An unsolved mystery….                the murder of                          William Desmond Taylor

On February 1^st, 1922 Hollywood was still reeling over the Fatty Arbuckle/Virginia Rappe  scandal and awaiting a verdict in the murder case being tried in San Francisco. But a new scandal was on the horizon. Before the day was over, in the quiet L.A. community of Westlake, the new head of the Motion Picture Director’s Association William Desmond Taylor was shot to death in his bungalow studio.

 Taylor’s bungalow at 404 ½ S. Alvarado Street was part of a duplex with actress Edna Purviance next door at 404. Edna was Charlie Chaplin’s leading lady on screen and off for a number of years. On the other side, separated by an 8’ alley leading to the street, was 406, the bungalow of actor Douglas MacLean and his wife. 

Edna Purviance

Douglas MacLean

The director’s body was discovered the next morning by his valet, Henry Peavey, who woke up neighbors by running into the street screaming. Edna Purviance heard him and immediately called actress Mabel Normand, a  very close friend of the director. Mabel called Charles Eyton, general manager of Famous Players-Lasky (a subsidiary of Paramount Pictures where Taylor was chief director). But the telephone round-robin didn’t stop there. Eyton called Paramount head-honcho Adolph Zukor. Back at the bungalow, Edna telephoned Mary Miles Minter, another Taylor very close friend, but Mary wasn’t home. So Edna passed the message on to Mary’s mother, Charlotte Shelby who was definitely not a friend of the dead man.

           But not one of them called the police!

Adolph Zukor

By the time the police arrived, the crime scene was a disaster. The bungalow had been tramped over and ransacked.  A Paramount employee was conveniently using the fireplace to burn a lot of Taylor’s papers. Charles Eyton reportedly removed several personal items from the bedroom upstairs and left carrying “an armful” of papers. Mabel Normand just happened to drop by and was searching room to room, drawer by drawer for letters she had sent to the director (they were found later secreted in one of his riding boots along with a pink nighty and a lace hanky both monogrammed “MMM”). Adolph Zukor busied himself ridding the place of illegal liquor and, hopefully any suggestive photos or literature. 

The dead man was laying on his back, arms outstretched and an overturned chair was across his legs. Robbery was not an obvious motive because Taylor was still wearing his large “lucky” diamond ring and a small amount of cash was found in his pockets ($78.20). However, later it was discovered that $5000 known to be in the house earlier had disappeared.

 Someone claiming to be a doctor, pronounced the corpse “dead from natural causes” and then left without being identified. Then two hours after the police arrived, a curious detective rolled the body over to discover a pool of blood. William Desmond Taylor had been shot in the back with a .38 caliber bullet and any evidence that could lead police to his assailant had probably been already destroyed!                  

Mabel Normand

Mary Miles Minter

Rounding up the usual suspects….

. Both Mabel Normand and Mary Miles Minter admitted to being at the Taylor bungalow the night of the murder. Mabel was the last to leave and the director gave her a book of Freud to take with her. The neighbor Faith Cole MacLean watched Mabel leave from her window then, hearing what may have been a gunshot, she returned to the window. She saw “a man walking funny” exiting the Taylor bungalow and walking down the alley to the street. Mrs. MacLean later agreed with police that it could have been a woman dressed like a man.  

Charlotte Shelby

. Charlotte Shelby, Mary’s mother, owned a pearl-handled .38 revolver. She was distraught over Mary’s involvement with Taylor, a man 30 years her senior. Her daughter was also the moneymaker in the family. But Charlotte, who was also a friend of the district attorney, was one suspect that flew the coop. She sailed to Europe before she could be questioned.

Henry Peavey

. Henry Peavey, Taylor’s latest valet, had recently been arrested for soliciting young boys and his boss bailed him out. Taylor was supposed to testify in his defense the day after the murder.

 
. “Sands”, Taylor’s former valet/chauffeur is a mysterious element. One source claims he was a British cockney named Edward Fitzgerald Snyder, a convicted embezzler-forger who did his “artwork” on a few of Taylor’s checks and wrecked the car before disappearing. Another source, also considered very reliable, claims it was really Taylor’s wayward brother Denis, on the lam from the police for the same kind of nefarious crimes.

Ella Margaret Gibson

Ella Margaret Gibson who used the screen name Patricia Palmer at Paramount, was never a suspect at the time of the murder and there was no evidence she was ever in the Taylor bungalow. But, after converting to Catholicism, she made a deathbed confession to killing Taylor in 1964. An investigation of her life for that period led many to believe her. Did Ella Margaret Gibson commit the perfect crime?

But the murder investigation, as flawed as it was, revealed more about the victim than it did about the crime. 

Taylor in uniform

According to the studio bio Taylor was raised in Kansas, mined in the Klondike, and earned medals for heroism at Dunkirk while in the Canadian Army.

 Actually it seems that the renowned director, known around the world as William Desmond Taylor, was no other than wife-deserter William Cunningham Dean-Tanner, a New York antique shop owner. Born in Carlow and raised in Dublin, Ireland, he was the third child of a British Army major. William failed the exam to get into the army himself and later turned up in New York where he married Ethel May Harrison, daughter of a Wall Street financier in 1902. They had a daughter Daisy in 1904.  But one day he went out to lunch and never came back. Ethel, who loved movies, caught one of his at a New York theater and tracked him down in Hollywood, daughter in tow. Caught red-handed, he agreed to pay their expenses as long as she kept the whole affair quiet. 

 He did join the Canadian Army when he was 41 but never saw action.  However, it made for a good picture.

 Strangely, when Taylor was murdered it was Ethel and Daisy who made all the funeral and burial arrangements . It was one of the most impressive and expensive wakes in the Los Angeles of that era.

  But it is his real name on the tomb...William Cunningham Dean-Tanner!