Minx, The Magazine - Volume Two, IssueTwo

Crime and Passion. The William Desmond
Taylor Murder Case

by Neal Patterson

      A celebrity is murdered in Hollywood. High-profile individuals of the entertainment industry are implicated. A disorganized police force allows the crime scene to be compromised. Evidence surfaces that is thought to be planted. A swirl of wild and unsubstantiated "facts" fill the newspapers. Amid all the hoopla, the case is never definitively brought to a close.

      Sounds like a certain celebrity murder case of recent vintage, but these events refer to the unsolved murder of silent movie director William Desmond Taylor. Not exactly a name that springs to mind when one thinks of the era before talking pictures, but Taylor’s mysterious murder sent tremors through the Hollywood community and continues to intrigue movie and mystery buffs to this day.

      Although no longer well remembered, William Desmond Taylor had been a shooting star in the Hollywood galaxy of the teens and early 20’s. He started as an actor, then quickly moved to directing. His directorial breakthrough was an adaption of Huckleberry Finn. He later directed Mary Pickford in Johanna Enlists and Captain Kidd, Jr., and gained greater fame as the director of Mary Miles Minter, the popular teenage beauty of the day. Taylor directed Minter in Judy of Rogues Harbor and Jenny Be Good. By 1922, Paramount Pictures had made Taylor head of his own production unit. He was at the top of his game.

At 7:30 a.m. on the morning of February 2, 1922, William Desmond Taylor’s manservant, Henry Peavey, arrived at Taylor’s bungalow in the Alvarado Court Apartments on South Alvarado Street. Peavey was carrying a bottle of milk of magnesia for his employee’s stomach cramps as he unlocked the front door.

Taylor's South Alvarado Street Bungalow.

Upon looking into the bungalow, Peavey let out a shriek that aroused the neighbors. Edna Purviance, an actress and neighbor who lived in the bungalow directly west of Taylor’s, heard Peavey’s shrieking and contacted the police. Los Angeles Police Detective Tom Zeigler was the first to arrive on the scene.

From here on, the details tend to vary depending on which accounts you read. William Desmond Taylor’s body was found lying on his back, completely dressed, arms at his side, with his head towards the east. Some accounts state that he was found in his den or study, but the bungalow had no such room. Photographs of the crime scene show that Taylor’s body was in the living room by a writing desk.

The scene of the crime.

      Upon his arrival, Detective Zeigler found several individuals roaming about the house, including Edna Purviance and Henry Peavey. Peavey may have been washing dishes at the time, although it seems unlikely since he had finished washing dishes before he left Taylor’s home the night before. Silent screen star Mabel Normand was found rummaging through drawers looking for personal items. It was also rumored that two executives from Paramount studios were found burning papers in the fireplace. However, this is illogical since no fireplace existed in the bungalow. It is true that Zeigler allowed Charles Eyton, general manager of Famous Players-Lasky (a Paramount subsidiary), to search the house for items. Although highly irregular for a crime scene, Zeigler allowed Eyton to enter the home based on their friendship.

      Amid the confusion, a middle-age man emerged from the crowd claiming to be a doctor and offered his services. Zeigler allowed him to examine the body. The man quickly determined that Taylor died from a stomach hemorrhage or heart trouble brought on by natural causes. The man then disappeared without being identified.

      The case would have been closed at that point had it not been for a slight curiosity that manifested itself as the body was being removed for transport to the funeral home. On the floor where Taylor’s body had lain was a small pool of blood. Taylor had been shot in the back with a .38 caliber bullet. The police report later stated that the bullet had enter "the right side of the middle line, posterior to the right collar bone and entered the tissues of the neck." The bullet hole in his suit coat did not correspond with the hole in the vest. According to whichever theory one believes, this indicated that Taylor either had his arms up, was reaching for a chair, or was seated when he was shot. The theory one subscribes to also depends on whether you believe that a chair was overturned across Taylor’s legs or, as Henry Peavey described it to police, pushed out a little bit with Taylor’s feet underneath it.

      Having now become a murder investigation, police proceeded to question the neighbors. Noted actor Douglas MacLean, who lived across the courtyard from Taylor, said he heard a muffled shot between 8 and 8:15 p.m. His wife, Faith Cole MacLean, looked out the window and saw a man wearing a cap and muffler leaving Taylor’s front door. She described the figure as 5’ 10" tall, medium build, and roughly dressed. Later, Mrs. MacLean stated that it may have been a woman as the figure was "funny looking."

Police also searched the house and found evidence that linked Taylor to both Mabel Normand and Mary Miles Minter. Love letters written by Mary Miles Minter were interpreted by the press as suggesting an affair between the 50 year old director and the 20 year old Minter. However, Ed. C. King, Special Investigator for the L.A. District Attorney’s Office, described the letters as "just a young girl unashamedly confessing her love for the man she loved." Love letters by Mabel Normand were also discovered in the toe of Taylor’s riding boots (perhaps the personal items Ms. Normand had been looking for). It was later theorized that the letters may have been forgeries planted by Charles Eyton. Other reports referred to handkerchiefs and a nightgown on the premises bearing the initials "MMM." Although it is generally believed that the items were found, there is doubt about the monogrammed initials.

Letter from Mary Miles Minter

Charlotte Shelby.

