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Taylorology Issue 39
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* T A Y L O R O L O G Y *
* A Continuing Exploration of the Life and Death of William Desmond Taylor *
* *
* Issue 39 -- March 1996 Editor: Bruce Long bruce@asu.edu *
* TAYLOROLOGY may be freely distributed *
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CONTENTS OF THIS ISSUE:
Woolwine's Statement Regarding Mary Miles Minter
Wallace Reid, Part II
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What is TAYLOROLOGY?
TAYLOROLOGY is a newsletter focusing on the life and death of William Desmond
Taylor, a top Paramount film director in early Hollywood who was shot to
death on February 1, 1922. His unsolved murder was one of Hollywood's major
scandals. This newsletter will deal with: (a) The facts of Taylor's life;
(b) The facts and rumors of Taylor's murder; (c) The impact of the Taylor
murder on Hollywood and the nation; (d) Taylor's associates and the Hollywood
silent film industry in which Taylor worked. Primary emphasis will be given
toward reprinting, referencing and analyzing source material, and sifting it
for accuracy.
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Woolwine's Statement Regarding Mary Miles Minter
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
April 8, 1922
MOVING PICTURE WORLD
The Official Facts
Misrepresentation ran riot among the newspaper correspondents of Los
Angeles and did not stop at false and wholly preposterous stories about
moving picture people. It extended even to the officers of the law who were
putting forth every effort to solve the mystery surrounding the slaying of
William Desmond Taylor. One of the chief victims of this disregard for
facts was Thomas Lee Woolwine, district attorney of Los Angeles County.
Mr. Woolwine was interviewed without being talked to, his name was
signed to a statement he never made and the statement was sent broadcast to
newspapers throughout the country. When he made his unqualified denial, the
denial was given an inconspicuous publication and, so far as we have been
able to discover, never reached the Eastern Seaboard or the central cities
at all. [1]
We took a trip to California to find out all of the facts, and we
condemn this misrepresentation of Mr. Woolwine precisely as we condemn the
misrepresentation of our own people of the moving pictures.
In a letter to us Mr. Woolwine makes the following significant
statement of the facts. It is vitally important, as it comes from the
public officer in full charge of the investigation of the case:
"In this connection I cannot refrain from observing that in all my
experience as district attorney of Los Angeles County, I have never known
anything to equal the orgy of falsification and exaggeration by certain
sensational newspapers in connection with the murder of William Desmond
Taylor. It became necessary in the investigation of the Taylor murder to
call to the district attorney's office, for the purpose of taking their
statements, many persons who knew the murdered man, in the hope of clearing
up the mystery of his death. A large percentage of those who came to my
office at the request of the officers suddenly found themselves written up
in some of the newspapers in such a way as to convey by innuendo a very
unfavorable impression of them and their relations to the murdered man. One
notable example is that of Miss Mary Miles Minter.
"In all of the investigations by the police authorities, which has been
up to this time most thorough and searching, nothing has been laid before me
that would furnish the slightest indication that she had anything in the
world to do with this crime, or ever had any knowledge directly or
indirectly of its perpetration, or that her acquaintance with Mr. Taylor was
such as to subject her to the slightest criticism.
"Again thanking you for your offer to correct any false impressions
with relation to myself that may have gained ground by reason of the
articles to which I have referred, I am,
"Very cordially yours,
"Thomas Lee Woolwine,
"District Attorney"
[Thanks to Annette D'Agostino for providing this clipping.]
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Wallace Reid, Part II
Below are additional clippings pertaining to Wallace Reid's life and death,
which supplement the biography of Reid reprinted in the issue 38 of
TAYLOROLOGY.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
January 18, 1913
MOTOGRAPHY
Wallace Reid, director of one of the "Flying A" companies, sustained
severe injuries to his left leg when, on horseback, he was giving chase to a
runaway on the boulevard one afternoon recently. His horse fell with the
rider beneath it. Mr. Reid and Miss Lillian Christy, leading woman of the
company, and been at the plaza and were about to return uptown. The two
horses were untied when that of Miss Christy's dashed away. Mr. Reid was
immediately astride his own and giving chase to the runaway. He was in a
wild gallop about a block from the plaza when the animal lost its footing on
the pavement and fell, carrying its rider with it. Mr. Reid's left leg was
pinned beneath his mount and he suffered a severe sprain of the left ankle.
The runaway stopped of its own accord upon overtaking other "Flying A" horses
which it had started to follow. Mr. Reid's injuries did not interfere with
the direction of his company, although he will not be able to wear a shoe on
the injured foot for several days. [This injury continued to bother Reid for
the remainder of his life, and is referred to in the series of articles
written by his wife.]
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
March _, 1919
NEW YORK TELEGRAPH
Nearly every member of the Wallace Reid company was injured in an
accident last Monday [March 2, 1919] in northern California, when a
train caboose, carrying the Reid company of players, jumped the tracks
on a trestle bridge near Arctas and turned over. Wallace Reid
sustained a three-inch scalp wound, which required six stitches to
close. Grace Darmond and others in the company suffered similar cuts
and bruises... [As the statements by his wife later indicated, Reid
was given morphine to ease the pain from this injury.]
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
November 25, 1920
VARIETY
Had Dope For Sale
Los Angeles--Thomas H. Tyner, alias Claude Walton, alias Bennie Walton,
was taken into custody here on a local lot with seven bundles of heroin on
his person, according to the arresting officer. He was arraigned before U.S.
Commissioner Long and held for $1,000 bail for a preliminary examination.
It is said Tyner declared he was delivering the dope to one of the best
known male picture stars on the coast and that it had been the second time he
was engaged to deliver to the same star, whose wife, in the hope of having
him break the habit, informed the authorities.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
May 25, 1921
LOS ANGELES HERALD
Trailing a suspect in a taxicab to the home of a prominent actor in
Hollywood, three officers today took into custody a man giving the name of
Joe Woods, 34, said by them to be a notorious narcotic distributor, and
confiscated $1000 worth of morphine.
Woods was booked at the city jail on a charge of violating the state
poison law and was held on default of $500 bail pending arraignment before
Police Judge George H. Richardson.
Inspectors Fred Borden and Peoples of the state board of pharmacy and
Detective Sergeants O'Brien and Yarrow of the police narcotic squad, nabbed
Woods, according to records at detective headquarters.
Reports received by the state and city officers indicated the suspect
was active in the unlawful distribution of narcotics. They followed him in a
police automobile to Hollywood, they say, and took him into custody in the
pretentious home of the actor while, it is charged, he was attempting to sell
his wares.
According to the police, Woods, who is well known to them as a narcotic
peddler, recently finished serving a term at the county jail after being
found guilty of violating a federal law in the unlawful distribution of
narcotics.
The officers who arrested Woods declined to reveal the name of the
actor. It was explained by them that the actor was neither an addict nor a
distributor, and played no part in the arrest of the suspect.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
September 23, 1921
VARIETY
...It is known the wife of one of the most popular of the younger male
stars has time and again had the peddlers of dope supplying her husband
arrested, but she has been unable to get her husband to break his habit...
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
August 26, 1922
NEW YORK TIMES
Mr. and Mrs. Wallace Reid to Adopt Child
Los Angeles--Mr. and Mrs. Wallace Reid petitioned the Superior Court
today for permission to adopt Betty Mummert, 3 years old, whose parents have
consented to the adoption. Mrs. Reid is known to the screen as Dorothy
Davenport.
[As the following item indicates, it was rumored in Hollywood that this
adopted daughter was in reality Wallace Reid's own daughter.]
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
August 18, 1923
MOVIE WEEKLY
Real Dramas of Hollywood
She heard of her dashing husband's affairs from time to time. She
even indulgently answered his "mash notes" when he was too lazy to write
the letters himself, which he frequently was.
"Here are some more letters from mushy dames!" he would laugh, and
throw the letters into her lap.
But one night came something more serious.
The wife was alone in the house, except for the children, who had
gone to bed. The servants, Japanese, went home at night.
Came a rap on the door, --a timid rap,--and the wife wondered why
the visitor did not ring the bell. But she was no coward, and besides
that timid rap did not come from any burly intruder, she was sure of
that.
She opened the door, and there stood a girl with a baby in her
arms.
It was so like a melodrama that the wife felt a horribly hysterical
desire to laugh when the girl asked for her husband!
"So it has come at last!" she said to herself, still with that
awful clutching at her throat,--the hysterical desire to laugh and weep.
She knew now that she had been expecting something of this sort to
happen.
The girl was crying, and looked so helpless,--so utterly as a
victim of her husband would look, she thought!
The wife asked the girl to come in. The girl, young and very
pretty and modishly dressed after a cheap fashion, brightened and came
in.
She felt no pang of jealousy when she looked at the girl, oddly
enough, she thought to herself even then,--but she felt a terrible,
clutching feeling, half anger, half piercing pity, when she looked at
the baby!
