retreating from Taylor’s house wasn’t a man at all but Charlotte Shelby, the mother of starlet Mary Miles Minter, a Taylor protégé. Minter had been in love with him, but Taylor had rebuffed her, saying he was too old for the teenager. Rumors circulated, though, that a piece of lingerie found in his house had her initials on it. Shelby, who was by many accounts an incorrigible stage mother, was outraged by the possible relationship. In the coming years, both of Shelby’s daughters, including Mary, would accuse her of the murder. “My mother killed everything I ever loved!’’ Mary Minter would later say.
Edward Sands, Taylor’s former valet, who had previously robbed him, was long considered a leading suspect, but the police were unable to find him. An anonymous confession letter came from an “educated” man in Atlantic City. In 1964, as Margaret Gibson, a silent film star who had worked with Taylor, lay dying, she asked for a priest. She then proceeded to tell the priest and the group of neighbors who had gathered around her, “I killed William Desmond Taylor!”
Despite all the confessions, suspicious motives, and a slew of biographies professing to reveal the true killer, no consensus emerged and Taylor’s murder was never solved. Minter and Normand’s careers never recovered from the scandal, and the incident left an indelible mark on the industry. Hollywood was already looking bad in the broadsheets, with some claiming it was run by “cocaine-crazed sexual lunatics.” Outcry from conservative political and religious groups who wanted the movies to represent “correct thinking” with “wholesome” story lines resulted in dozens of censorship bills across the country. The year before, silent film star Fatty Arbuckle had been accused of rape and murder. This combined with a slew of actresses dying of drug overdoses resulted in a crackdown in Tinseltown. William H. Hays was hired by the studios to help fend off government censorship by creating a self policing system of “Don’ts” and Be Carefuls.” Profanity, miscegenation, “sex perversion,” and “white slavery” were prohibited. The “use of the flag” and “excessive lustful kissing,” were to be handled with caution. Moral behavior became a requirement in actors’ contracts.
Hollywood, unsurprisingly, proved lax at self-policing, and by 1934 the studios had to up their moral standards. Films were required to get a certificate of approval from the Production Code Administration before a movie could be released. Gone were the inventive plot lines, subversive female leads, and “the raw stuff of American culture.” That year, when It Happened One Night came out, the “bedroom scene” was chaste. When Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert are forced to stay in a hotel room together, they hang a sheet from the ceiling between their beds, while Colbert wears pajamas befitting a nun.
For the next 30 years — at least on screen — prudishness would prevail in Hollywood.
