Movies are the great art-form of the 20th century, but they have changed significantly since inception. The flickering images shown in nickelodeons at the beginning of the last century barely resemble the sweeping pictorials audiences today take for granted. By the 1920s, however, films had reached a viewing standard that bears some resemblance to today's movies. More importantly, their influence on popular culture began attracting the attention – and wrath – of religious social conservatives. It's against this background that William J. Mann sets his gripping Tinseltown: Murder, Morphine, and Madness at the Dawn of Hollywood (Harper, $27.99).
The murder victim, William Desmond Taylor, was a one-time actor, a much admired and successful director, and a closeted gay man with many secrets. He was shot in his Los Angeles home in 1922. His flamboyantly gay valet discovered the body. Taylor was months short of his 50th birthday. His killer was never identified. Among the once-famous names whose relationship with the intensely private Taylor aroused police interest were Silent Screen stars Mabel Normand and the teenaged Mary Miles Mintner, whom many believed would be the next Mary Pickford. Mintner's controlling stage-mother Shelby had often threatened to kill Taylor because of her daughter's obsession with him. She gleefully broke the news of his death to her daughter.
Taylor's murder followed scandals involving stars dying from drug overdoses and engaging in highly publicized sexual revelries. The latter included the San Francisco trial of popular comedian Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, accused of causing the death of a young woman during an orgy at the St. Francis Hotel. Taylor's murder pushed Arbuckle off the front pages of newspapers.
One of those most concerned was Adolph Zukor, head of Famous Players-Lasky, the industry's most important company. Zukor controlled what would eventually become Paramount Studios and its huge chain of theatres, which he filled with movies his company made. He had already realized that if the industry didn't censor itself, each state would do so – the conflicting codes would destroy the business. Hence, he and other pioneers reluctantly agreed to the Motion Picture Production Code. They hired Will Hays, President Warren Harding's Postmaster General and former campaign manager, to run it. It took until the mid-1930s for enforcement to begin, but the American film industry suffered from its restrictions until its demise at the end of the 1960s.
Those arriving first at Taylor's home chose to believe he died of natural causes. They removed letters, personal effects, anything that might embarrass some of his celebrated friends and colleagues. Normand, Mintner, and Taylor's much younger lover, set decorator George James Hopkins, genuinely mourned him. Yet Mintner's feelings for Taylor were complex. Infatuated with him, frustrated by his lack of romantic response, she saw him at the opera with Hopkins and intuitively understood their relationship. She didn't hide her scorn. An anxious, embarrassed Taylor left the performance at intermission. His chauffeur drove him home, alone. Minor actress Margaret "Gibby" Gibson, who often worked as Patricia Palmer, had once been close to Taylor, but he failed to help her get the parts she felt she merited, making him a target of her resentment. Her possible knowledge of his true nature, and her association with sleazy criminals and blackmailers, did not bode well for him.
To Zukor's chagrin, and despite papers removed from Taylor's home, journalists soon reported that he had changed his name, had once been married, had fathered a daughter, and was known to visit "Queer Places," probably male bordellos in Los Angeles. This latest scandal boded ill for the industry.
As for the killer? Normand had been the last to see him alive, or so the police insisted. Not so, she averred – the killer was. But who murdered him?
In short, punchy chapters, Mann explores the investigation, the feelings of all those close to Taylor and those whose involvement with him may have been peripheral but deadly. He superbly recreates the era of bootleg whiskey (Prohibition had begun in 1920), widespread drug use in cities, the emerging sexual emancipation of women, burgeoning gay life that thrived in the anonymity of urban centers following World War I, the often sexually charged movies, and the hysteria of the puritanical "Church Ladies" and their allies who were determined that pictures should promote their standards of propriety.
Mann's conclusion as to who murdered Taylor is logical, convincing, and carefully documented, although by necessity circumstantial. His bibliography and footnotes are compelling.
What happened to the key players? Zukor (1873-1976) saw the system he created dismantled when studios were compelled to sell their theatres. But he also witnessed the end of the Production Code. Normand's chauffeur was involved in another murder, and her popularity declined in the mid-1920s. She died at age 38 in 1930. Minton quit acting in 1923 and died in obscurity in 1984, at 82. "Gibby" Gibson was 70 when she died in 1964, still hoping for stardom that never came. Hopkins (1896-1985) had a very successful career, decorating sets for Casablanca (1942), Mildred Pierce (1945) and Strangers on a Train; winning an Oscar for A Streetcar Named Desire (1951); A Star Is Born (1954), Auntie Mame (1958); collecting a second Oscar for My Fair Lady (1964); Wait Until Dark (1967), Hello, Dolly! (1969), and The Day of the Locust (1975).
Anyone interested in the history of American films, and those fascinated by intelligent investigative reporting, will find Tinseltown difficult to put down.