It was all as the wife had expected from the first moment she
looked at the girl. The baby was her husband's! She never thought to
doubt the girl's story. It didn't occur to her until afterward that
this was odd. But the girl was so evidently miserable, heart-broken,
and her claim was made in such frank, genuine, if heart-broken, fashion,
that the wife had to believe her.
"I'm only an extra girl," the girl said hurriedly, after satisfying
herself that her seducer was not at home, and that the wife had only
pity in her heart for her. "I do love my baby so, but my mother died
last week, and there is no one to care for him! Oh, my darling mamma!
She did love my baby so! She was so good to me! Some mothers would
have been cross, but she never was. She was just sorry! All the time,
she was just sorry. And she loved my baby!
"Now--I think you just must--you just must adopt my baby and--"
The wife started back. She had expected a call for money, but not
for this.
"Yes," the girl said firmly. "There isn't any other way. I've
thought it all out. My baby cannot go to a foundling asylum.
I couldn't bear that--nor for anybody but his own father to have him!"
The wife was sunk in thought. The baby was a dear baby.
"I'll kill myself if you don't!" the girl threatened desperately.
"Yes, we'll do it!" the wife suddenly decided.
What mixed motives there were beneath that decision! It was all
generosity on first impulse. Then followed the subtle thought that her
husband could never look at the little one without remembering his
fault! And he should care for it, and pay its bills.
Her husband would not dare refuse, she knew that. For the girl
would certainly make a scandal. The girl promised never to see her baby
again.
As for herself, she had long passed the stage where she could feel
any active resentment against the girl. She was only one of many, she
thought drearily. And the baby was a dear baby!
So the little one found a home.
And the child will never know the difference between its own mother
and this foster one!
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
October 21, 1922
LOS ANGELES EXAMINER
Wallace Reid Seriously Ill in Sanitarium
Wallace Reid is seriously ill.
Waging a valiant battle against a combination of maladies the
debonair, dashing hero of screenland was reported last night as "doing
as well as could be expected."
From his bedside in a sanitarium Dorothy Davenport, actress, in
private life Mrs. Wallace Reid, said in effect:
"Wallace is a very sick man. It is true that his condition is
serious but he is not dying, as was the rumor this afternoon."
Attending physicians and Miss Davenport announced that the
dangerous illness is a combination of a nervous breakdown and an eye
disorder known in cinema circles as "kleig eye."
"Kleig eye," it was explained, is similar to "snow blindness" and
is brought on by long and continued exposure of the eyes to powerful
batteries of calcium lights used in moving pictures.
The stricken screen star, Miss Davenport said, has been in ill
health for several months because of overwork and the eye malady. The
combination proved too much for his physique Wednesday and he suffered a
"complete breakdown."
Reid has appeared in more pictures than any male star in the
studios here, his friends assert, and his eyes, never strong, failed
completely about two weeks ago. For several days he was blind, they
say, but during the last week his eyes grew stronger, but his
nervousness was accentuated.
The climax came when he started to work on the Lasky "lot" a week
ago on a picture known as "Nobody's Money."
He was cast for the lead, but was unable to continue after the
first day or so.
Scenes in which he was not scheduled to appear were "shot" while
the supporting company waited for his recovery.
But yesterday it was announced that Jack Holt had been signed to
play the lead in "Nobody's Money."
Reid requested and obtained a four weeks' vacation from the Lasky
Corporation which ended Wednesday. During that period he camped and
hunted in the mountains in an attempt to stem the onrushing nervous
breakdown.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
December 16, 1922
LOS ANGELES TIMES
Wallace Reid, international screen idol and hero of scores of film
plays, has voluntarily given up the use of narcotics and is now playing
out the most heroic role of his life in a Hollywood sanitarium where his
determined attempt to win out over drugs and whisky have brought him to
so low an ebb of physical resistance that his life is in danger.
Two months ago Reid determined to break himself of the use of
stimulants. Yesterday members of his family talked freely to The Times
with the purpose of quieting the many false rumors which have grown and
spread from coast to coast during the last two years--rumors which have
run the gamut of sensationalism from tales of hopeless addiction to
morphine and heroin to widely spread and unfounded reports that the
Lasky star had reached a stage of partial blindness and equally untrue
tales that his condition had become such that psychopathic treatment had
been found necessary.
The truth of the situation is that Mr. Reid is perilously weak and
suffering from collapse and a high temperature: he is in a sanitarium in
Hollywood under the care of two doctors and constantly under the
surveillance of two male nurses, but his determination to stage a "come-
back" both personally and on the screen is unshaken, and his will power
and cheerfulness are unimpaired.
Wild liquor parties at the Reid home, called "more like a road-
house" by Mrs. Davenport, featured Mr. Reid's slow decline to where he
was forced to rely upon stimulants to carry him through his acting on
the Famous Players-Lasky lot in Hollywood.
The parties, according to Mrs. Davenport, were made up in a large
part of "friends," not even invited by her son-in-law. It is these
persons who are chiefly to blame, she said.
Almost three years ago members of the Reid household first noticed
the change in the star's actions, they declared yesterday. The change
dated from a severe injury sustained by Mr. Reid while he was filming a
picture near San Francisco. A large rock falling from an overhanging
bank struck Reid on the back of the head and knocked him out. Eleven
stitches were taken by physicians in the actor's scalp.
From the date of the accident to Reid's general break-down last
September, his family yesterday traced his decline. Party after party
in which liquor flowed like water marked the path. From whisky the
trail branched to narcotics and ended just two months ago when Mr. Reid
decided to fight it out and win his way back...
From the bedside of her husband, Mrs. Dorothy Davenport Reid went
to the home of a friend and there made a brief statement.
"My husband is a sick, sick boy," Mrs. Reid declared. "I don't
know if he will recover, but he has broken his habit and won his fight.
He made this fight of his own free will and has won it by the strength
of his own mind and will. I know that he will come back...
"I have never been able to learn how much morphine was supplied a
day by the peddlers to poor Wally, but he bought the drug here and also
in the East. He had to have it. Then some time ago he fought his first
battle with the habit and we all thought that he had won, but he was
unable to shake clear and was unable to do so until about two months
ago, when he left the studio, went into the hills and won his fight.
"One week after he returned to us he broke down. Now he is
fighting for his life."...
From Mrs. Davenport, the wife's mother, the story of the plucky
struggle was learned...Mrs. Davenport declared, "For months before Wally
went to the sanitarium he was unable to sleep at night. For hours he
remained awake in bed and always Dorothy, heavy eyed, sat by him and
soothed him like a mother. He seemed to depend upon her and she did not
fail him. He would awaken her in the early morning hours and she would
stroke his hair and croon him to sleep.
"Dorothy fought and lost, and then kept on fighting and won. The
big struggle is over. Now we must nurse Wallace back to health."
The future for the film star, according to friends and others
employed in the Famous Players-Lasky studio is uncertain. It is said
that he is expected to be back at work the second week in January.
Nothing has been officially given out concerning Mr. Reid except that he
has been ill from "overwork and a bad case of Klieg eyes."...
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
December 17, 1922
LOS ANGELES TIMES
...[Will] Hays attempted during the course of the afternoon to get
into communication with Jesse Laksy, who finally telephoned him at his
Ambassador suite and declared that he would refuse to issue any
statement regarding Mr. Reid.
Mr. Lasky reminded Mr. Hays that last June he had detailed a
physician and a nurse to attend Mr. Reid and watch him constantly,
everywhere he went from the cellar to the bathroom. This was at the
time of Mr. Reid's first breakdown...
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
December 19, 1922
NEW YORK TIMES
Los Angeles--...In an interview in the Los Angeles Examiner, Mrs.
Reid told just how near death her husband had been.
"He thought he would die the other night," she said. "He was so
brave about it, poor boy. For three nights he had expected to die. He
isn't afraid to die, but he wants so much to live for Billy and Betty
and me," referring to their son and adopted daughter.
Mrs. Reid, in describing his condition just before the present
breakdown, said that he wept and said:
"How did I happen to let myself go? Why couldn't I have stopped
long ago? I thought I was so strong; I thought I knew myself so well;
I can't understand it."
In an interview given to The Examiner at a Hollywood sanitarium,
one of Reid's physicians said:
"Mr. Reid has been near death for the last five or six days. His
temperature has repeatedly reached 103 and his pulse 130. His heart
action is irregular and weak. He has fainted on an average of three
times daily and has lost seventy pounds. Laboratory finds at the
present time indicate he is suffering either from a condition of
complete exhaustion or from influenza. A re-infection of influenza is
possible at any time and could cause his death. This is not anticipated
by attending physicians, but must be and is being considered.
"His present illness has no connection with overindulgences in
alcohol or narcotics, although such indulgences have undoubtedly
undermined his strength and system in months gone by."
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
December 24, 1922
Harry Carr
LOS ANGELES TIMES
...Some months ago there was formed an organization called the
"Federated Arts," which was made up of directors, camera men, scenario
writers, electricians, etc. The stated purpose was to boycott any
picture stars who were not conducting themselves in a manner to bring
credit to the industry. Everybody understood that it was directed at
Wally Reid and two or three other stars.
