Murder in Hollywood: Solving a Silent Screen Mystery
Published in the Lambda Book Report,
2005
Murder in Hollywood: Solving a Silent Screen
MysteryCharles
HighamTerrace Books, University of Wisconsin
PressISBN:
0-299-20360-3Cloth$24.95227
pagesThe
murder of silent film director William Desmond Taylor is not
commonknowledge to most people today, but to
devotees of unsolved crimes, it islegend.
Charles Higham's "Murder in Hollywood," not the first book
aboutTaylor's murder in February 1922, takes a
new look at the cast ofcharacters involved in
the bisexual director's life, and
death.Charles Higham, a Hollywood
biographer, is not the first to take a crackat
solving the mystery. Silent film director King Vidor tinkered with
theidea of making amovie about it back in the
1960s. In 1986, SidneyKirkpatrick's "A Cast of
Killers," wrote the "true story" of this
murderwhile doing research for a biography of
Vidor, who set aside his owninvestigation
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 bynow, 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 thattook place
immediately following the discovery of Taylor's corpse by
hishouseman, Henry Peavy. First, personnel
from Taylor's movie studio arrivedto remove
anything that might incriminate anyone in its employ in any
way.Neighbors and strangers arrived before
police could dust for fingerprintsand
photograph the scene, standard procedure even in 1922. And worst
ofall, a corrupt district attorney was dating
Charlotte Shelby, the motherof 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
setinspired 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 stridesin 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 toan 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
investigationHigham 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: Thu - March 23, 2006 at 01:58 AM
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Published On: Jun 20, 2009 07:04 PM
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