In addition to the two famous actresses, another suspect soon surfaced: Charlotte Shelby - the domineering mother of Mary Miles Minter. Mrs. Shelby did own a .38 caliber pistol and was known to threaten death upon directors who had made uninvited advances on her pretty young daughter.

Although much was made in the press about the suspected affairs of Taylor and these three women, it was also a widely held belief that no such affairs could have occurred as Taylor may have been a homosexual. This suspicion was supposedly supported by his association with Henry Peavey, a known homosexual. Charles Sands, Taylor’s former personal secretary, was also believed to be gay. Shortly before Taylor’s death, Mr. Sands stole jewelry, money, and a car from Taylor and vanished from sight while the director was on vacation in Europe. Two more suspects were addedto the list.

      As if the lack of hard evidence and the abundance of speculation was not enough, the L.A. police uncovered a new wrinkle. William Desmond Taylor was actually a man named William Deane Tanner. Unlike the descendant of prominent Irish families that Taylor professed to be, William Deane Tanner was born on April 26, 1872, the product of a simple, middle-class Irish Catholic family. As Tanner reached adulthood, he rebelled against the strict upbringing of his father, an officer in the British Army. He travelled about in various careers, including acting, until he ended up in New York flat broke. In 1901, he decided to settle down and marry Ethel May Harrison, the daughter of a wealthy stockbroker. Tanner became vice-president and part owner of the English Antique Shop at 246 Fifth Avenue.

      After seven years, however, Tanner became restless. On October 23, 1908, he left the shop saying he was going to the races. He never returned. Taking a large amount of money from the antique store, he left his wife and daughter and wandered across country until he came to Hollywood to rekindle his acting career. It was during this cross-country trek that William Deane Tanner became William Desmond Taylor.

      It’s been reported that his wife, Ethel, became aware of Taylor’s new life when she saw him in a movie in 1919, although it is also thought that she was aware of his reincarnation as early as 1915. Ethel allowed their daughter, Ethel Daisy Deane Tanner, to write to Taylor and a steady correspondence developed. Father and daughter eventually met again in 1921.

      Curiously, Taylor’s brother - Denis Deane Tanner - also disappeared in 1912, abandoning his wife and two daughters in New York. After Taylor’s death, the rumor was circulated that Denis Deane Tanner and Charles Sands had been the same person. The police never pursued this theory as the two men were distinctly different in appearance. While Denis Deane Tanner’s wife described her husband as slender with a noticeable mark on the nose, Charles Sands was a stocky man with no distinguishing nose mark.

As the years passed, a flurry of half-truths, rumors, and tall tales grew out of the William Desmond Taylor murder case. The only thing that didn’t develop was hard evidence or a conviction. Coming as it did in the midst of the Fatty Arbuckle rape trial, the Hollywood power elite pulled together after the murder to present a more wholesome view of Tinsel Town. The Hays Office was established as a moral watchdog of motion pictures, and studio executives put the publicity machine into overdrive so that the public only saw of its Hollywood idols what the studios wanted them to see. The case soon faded into the past.

Mabel Normand.

The key players also faded into obscurity. On her death bed in 1930, Mabel Normand was reported to have said as her dying words, "I wonder who killed poor Bill Taylor?" Like so much about this story, it is uncertain whether the quote is fact or fiction.

Forty-five years later, famed director King Vidor set out to investigate the case again as a possible movie project. Vidor was a rising young director at the time of the Taylor murder, running his own studio, Vidor Village. He later went on to direct MGM’s first hit film, The Big Parade, and found continued success with movies such as The Fountainhead and War and Peace.

By 1967, Vidor was finding the new Hollywood a difficult place to make movies and felt that the Taylor murder case was just the project to kick start his career. He spent most of that year investigating the case, but the film project never materialized. Vidor did, however, feel that he had solved the case.

It was known that, on the evening of February 1, 1922, Mabel Normand arrived at Taylor’s bungalow around 6:45 p.m. She had stopped by to pick up a book that Taylor had purchased for her. After a 45 minute visit, Taylor escorted Normand to her car where he told her that he would call her around 9 p.m. to see how she was enjoying the book. Mabel Normand would never see William Desmond Taylor alive again.

King Vidor theorized that, while Taylor was escorting Normand to the car, Charlotte Shelby entered the bungalow through the open front door. He further theorized that Mary Miles Minter had been hiding in the bungalow during the visit between Taylor and Normand.

Mary Miles Minter.

When Shelby found Minter in the bungalow, her suspicions of an affair were confirmed. Shelby hid until Taylor returned to the living room, whereupon she stepped out and shot William Desmond Taylor in the back.

      Vidor’s investigation of the case was chronicled in the 1986 book A Cast of Killers. Although peppered with inaccuracies, the book is an exciting read and an interesting glimpse into old Hollywood. It should also be said that Vidor’s conclusions are by no means the final word on the case.

      More recently, a whole Web site was devoted to William Desmond Taylor. Taylorology focuses not only on the murder case itself, but on the life and career of William Desmond Taylor and related information about Hollywood in the silent movie era. Edited by Bruce Long, the site provides a comprehensive study of this peculiar case.

      A close look at the William Desmond Taylor murder case can certainly send anyone’s head reeling from the intricate web of fact, falsities, and speculation. Amid this confusion can also come a sense of comfort that we are not the first generation to become obsessed with murder, sex, and scandal as played out in the daily news. Real life intrigue has been, and always will be, a tantalizing attraction.

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