A delegation went to Lasky and asked him to remove Wally Reid from
the films--at least, until he cured himself of the dope habit.
According to the story told by the survivors, Mr. Lasky promised to
investigate, but did nothing. The truth is that Reid presented himself
at "the front office" with heated denials, threats and demands for an
investigation. He offered to allow physicians to examine him, etc. So
the affair came to nothing.
After that, an informal scheme was proposed by some of Wally's
friends to forcibly kidnap him and take him to some hospital for
treatment. This also fell through. The remnants of the Federated Arts
have burned with the rebuff ever since...
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Wallace Reid's Struggle Against Drug Addiction
December 18-21, 1922
William Parker
LOS ANGELES HERALD
Part 1
Mrs. Wallace Reid, wife of the famous film star, told today for the
first time her struggle to save her husband from the grip of the downward
pull.
Mrs. Reid, too, in an exclusive interview granted The Evening Herald and
the Cosmopolitan News Service revealed her husband's plan to make public his
battle against the modern dragons, dope and booze--that he might save others.
She took the interviewer back behind the scenes of her life and related
how Reid's personality won her love; how she had put aside her own screen
career to make his home life happy; how, when she saw him going down toward
the depths she stood by him as a wife and mother in his battle for self
preservation.
"I am opening the book of Wallace Reid's life so that the public will
read and know the truth," said Mrs. Reid.
"My husband is battling as a man has never battled before. He has
traversed the 'land of darkness and the shadow of death.' The horrors of the
hell he has gone through would long ago have broken the heart of an ordinary
man. But I know as surely as I know there is a God he will win out.
"How do I know?"
"This is my answer. I did not care for Wallace Reid when I first knew
him. He proposed marriage to me. I replied curtly, 'I am not going to marry
you or anyone.'
"He went to my mother--he always called her affectionately, 'Mother.'
He said to her, 'Mother, I'll make her care for me if it kills me. I've
never been licked yet--and I'm not licked now.'
"He said the same thing just recently, this time under not romantic but
dramatic circumstances. He fully realized, poignantly, desperately that he
had come to the turn in the road in his life. He reiterated his
determination in the sanitarium where he now lies critically ill.
"Some whisky was given him in medicine. Wan, weary and so weak he would
faint from exertion when his pillow was turned under his head, he roused
himself to protest. In almost a passion of range he demanded to know what
was in the medicine. Someone replied, 'Scotch whisky."
"'What are you trying to do?' he exclaimed. 'Do you want me to get
started again?'
"Then, nerving himself for a final effort, he clenched his teeth and
said grimly, 'I'll beat it. I've never been licked yet--and I'm not licked
now.'
"No matter what the public hears, no matter what it reads I want it to
keep before it the Wally Reid I know, a man of heroic determination, a man
who one day suddenly recognized his foe, met it face to face, clenched his
teeth and declared, 'We will fight it out now--till one of us is dead.'
"In telling you the story I am relating what he had hoped to do. He
knew of the rumors which had spread like wildfire to all parts of the
country. It was his plan, as soon as he gained strength, to invite a
representative of every Los Angeles newspaper to come to him and hear the
true story, the truth of his slavery.
"He recognized impersonally--as I do--that by reason of his prominence
such a story from him would serve to bring forcibly before the people the
dangers of the drug evil.
"He felt that through such a story he would be able to prompt his
thousands of screen 'fans' to use their vote and moral and financial
influence in behalf of any campaign being waged against the traffic in drugs
and liquor.
"The premature publication of his condition forestalled his plan. Now
it has fallen to me to tell the truth. And I want to tell it. I want to
tell it more as a mother than as a wife. I want to tell it with all the
compassion and tender affection for the one who has always been in my heart
and thoughts, 'My boy.'
"Let me go back first to a brighter day than this. Gray clouds have
been hanging over the Hollywood hills the past week and they have seemed to
me symbolic of the same gray clouds which have been hanging over our lives.
But there was a brighter day, a day when love was young in the springtime of
our lives. And there must be a bright day ahead for us in our life tomorrow.
"The rise of Wally Reid from histrionic obscurity to the foremost place
in film fame was associated with screen names which will come back to you
when I mention them.
"It was back in 1911 I first met Wally Reid. I was then working for the
Universal Film Co. While the pictures were restricted to one reel, 'Dorothy
Davenport' was a star. I am, as many of the fans know, a niece of the famous
Fanny Davenport.
"Wally Reid had come to the coast with the late Otis 'Daddy' Turner--
'The Governor' he was called. Wally as assistant director, scenario writer
and general utility man.
"My director, Milton Fahrney, was ready to make a one-reel picture
entitled 'His Son,' a western subject. We were without a leading man.
Turner was not ready to start, and Wally, being on the company payroll at $40
a week, was assigned to us as leading man. At that time I was being paid $35
a week.
"When Wally came to us and said he was to play the leading male role, my
impression of him was that he was all hands and feet--and very much
embarrassed.
"My impression when the picture was completed was he was a very poor
actor. When I came home I complained to mother because I had to play with,
as I called him, 'this boy,' when I had been used to playing with such actors
as Harold Lockwood, Henry Walthall, James Kirkwood and Arthur Johnson.
"After 'His Son,' Wally went back to Turner and did several pictures
with Marguerita Fischer, Ella Hall and others.
"The members of our company dressed at what was then known as the
'Universal ranch,' now called the Lasky ranch. Wally did many Indian parts.
He had previously played at the Vitagraph in 'Deer Slayer,' with Florence
Turner, and 'The Indian Romeo,' in casts which included 'Larry' Trimble,
Harry Morey and other people who are totally famous or forgotten. Those were
the days when Norma Talmadge was an extra girl at the Vitagraph studio.
"Wally got his start in pictures when he was employed by the Selig
company as 'stunt' man. Tom Mix was then in charge of the horses for Selig.
"As I was saying, the members of our company made up at the Universal
ranch. Wally used to ride past my dressing room in his Indian regalia.
Mother used to rave over his handsome appearance. It was my almost daily
practice to slam the door when he would appear because I knew that he knew
that he was good looking, and I was not going to let him think that I had
succumbed to his good looks.
"It sounds somewhat childish for me to relate it, but I was only 16
years of age then--and very proud that I was a film star.
"Gradually, I don't know just how or why, we began going together. One
night a week we went to a theater. Wally called this his 'Dorothy night.'
It might appear that he had a girl for every night, but this was not true.
"As we became better acquainted Wally and Eugene Pallette prevailed upon
mother to take them as boarders. Phyllis Gordon, who was playing leads with
the Selig company, also asked to come with us because her health was not the
best and she wanted to sleep on our sleeping porch.
"I had always wanted a pony. It had been the ambition of my life. When
I came West mother bought three horses instead of a pony. Wally and 'Gene
built a corral for the horses and the three of us rode daily to work--rode
all day, working in pictures, and rode home again.
"Gradually I must have fallen in love with Wally, although it was a long
time before I would admit it even to myself. He was so sweet, so thoughtful
one could not help liking him.
"He proposed to me early in 1912 but at that time I did not want to
marry anybody. I told him I cared for him but I did not love him. He had
accepted a place offered him with the American Film company at Santa Barbara
and wanted me to go along as his bride. He saw mother before he left. He
said to her, 'I'll make her care for me. I've never been licked yet--and I'm
not licked now.'
"Wally directed the second company at Santa Barbara, having such players
as Vivian Rich, George Fields, Ed Coxen and others. Betty Schade, now a well
known screen actress, got her start in pictures under the direction of Wally.
She had come to Santa Barbara with a traveling theatrical company and had
never done any picture work. In Santa Barbara Wally lived with Alan Dwan and
Alan's mother. Alan was directing the first company for the 'Flying A.'
"Wally came to Los Angeles occasionally to see me. He wanted me to play
leads and Santa Barbara, but I did not want to break up housekeeping and
besides I was not particularly anxious to be with him.
"We had a quarrel one day. It must have been trivial, for I don't
recall what caused it. Afterward we did not correspond for a long time,
fully six months.
"In 1913 he came back to Los Angeles with Alan Dwan and went to the
Universal company. Wally played leads, Pauline Bush the feminine leading
roles and Marshall "Mickey" Neilan was the director with the company.
"Now here is an odd thing. Wally had returned with the determination to
make me propose to him. It was a little drama in real life. Wally would
come to our house for a social call. The telephone would ring. 'Is Wally
Reid there?' a voice would ask. Wally would go to the 'phone and say
importantly, 'All right, I'll be right over.' I learned later he was having
people call him up just to make me jealous.
"Once he said to me, 'You are going to marry me this fall!'
"'Oh,' I replied, 'I suppose I have nothing to say about it?'
"'No, you haven't,' he said. 'Your mother and I have decided it.'
"A picture in which I was working called for location at Pine Crest, a
scenic spot in California. Wally went to the railroad station with our
company. He picked up a magazine on the cover of which was a picture of a
girl wearing a bridal veil.
"'That's the way you are going to look this fall,' he declared.
"I said nothing. A fatal sign with any woman.
"At Pine Crest I began to develop symptoms of being in love, so mother
has since told me. I would not dance when the others danced, and I spent
much time alone, thinking, thinking.
"Following my return to Los Angeles, Wally said one evening, 'You are
going to marry me Saturday.'
"This time I did not say I would not marry him. I was not through
protesting, however.
"'If it is to be at all it must be on the thirteenth,' I said.
"Thirteen, I have always believed, is my lucky day, because of a series
of three and thirteens in my life. I was born March 13, the third month of
the year and the third day of the week.
"So I became the wife of Wally Reid, Oct. 13, 1913.
"We were married at 6:30 o'clock in the evening at the Church of the
Holy Cross by the Rev. Baker P. Lee. The only persons present besides
ourselves were Ed Brady, Phil Dunham, Ruth Roland, Isidore Bernstein, general
manager for the Universal company, and my mother.
"After the ceremony we went to the home of Mr. Bernstein in Morgan
place. Warren Kerrigan and Charles Worthington and Warren's mother dropped
in.
"Mr. Bernstein proposed a toast to the newly married couple.
"It was drunk with lemonade, for that, and water, was the only liquid
Mr. Bernstein ever had in his home.
"What a terribly place is Sinful Hollywood!
"But there was a more tragic chapter yet to come."
Part 2
Wallace Reid, the famous motion picture actor, contracted the
morphine habit in New York city.
Mrs. Dorothy Davenport Reid, wife of the actor, revealed this as a
fact today in an extended and exclusive interview granted The Evening
Herald and the Cosmopolitan News Service.
Hitherto it had been the public belief, and a conviction which had
spread nation-wide, that the handsome actor had become a narcotic addict
in Hollywood. Each telling of the story had added to its exaggeration
until there existed in the public mind an impression that Hollywood was
nightly the scene of drug revelries and booze debauches, with Wally Reid
a central figure.
It was to correct these inflated statements that Mrs. Reid
consented to make known to the public the details of her husband's
struggle to overcome the drug habit.
"It was not in Hollywood he learned the use of morphine to quiet
his nerves. The first morphine in which he indulged to any extent was
given him in New York," said Mrs. Reid today.
"Wally had gone East to make a picture, 'Peter Ibbetson.' While in
New York he became ill. An expensive cast of players had been employed
to work in the film and he began to worry when it appeared that his
illness was delaying production and adding to the expense.
"Wally has had one virtue which his real friends know has been his
besetting sin--his good nature and his willingness to work. Had Wally
remained in bed until he recovered from his illness, I felt he would not
today be a narcotic addict.
"'Peter Ibbetson' has been classed by critics as perhaps one of the
best acted pictures ever made in America. Fans everywhere have written
and told Wally how excellent was his work. Here was an actor--a servant
of his art--going through the most difficult role of his career in a
physical condition which would have sent an ordinary man to the
hospital.
"It was his grim determination and the good nature which prompted
him on. To nerve him for his daily and arduous task a New York
physician gave him morphine.
"There was laid the foundation for what the world now knows.
"'Peter Ibbetson' was made a year ago last summer. When Wally
returned from the East he was not the same Wally Reid I had known when
he left Hollywood. He seemed to possess a dual nature. To me he had
been always the affectionate suitor. Now there was a change. For no
apparently accountable reason he would become irritable, morose,
strange.
"At first I was deeply puzzled. Before long rumors began to reach
me. A wife, as every one knows, is ofttimes the last to hear the truth
about her husband. I determined this should not be the case in the
Wallace Reid family.
"I went to Wally, 'Tell me,' I said to him. 'Is it true you are
using drugs?'
"He replied, 'Don't believe a word you hear. I am not.'
"Yet I was not convinced. I knew something was wrong and I was
resolved to get at the bottom of it. It must be kept in mind by the
public that the use of any narcotic is responsible for strange actions
by the victim. Your closest friend may be in the grip of the insidious
habit and all unknown to you. Thus I do not think Wally really meant to
lie to me. I think it was more of an effort on his part to deny to
himself the possibility of his ever allowing the drug to gain a definite
foothold.
"I did not allow the matter to rest with his denial. As time wore
on I asked him again. Still he denied the truth.
"All of his life Wally has been intensely restless. I don't
believe he has ever had what would be termed a good night's rest. In
reading he is constantly crossing one leg over the other and shifting
about in his chair.
"This restless condition became accentuated. The realization must
have dawned on him that he had fallen into the pit. He began to drink.
He had never been a steady drinker, his drinking being confined to
social occasions.
"Now, however, he seemed suddenly to have an appetite for whisky.
What was really going on in his consciousness, no doubt, was the
awakening to his danger from the drug. Eventually he confessed to me he
was using morphine.
"Toward the last, just before he left, the studio to recuperate, it
would take only a few drinks to affect him.
"His breakdown came after he had reported back to the studio ready
for work. A condition developed which baffled and is still puzzling
doctors. It first manifested itself as an intestinal disturbance. When
this became aggravated he consulted a physician. He was ordered to a
hospital. Other physicians were called in.
"Every possible test which the doctors knew was given him. Needles
half a dozen inches long were driven into his spine. The pain he
endured was terrible. The Wasserman test was administered. Not a
single test showed a positive result.
"In the midst of all this, influenza set in. His average weight:
200 pounds, Wally's weight now is about 122 pounds."
Part 3
Mrs. Wallace Reid brands as gross exaggeration the reports which
emanated in Eastern Cities that her famous cinema actor-husband has had
any direct connection with a drug ring.
It was the nation-wide dissemination of this rumor which led to the
admission by Mrs. Reid that her husband had contracted the drug habit.
There appeared in correspondence seized in a drug raid in New York city
the initials "W. R."
"There are to my knowledge," said Mrs. Reid in a continuation of
the exclusive interview granted The Evening Herald and the Cosmopolitan
New Service, "two other Wallace Reids of prominence in the East. One
is, I understand, a New York stock broker. the other lives in Chicago.
Mail for the Chicago Wallace Reid has reached my husband, and his mail
has been mixed at times with the Chicago Wallace Reid.
"Understand, of course, that I do not mean to intimate that either
of these Wallace Reids might have been the 'W. R.' referred to in the
correspondence found in New York.
"I am stating this merely to indicate how, when a man is on the
defensive, he is made the target for unjustified attack where there
might be a hundred other 'W. R.'s in the country.
"My husband, as I have stated to you, contracted the morphine habit
in New York city. It was given to him by a physician so he could
continue work in the film production of 'Peter Ibbetson.'
"When Wally returned to Hollywood I noted a change in his whole
manner of life. While previously he had been of a jovial, affectionate
nature, now he began to give way to spells of apparent despondency. A
sense of irritability developed, a phase of character which was foreign
to the real Wally Reid. It must have been that these were the times
when he felt the craving for the drug and was trying to ignore its
insistent demands.
"While he was very secretive about the habit--declining for a long
time even to admit it to me--I learned that his supply of morphine was
coming from New York by mail.
"On one occasion a supply was brought to him in Hollywood by a
person who came from New York. I will not say whether it was a man or
woman, or one in the theatrical profession. I don't feel that I should
do anything to involve others in what is already a deplorable and
unfortunate situation.
"I am being criticized severely by some of our acquaintances for
having talked so much, but I feel that if the public knows the truth it
will not condemn Wally any more than I have condemned him.
"His is not an individual case symptomatic of a community. The
battle Wally is making is the battle that thousands--I might say a
million--of men and women are making. My heart goes out to them in
sympathy. I know the horrors of the hell they must be suffering because
I saw this dread enemy attack my husband.
"If then through telling the truth I can do my part to arouse
public sentiment against this nefarious traffic I am willing to suffer
criticism. I look upon this whole affair as impersonal rather than
personal. Friends, of course, insist on personalizing the misfortunes
which sometimes enter our lives, overlooking in their kindness and
sympathy the moral lesson involved.
"I want to go back several years in the history of picture making
and explain an incident. It proves how easily one can turn to narcotics
in moments of pain--and the tragic aftermath.
"Wally was playing the leading role in 'The Valley of the Giants,'
an adaptation of the novel by Peter B. Kyne. The company was working in
the logging district of northern California. Grace Darmond was cast as
the ingenue.
"A scene in the script called for Wally and Miss Darmond to ride
down an incline in a logging car. While this scene was being taken an
accident occurred.
"An iron block swung toward Wally and Miss Darmond. It appeared
inevitable that Miss Darmond would be injured. Seeing this, Wally threw
himself directly in front of her. The iron block struck him on the
head.
"Wally was painfully injured. To ease his pain morphine was
prescribed by physicians. He was unable to sleep at night. On these
occasions other sleep-producing potions of an apparently harmless nature
were given to him.
"I know he did not at that time become addicted to the use of
morphine, for I was with him hours and days at a time afterward and I
would have known had he himself used a hypodermic needle to inject the
drug.
"The pain he suffered in his head gave him almost continuous
trouble. We had X-ray photographs made of his skull, hoping that if
there was a fracture it could be located and set. The X-ray pictures
indicated nothing wrong.
"All of this time he was working at the studio, unmindful of his
suffering. Gradually his physical condition began to be affected by the
injury. He planned to take a vacation and rest. His has been, as I
have said, a too close application to work.
"When a vacation was granted him between pictures he went to a
dentist to have work done, postponing till a later date the relaxation
he promised himself.
"The dental work accentuated his physical suffering. Work was
started on the picture production of [......] fitted into Wally's mouth
on the raw swollen gums. He worked this way a week while the company
was in San Diego making scenes.
"When the dentist saw the condition of his mouth he could not
understand how Wally had been able to do any work. The pain, the
dentist said, was even greater than that which comes with an aggravated
case of appendicitis.
"It was only a few months ago when my mother learned Wally was
using a drug. She wanted to have him kidnapped and put in a sanitarium
to be cured.
"Wally was almost heart-broken when mother suggested this to him.
"'My God, mother, don't do that. I've never been licked yet--and
I'm not licked now. I'll fight this thing out myself.'
"The first reports of Wally being a drug addict followed the arrest
of a young man who had been a friend of our chauffeur. The details of
that case, and how it apparently involved Wally have never been
published. I want to tell the incident so that the whole truth will be
known."
Part 4
"My first 'close up' view of the activity of drug peddlers was
about two years ago, when there occurred an incident which was the means
of starting unjustifiable rumors about my husband," said Mrs. Wallace
Reid, wife of the famous picture star, in continuing her exclusive
recital to the Cosmopolitan News Service of the events which culminated
in her public statement that her actor-husband was a narcotic addict.
"For some time I had seen a young man coming to our home or Morgan
place, but paid no attention as he appeared to be a chum of our
chauffeur.
"Since the unfortunate incident occurred I have heard it said that
officers reported they had trailed this young man to our home, and that
he was supplying Wally with drugs. This was when Wally was not--to my
knowledge--using anything more than harmless sleep-producing remedies in
order to rest at night.
"One day our chauffeur came to Wally and said this young friend of
his had a number of Parisian magazines which he thought Wally might want
to buy. Wally is, as his friends know, a collector of books.
"We told the chauffeur to have the young man bring the magazines so
we could look them over.
"He came the next day. Wally and I spread the magazines out on the
table. Then, as Wally picked up one copy, a number of tinfoil packages
fell to the floor.
"When the young man became evasive Wally demanded what the packages
contained.
"'Morphine' was the reply.
"'It doesn't interest me,' declared Wally, and he swept the
packages away from him.
"'The young man told us he found the packages of the drug hidden
behind the moulding of a new apartment into which he had just moved.
"'But why did you bring it here?' asked Wally.
"'I didn't know the packages were in the magazines,' he replied.
'I'm desperate for money; I am not working and my wife is going to have
a baby.'
"Here was where, once more, Wally's sympathy got him into an
embarrassing predicament.
"'If you will come to the studio in the morning I will see if I can
get a job for you,' said Wally.
"My surprise came the next day.
"When the young man appeared at the studio he was placed under
arrest by federal officers. The report gained circulation that this
young man was arrested while trying to smuggle to Wally morphine
concealed in rare books. Further, it was rumored that the arrest had
been brought about at my instigation.
"The young man was placed in jail. Wally talked with me about it
and wanted, out of sympathy, to put up the bail money necessary, to free
him from jail so he could return to his wife. Friends, however,
persuaded him not to as it might place him an a guilty light.
"The young man is now employed in a Los Angeles printing house. He was,
I understand, a drug addict but was cured or is taking a cure."
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
December 31, 1922 through January 5, 1923
Dorothy Davenport Reid
SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER
Wife Pens Dramatic Story of Wallace Reid's Drug Ruin
Part One
Dope Curse Traced to Car Injury in 1919
This is to be the intimate, personal story of a brave man's tremendous,
tragic, triumphant fight against the greatest curse of humanity--dope! It is
to be, I hope, at once a vindication and a warning. It is to be the story of
Wally Reid, whom everyone loves and none more than I, his wife.
I say it is a personal story simply because it is, just that. It is not
a story of the laughable "horrible Hollywood" which some persons believe
exists out here in the green hills of California. It is not a story of the
"debased" motion picture industry which some so-called reformers are
doubtless well paid, wrongfully to portray.
The story of Wally Reid is the story of a great personal tragedy--the
story of a personal, isolated case. And I may say with the utmost truth that
I know of no parallel in Hollywood, nor in all the picture industry.
I defy any person to say and prove that pictures, or that Hollywood,
caused Wally Reid to fall victim to the curse of drugs. It simply is not
true. Any such assertion is silly.
I enter into the narration of Wally's story, then, with three objectives
in view:
First, I would like the world, through the great Hearst newspapers, to
know the true, complete, unblemished, hitherto unpublished story of Wally's
monumental battle against the narcotic demon. I will try to picture Wally as
he was before the tentacles of the dragon gripped him; as he was, as he is,
and as I believe he will be--a man all through. Knowing all, I hope you who
read will judge whether he should be pitied or censured, ruthlessly crushed
or manfully helped, knocked down or aided in his struggle to come back.
I have no fear of the verdict.
Second, I hope that some of you will profit by the lesson. I shall not
attempt to write morals into this story; that would be foolish and probably
futile. But should Wally's story keep one boy from the clutches of drugs,
the path of ruin, my work will have been worth the while.
Third, I wish you would believe me when I say from my heart that Wally's
case can by no stretch of the imagination or biased judgment be construed as
typical of Hollywood, of the motion picture colony or of the motion picture
industry. There has been so much printed about the sins of horrible
Hollywood and it is really so funny to us who know the truth. Wally is big
enough, man enough, to shoulder his own burden and to rise from his own
falls. I ask only a minimum of belief, a maximum of reason.
Also may I ask understanding for my reasons in telling the truth about
Wally's condition to the public via the press? It has come to me from
various sources that I, his wife, "should have been the last one to admit
conditions." That is one way to look at it, but remember that, as I write
this, my boy is lying at death's door and I couldn't see him go with the
horrible clouds of rumor, innuendo and gossip hanging over his name, for they
were so far from the truth and made of him a person deserving of scorn and
suspicion instead of, as I know he deserves, only praise and sympathy.
I have only one regret. That is that I and not Wally must reveal these
secrets. If Wally were able, I know in my heart that he would be the first
to tell the truth that people might know, and knowing, judge.
I write of this nervously, within sound of the private telephone that
leads to the sanitarium where Wally is still fighting for his life. Each
shrill peal on that telephone may be a summons to his death-bed. My babies
play in the next room--Billy, my own, and Betty, the youngster we took into
our home some months ago. Their voices come through the door like a muted
symphony of happiness--yet I wait, tense, for that dreaded summons on the
phone.
No man, however learned, is able to say that Wally will live. We may
only hope and trust and pray.
There is a skeleton in every family closet. Ours began to take form in
the spring of 1919, when a freight train caboose jumped the track and hurtled
down a fifteen-foot embankment in the north of California. Let's go back for
a moment and peep into that car.
There they are, in the middle of the smelly old caboose, sitting side by
side on the long leather-padded seat to the right. Wally is in the center,
strumming his guitar and singing lustily. On one side is Speed Hanson with
his inescapable banjo. On the other is Grace Darmond, in a fluffy dress.
They are going into the country of the big trees for location for "The
Valley of the Giants," and the old caboose groans and jerks and sways along
over the narrow-gauge mountain railway. The signal flags rattle in their tin
container. The overalled leg of a switchman dangles from the lookout tower
just inside the open, hanging door. That is the atmosphere, the real life
set.
All of a sudden the caboose swayed perilously. The switchman leaned
from the tower. The car bumped over the ties of a little trestle and then,
with a sickening lurch, careened and toppled into space. It was only a short
fall, as I have said, but the piercing screams of Miss Darmond reached to the
tops of the solemn old pine trees along the right-of-way.
Wally crawled out of the door, dragging Miss Darmond, whose fluffy dress
was drenched with blood. When he reached the open, he collapsed, but his
wonderful stamina came to his aid. With the back of his skull scraped from
the blow of a falling railroad frog and his left arm sliced to the bone by
glass, he still was strong enough to lurch among the other members of the
party, attending to their wounds.
Twelve hours later they reached a town and a doctor and then, for the
first time, Wally's wounds were dressed. Against the advice of the
physicians he went to work next day and the picture was made on schedule.
But from that hour Wallace Reid was never the same. I do not know why;
it is an intangible thing I will try to explain as we go along.
When he came back to Hollywood, in six or seven weeks, he apparently had
fully recovered. His eyes were bright and his health above normal. He had
gained weight.
It was months before I realized that the change in his disposition dated
from that wreck in the lonely mountain wilderness. How, in the light of
later events and developments, I now can see, plainly; can understand how it
began and appreciate how he fell prey to the soothing, deadly sweet promises
of drugs.
There was at that time no screen star more widely loved and admired than
Wally. There was no screen home more happy than ours. There was in all
Hollywood no more perfect husband than Wally. He was--and he is--a clean,
honorable gentleman. You have seen him on the screen--the tall, straight
form and the frank, boyish open face of him. The camera does not lie.
Wally, in his best role as a lover, did not exaggerate the traits he
displayed in his home with his family.
So I was slow to realize the terrible change that came over him as the
weeks merged into months and a year crept perilously near. It was an
insidious change, without definite beginning.
At first it was nervousness. He could not sit still. He fidgeted. He
could not read without rocking so violently that I momentarily expected his
chair to tip over. He lost his healthy, normal appetite. The happy ring
went out of his voice and a pitiful querulous wail replaced it. He was for
all the world like a spoiled child. Nothing suited him. I could not
understand it.
Insomnia came next--and then the family doctor. I remember only too
clearly the night I watched the doctor give Wally his first "shot" to quiet
his nerves and its astonishing effect. The old doctor had been summoned from
his bed and for half an hour had tried to reason Wally into sleepiness. The
argument failed.
I lay in bed and watched with a fascinated horror as the doctor opened
his little black bag and took out a smaller case. The reading light at the
head of Wally's bed glinted from the steel and glass tubes which lay in the
little case in orderly rows. Silently, with a slight frown, the doctor
prepared the "shot."
Part Two
Small 'Parties' Finally Lead to Roman Bacchanal
Yesterday I told you of Wally's introduction to narcotic drugs and of
the insomnia which made their use apparently necessary. Please understand
that in this connection I have not the slightest criticism for the physician.
He did what he believed to be right, and Wally's use of drugs at that time
had nothing to do with his subsequent addiction.
His insomnia was a pitiable thing, all the more distressing to the poor
boy because I could sleep so soundly. My very sleeping seemed to irritate
him. Some of our few quarrels had that ridiculous cause. He seemed to feel
he was abused because I could sleep and he could not. I knew then and I know
now that his irritation was merely from the nervous condition induced by his
insomnia.
Night after night he sat in bed after I had gone to sleep, reading,
reading and smoking incessantly. Sometimes he dozed in the hours before
dawn, but often the rising sun crept into the bedroom windows and found him
wide awake, the reading lamp still burning at the head of his bed, a book
still in his nervous hands.
Occasionally he would awaken me in the small hours of the night as he
stamped about the room getting into his clothes. "Where are you going at
this time of night?" I would ask and he would mutter, "Any place; any old
place; out to get some air." A little later the lights of his car would
flash across the windows and I would hear the roar of the motor as he raced
down the drive into the night. Sometimes he drove furiously for hours.
On other occasions he would get into his shooting clothes long before
daylight, telephone some friend out of bed, take his gun and drive to the
ranch to shoot rabbits at dawn. He would return fresh, apparently rested,
just in time to bathe, change clothes and rush off to the studio for work.
For he was working all of this time, reporting for duty between 9 and 10
o'clock.
During his sleepless nights he complained of lumps which formed at the
base of his skull, on the spot of the wound from the railroad wreck. His
right leg also troubled him and sometimes would be numb all night. It had
been injured years earlier while he was making a picture. As I look back I
can trace this insomnia directly to these accidents.
Unpleasant thoughts and fears crowded his mind. Sometimes he shrank
from some horrible danger he never confided to me. But times without number
he has awakened me and sitting on the edge of my bed, has clasped my hand
nervously and whispered: "Don't leave me alone, mamma. I feel so strange.
I don't want to be left alone." He was just a child and I soothed him as I
would my baby.
Sometimes he pattered downstairs and I would hear him in the dining-room
mixing drinks. He found that very often drinking enabled him to sleep and he
chose whisky as the lessor evil.
But Wally wasn't drinking to excess. Prohibition was still new and
everyone, I suppose, was drinking to some extent. Wally usually had one or
two cocktails befor
e dinner and that was all. Once in a while he would go to
a "party" at the home of mutual friends.
Even during the holidays he drank little. That was partly, I suppose,
because we had entertained the same set of friends at Thanksgiving, Christmas
and New Year's for a number of seasons--people who were living in apartments
or hotels and did not maintain homes. There were about a half dozen.
No, Wally did not drink heavily until the following July, when I took
Billy and went away for a vacation, but before we get to that--
In the spring of 1920 we decided to build, and for three months we
studied plans, rejecting some and adding to others. In June ground was
broken for our new home. We were highly elated. It was to be on a hill in
Hollywood, overlooking all the great sweep of a city--a marvelous site and a
splendid home. Late in June it became very warm and the first of July I took
the youngsters and went to the mountains for a month, leaving Wally at work.
Previously he had renewed a boyhood friendship with a San Francisco man, who
had dropped whatever work he had and came to Hollywood to be with us. Wally
had no business manager then, and this old friend naturally took over the
reins, paying Wally's bills and generally attending to his finances.
After I went away Wally finished "The Charm School" and promptly, with
the aid of this old friend, decided to celebrate. He did. There were
parties at the house two or three times a week. My mother gave a party for
the boys one night, and there were others. They were all comparatively
harmless but after I came home Wally told me about them in a rather shame-
faced sort of way. He was always sorry after he had been drinking too much.
And I want to say right here that Wally had no secrets from me until he
began the use of narcotics. After that I know he did not tell me the truth
on many occasions--but I knew, too, that it wasn't my boy that lied. It was
the drug that ruled him. Afterward, when it all came out, he wept because
this was true.
I came back to find things pretty well muddled up. The boyhood friend
had tried to prevent my return by intercepting messages and telephone calls
and by various means. Shortly after I returned he disappeared, leaving
Wally's affairs in a tangled condition. I tried to find him, but he had
gone. He was one of the "fair weather" friends who bob up sometimes, but now
he is only an incident, an unpleasant memory.
I have never learned whether the chauffeur invited all his friends, or
whether it was the gardener. But they came. I have never on any motion
picture lot, seen so strange an assembly of humanity as gathered in our
drawing room and overflowed into our kitchen that night. It was the most
terrible evening in my recollection. I often wondered whether I would live
to see another day.
Guests began arriving about 8 or 9 o'clock. They were our friends, the
people we knew. Wally's jazz band, in which he alternated with the saxophone
and violin, was in full swing. There were three other boys and one girl in
the organization. And, of course, there was liquor. What Christmas-time
housewarming would be complete without it?
Later in the evening, guests began to come from all directions at
once--people neither Wally nor I had invited. They had been to other
Yuletide affairs, and most of them were already under the influence of
liquor. Several young men became hostile and one or two girls from somewhere
or other were ludicrous.
One of the strangers barely entered the house when he insulted a young
man and the two of the prepared to do mortal combat in our reception hall.
I was terribly embarrassed, because the wife of the young man was talking
with me at the time. But to save the furniture, I was forced to ask the
uninvited guest to leave the house. The young wife, who had not been
drinking, was more embarrassed than I, but she whispered to me that she
understood.
I have chronicled these incidents in the evening in order to make clear
the somewhat amazing conduct of Wally for which I shall not attempt to
apologize.
Part Three
Drug Demon's Debut in Wallace Reid Home Described
Yesterday I told you some of the incidents of our astonishing house
warming.
You must realize that all the evening Wally's jazz band had been tooting
away in one corner of the drawing room with Wally, very much in earnest about
his music, as he is about everything he undertakes, busily directing the
repertoire. I had been busy with the guests.
It must have been 1 or 2 o'clock in the morning when I felt a touch on
my arm and found Wally, hair rumpled and all out of breath from his saxophone
calisthenics, standing at my elbow.
"Do you think everybody's having a good time?" he whispered anxiously.
He seemed very much concerned about it. I assured him I thought the party
was a howling success. "Good," he said mysteriously, and dashed back to his
jazz band.
And at 3 o'clock in the morning, when the last of the guests had gone,
I learned that Wally had taken just two drinks all evening--two drinks. With
a house full of liquor! And that is the Wally Reid the scandal-mongers now
are berating, the Wally Reid whose reputation is being so sadly shattered by
persons anxious to "cast the first stone."
When we went into the kitchen to hunt some cold turkey about 4 o'clock,
his arm was around my shoulders and he had to be assured, over and over again
like a child, that the party had been successful, that everyone had gone away
happy.
My evening was completed at 4:30 when one young man came wandering back
to demand a turkey sandwich. He had peevishly refused to come to the table
when dinner was served and said he was "nearly starved."
That was the beginning of what I shall call the convivial evenings at
our new home. They were always spent in the billiard room. They began with
the five or six old friends who were our regular guests. They would drop in
during the early evening and play billiards until midnight, with occasional
drinks. There would be music.
As time went by, more and more friends began to add themselves to our
evenings at home. Some of them were barely acquaintances. They would come
romping into the house on the way to the beaches, or on the way home, and
would proceed to make themselves very much at home until early in the
evening.
Wally's liquor supply diminished very rapidly during this period. The
strangers among our guests sometimes located the base of supplies and walked
out of the house with whole quarts in their pockets. In effect, our home
became a wayside inn during these months, with no cover charge and everything
free.
Wally would not stop them; he was "hail fellow well met" with them all.
One night in April, at the very coldest part of the year, an unusually
boisterous crowd came in late one night and demanded that Wally go swimming
with them at once. He did. They all found bathing suits and splashed into
our ice-cooled pool. At least it must have been ice-cold. They came out
blue with cold--but the visitors were cold sober. That was one of the few
nights during all these months that Wally slept soundly.
And all this time he was working, taxing his strength day by day in the
studio or on location, playing with his guests until all hours of the night.
I wish that you could understand that his heart wasn't really in any of
this, that he really didn't get any "kick" out of it. He simply had the
open, generous heart of a child. He would offend no one. So when those
friends and acquaintances dropped in, he would not drive them away.
Hospitality was Wally's watchword, and people abused it. This does not, by
any means, apply to his real friends, who have proved to be many in these
hours of trial. It applies only to those few who sought to find real
entertainment free, in our home and the homes of others; for, after all,
Hollywood's night life is so insipid, so tame compared with the night life of
New York. Why do they take such fiendish delight in censuring dear, sleepy
old Hollywood? Why not pick out Broadway or Chicago's loop?
And now I am about to blast another of the scandal-mongers' sweetest
bits of gossip.
They will remember when a young man was arrested with narcotics in his
possession and explained he was "going to see Wally Reid." The explanation
was true but the innuendo was false. Gossips immediately said the young man
was taking the drugs to Wally to "make a delivery," as the saying goes. That
was not true. Wally was not then addicted to the use of drugs.
And so for the first time I am about to reveal this, our first meeting
with a confirmed drug addict, and the mysterious circumstances which
surrounded it.
Wally was fond of French magazines, and that was the excuse for the
meeting. Our chauffeur knew this young man and knew he had a large
collection of such magazines. One night he brought the boy to the house and
Wally bought about $20 worth. He started to look through the bundle and
several little paper-wrapped packages fell out--bindles, I think they are
called by dope peddlers.
"What's the idea?" Wally demanded.
The boy seemed greatly surprised. He professed innocence. But Wally
called him out of the room and they talked privately for quite a while. When
Wally returned he explained:
"He told me a wild story about finding the drugs behind the moulding of
the bathroom at his home and said he brought them here believing that I would
buy them. He had heard stories about drug addicts among the picture people.
He's coming to the studio tomorrow and I'm going to try to get him a job."
So Wally sent the young man away and arranged to meet him at the studio
next morning, promising him work in the pictures. The boy was arrested next
day "going to see Wally Reid."
We investigated the young man and found his wife was expecting a
youngster. They were in financial straits. I helped the wife with the baby
things. Wally was anxious to visit the young man at the jail, but his
friends advised him against it. So the gossips immediately decided the boy's
story was true, and that Wally was afraid to face him, which was absolutely
false.
Part Four
Wally Reid's Confirmed Use of Drugs Revealed
I do not intend to give the young man's name, because I believe he is
trying to go straight. All the time he was in prison he wrote constantly to
Wally, and in one of his letters I remember a line I think was marvelous. He
wrote:
"I have ceased to play first hypodermic in the narcotic orchestra."
When he was released from prison the boy was warned to stay away from
Wally Reid. But he had a wonderfully ingenious mind, and was a spectacular
writer. He continued to write voluminous letters to Wally. Almost every
night, long after we had gone to bed, he would steal up to the front door and
leave a package in the mail box, after which he would run madly down the
hill. The packages contained his brilliant letters. I have often wondered
whether critics saw those midnight visits and jumped to the conclusion the
boy was peddling drugs to Wally.
It is a queer coincidence that, while all the world frowns on "horrible
Hollywood" and whispers of its "orgies," Wally Reid had to go all the way to
New York to become a drug addict.
In the last day of May or the first of June 1921, he was ordered to New
York to make "Forever," the film version of "Peter Ibbetson." It was the
most serious vehicle he had attempted, and he was tremendously, earnestly
enthusiastic as he went away. I wanted to accompany him, and now I wish I
had. But I feared the hot weather would be hard on Billy, our boy, and I
couldn't bear to leave him behind. So Wally went alone.
To understand fully the condition of mind which made Wally a prey to
drugs you must realize that he was a chemist of considerable experience, and
that he always had felt the greatest confidence in his own strength, mental,
moral and physical.
When he went to New York in the summer of 1921, his health was none too
good. He found an apartment downtown and prepared to live quietly and work
earnestly during the filming of "Forever." His friends, it seems, had other
plans, and, as usual, his friends won.
All sorts of people began dropping into his apartment--men and women
from the studios, from the newspapers and from everywhere. It must have been
a perpetual open house. Wally wasn't overjoyed at this state of affairs, but
he was too thorough a gentleman to show his annoyance.
And so elaborate parties were given in Wally's apartment without his
consent. Friends who came back from the East told me they had seen Wally
slip out of the house at the height of the festivities and remain away until
his "guests" had gone.
His rest during this time was necessarily fitful. His insomnia
persisted. And, to add to his troubles, the change in climate brought on a
severe cold, during which, for more than a week, his temperature hovered
around 103. He was very ill.
Foolishly, of course, but because he was very loyal, he insisted upon
working steadily. During this severe cold he was attended by a New York
physician whose name I do not know, but who kept Wally on his feet by
administering drugs. I imagine that Wally, believing his will power stronger
than the insidious ravages of the drugs, bought morphine and administered it
to himself.
Please understand Wally did not desire a "kick." He was not maliciously
drugging himself. He used drugs, then and always, simply to keep on his feet
and to be able to go about his work. Great physicians have done the same
thing.
I do not understand the physical manipulations which make the human body
immune, after a period, against the first small injections of morphine. But
I do know that if the desired false strength is to persist, the "shots" must
be increased steadily in size. The doctors call in "tolerance." And that is
the terrible thing that Wally began to fight in those weeks in New York.
He came home the last of July and appeared in the best of trim. It must
have been two weeks or more before I suspected he was using drugs. Wild
stories came to me--stories which then were going the rounds of Hollywood.
People would ask me:
"Are you sure Wally isn't using drugs?"
Of course I denied it. I had no suspicion at that time. I was
indignant at the very thought.
And then came the flood of queerly-worded telegrams. Some of them
accidentally fell into my hands. They were usually from New York and were
couched in mysterious terms. Most of them contained the word "shipping."
The senders were always "shipping" something. One day I realized that the
shipments were drugs.
"Wally are you using drugs?"
I have never seen emotions flash so swiftly over a man's distorted face.
Trapped fear, doubt, dumb questioning and sorrow--all were written there. He
flew into a childish tantrum of rage. He paced the floor, denying his
addiction, firing questions at me, accusing me of all sorts of things. "You
don't love me any more," he cried. After a while he quieted. But I had seen
the guilt written in his eyes.
I tried to be tender, considerate with him after that. The argument for
me was closed. I never mentioned drugs again until that other night, months
later, when he confessed to me and begged for help in fighting back. It all
came out then.
"I didn't want you to know, mamma," he said. "I thought I was big
enough to fight my own battle and win. I thought I could come back alone,
and you would never have to know."
But that is getting ahead of my story.
I have tried to picture the happy, carefree, boyish Wally Reid of the
old days. Now, in the clutches of drugs, he was a complete metamorphosis of
his former self. He was undergoing agonies of mental suffering. He grew
sullen, dogged, miserable, unhappy. His outlook on life was distorted. He
spoke spitefully of his friends, accusing them of caring for him "only for
what they could get out of him." He appeared to doubt my love. His opinions
were very biased. He suspected everybody of ulterior motives. It was a
nightmare of distrust. And all this time he continued to work.
Yet, during the worst of this terrible time, he harped to his friends
and acquaintances on the drug evil. "Keep off the stuff!" I have heard him
say it time and again. He had never admitted he, himself, had been
conquered, or that he was using drugs. Yet, he seemed to have a horror that
others might fall into the clutches.
He preached long sermons to Bill, our boy--tender, whimsical sermons I
am sure the youngster didn't understand. He seemed his old personality only
when he was with Bill. Time after time I have heard him say:
"Remember this, Bill: Every time daddy does something he shouldn't do,
he must pay for it. Remember son." And I am quite sure the boy didn't have
the slightest idea what it was all about.
He seldom left the house during this time. He lost interest in his
friends. That whole eighteen months, in fact, is only a blur in my memory,
as if a fuzzy curtain had been drawn before my mind.
Yet I remember the night he confessed and asked for help. It had been
such a terrible day; he had been so unreasonable. As usual he was awake far
into the night. I was aroused by the soft touch of his hand on my hair. He
was sitting on the edge of my bed, beside himself with grief. His eyes were
terrible.
I can't remember what he said, all of what he said. I don't want to
remember. I want to forget all that, if I can, and live for the future he
and I sketched that night--the future we would have when he was well again.
We talked until morning and I tried to soothe him, to drive his fears away.
Late in the morning he slept. I can't begin to tell you the happiness I felt
that day. It was like a re-awakening. I felt that our old confidence, our
old mutual affection, had been restored. The servants must have marveled at
my soaring spirits.
I believed at that time, knowing very little, that the drug habit could
be conquered by the power of the will. I knew that Wally was mentally
strong, and I knew that I could infuse into him some of my own strength. It
always has been like that with us; he has relied upon me and I upon him. It
has been a mutual bond, greater than I dare trust myself to write.
I didn't know then, as I know now, that the drug evil grips at the body
of a man as well as at his mind and soul. I didn't know that drugs had steel
fingers to wrench and torture the muscles of the body. Had I known, perhaps
my spirits would have been dampened that morning of our rebeginning.
I have seen it all in the last few months--Wally's brave, uphill fight
against the most damnable scourge of humanity. And if you will bear with me
just a little longer, I will tell you of the agonies he suffered in his
battle for normalcy, of the temptations which came to him, of the time he
collapsed on the drawing room floor and of how, in the last days before this
awful illness came upon him, he was carried up and down the steps of our home
like a little child.
Part Five
Overpowering Mastery of Drug Demon Described
During the winter of 1921 and the spring just past, Wally underwent
tortures surpassing imagination! Day by day, fighting, fighting, holding
himself in check, he cut down the use of the drug, and day by day his
physical agonies increased. To me, Wally's fight was the gamest thing in the
world, the greatest battle I have ever known.
I have watched him grit his teeth at the tortures which wrenched his
body and then, trying to smile, say:
"We're going to lick this thing, mamma. We'll win. I'm going to get
off liquor and everything."
It was pitiful, yes tragic. Yet, more than that, it was heroic,
magnificent. It was the heart-rending effort of a great, fine, brave boy
against an intangible horror that clutched him like an octopus, catching its
tentacles here, there, everywhere. His legs ached intolerably and doctors
have told me it was a certain symptom of abstinence from drugs.
At the studio they always believed that his illnesses were not caused by
narcotics, and have had such confidence in him they have paid him thousands
of dollars in half-salary regularly ever since he has been unable to work.
To clear up all suspicion regarding Wally's condition, a physician was
assigned to stay with him night and day, and to show you how well Wally at
that time had won his fight, I give you the following from the physician's
report which is dated March 24, 1922:
"In accordance with plans made March 16, 1922, I arrived at the home of
Mr. Wallace Reid Friday morning, March 17th. From noon of that day until the
present time, I have been constantly with him, and can state without
reservation that Mr. Reid is not a drug addict. I have slept with him, eaten
with him, been with him on the golf course and everywhere else he has been
throughout the twenty-four hours of these days; and at no time has there been
any indication of the use or need of any habit-forming drugs.
"Mr. Reid was examined by myself for morphine, dionin, codeine, heroin
and peronin by the Kober test and for morphine by the Huesmann test, and
found negative in both cases.
"Once while Mr. Reid was at his bath I carefully inspected his entire
body, finding only a few puncture marks from injections of vaccine which had
been prescribed by the family physician.
"From my knowledge and observation of addicts, I can state that Mr. Reid
has none of the characteristics of one, and I believe that the reports of
certain acts, said to have been committed by him, have been grossly
exaggerated."
So April came and found him winning his fight, day by day, tiny victory
by tiny victory. Then, all at once, his teeth began to ache intolerably. An
X-ray was taken and an operation on his jaw found necessary. He was in the
middle of a picture. For three days he lived in a dentist chair while they
sliced at his mouth. Eating was a horror to him, almost impossible. He came
back from the dentist's on the last day so weak he could hardly walk. Yet
the next day he resumed work.
There was no necessity for it, I suppose. The studio always has been
patient with him, and very kind. He was simply so loyal he would work if he
could walk. And he did. He went to San Diego on location and about that
time I went into vaudeville for a few months.
At that time he had conquered the habit. He was taking nothing at all.
He was tortured day and night by the physical agonies of abstinence, but he
was winning his fight. The agony of the dental operation must have been
responsible for his second lapse.
At any rate, he met me at the station when I came home from the road in
July, and as we were driven home he confessed to me that again he was taking
drugs, and again pledged himself to break away. I knew he would conquer.
I broke a contract which would have taken me to other cities, and for several
weeks played California towns, from which I could motor home to be with him
at night.
He was heart-broken that he had "slipped back." It was all to be done
over again. He plunged into this second fight with the same brave
earnestness, and day by day fought himself clear. But it was such a terrible
price he paid for his freedom!
I came home one night to find the servants fluttering all over the place
and the yellow boy who opened the door was almost white.
"Mistah Reid velly slick man, velly slick," he chattered. I found Wally
unconscious on his bed. One of the boys was working over him. He had
fainted on the drawing room floor, and the servants, fearing he was dead, had
carried him laboriously upstairs to bed. When he recovered he had no
recollection of the events of the early evening and as he lay helpless there
he grinned gamely at me and said, "We're winning, mamma; we're winning.
We'll lick it yet."
Wally always had wanted a baby girl. Playing in Long Beach one night, a
tiny curly-haired youngster strayed into my dressing room. Her clothes were
a sight. Her hands were black with the grime of the theater alley, her
playground. But her face, beneath her tightly curled hair, was sweet and
wistful. I found the old grandfather who cared for her and the next night I
took her home--Betty, who is now our own.
I wish you could have seen Wally's face that night. I carried Betty,
still in her dirty clothes, out of the car and into the house. Some of our
friends were there, but Wally forgot them. For an hour he sat on the floor
with the youngster, and then, oblivious of his guests, took her upstairs and
tucked her into beg. He refused to let the maid touch her. His face was
working with emotion when he came back, but he said very little. I think
that tiny Betty, with her curly hair and her dimpled cheeks, has played her
great big part in Wally's come-back.
The rest of the story may be briefly told.
By the first of September Wally was again abstaining from drugs. It
wasn't easy, as I have tried to make you see. It was a terrible struggle
against physical agony.
Then in September his "week of darkness" came. For several days he had
worked "under the lights" as the studios say. It had been inside work, and
he had gone through his paces hour after hour with the giant Kleigs smashing
their dead-white radiance into his eyes. One morning I heard him pattering
around the bedroom and into the dressing room. Suddenly, he gasped--a quick,
horrible indrawing of the breath. His voice came in a childish wail:
"Mamma, mamma! Come here. Where is the door?"
In the space of a heartbeat, he had gone blind. The studios call it
"Kleig eyes." It is a blackness which follows over-exposure to the glare of
the Kleigs. I helped him back into bed that morning, and later he was
dressed. He was totally helpless. Oculists could not help him. For one
week he was in the dark, seeing nothing, groping his way about the house, his
eyes shielded by smoked glasses.
Drawn into that terrible blankness, Wally was alone with his thoughts.
The agony of his abstinence from drugs abated not one whit. He was like a
child, dependent upon me for everything.
"Mamma," he would call, "please don't leave me; don't leave me alone in
the dark." I stayed with him constantly. I think he must have gone through
hell that week.
Valiantly, with his vision still "fuzzy," he went back to work and
finished the picture, seeing very little of the things around him. A room
was a blur. He had to be directed at each turn--"Right, Wally, feel that
chair?" or "Left, through that door there!" Finally the picture was
finished.
A few days' rest at home did not improve his condition. He decided to
go into the higher mountains for a week. He intended to shoot and play
tennis; he could do neither. He returned at the end of eight days and his
illness was stamped in his face. A dysentery had set in and was undermining
his strength. But night after night I have heard him say:
"No matter what comes now, mamma, thank God, I've bucked the drugs."
His condition worried me. I decided to put him in a sanitarium for two
weeks. Apparently he improved. He wanted to "go somewhere" and we went on
an eight-day motor trip, making easy jumps. His condition grew worse. We
tried every known remedy without effect.
When we returned, he decided he wanted a touch of the desert. We went
to Palm Springs, an oasis on the edge of the great Mojave wilderness of sand.
He seemed to rest there and enjoy himself. After a week he became
discontented and talked constantly about home. So we came back.
In an effort to get him to exercise, I engaged an professional boxer and
athletic trainer who came to the house and lived with Wally. But even that
failed. The trainer rigged up a bicycle arrangement and forced Wally to
exercise, much against his will. Still the dysentery persisted and Wally
grew weaker. Toward the last, the trainer carried him in his arms up and
down the steps and through the gardens at the house.
I suppose I grew panicky. At any rate I took him to a hospital and the
best specialists obtainable poked him and probed him and pierced him with
needles in an effort to diagnose his illness. They failed. The nerve-
racking days in the hospital sapped what little strength he had left, so now
he is back in the sanitarium, making his second magnificent fight with death.
I have told you the truth about Wally, my husband, my boy, because the
bare naked truth is so much better, so much cleaner, than the horrible
stories which for months, and maybe years, have centered about him. I am not
ashamed of anything he has done--sorry, yes. But Wally is not malicious and
he is not "bad." He is a big overgrown boy who made a mistake, and who had
nerve enough, strength enough to realize his error and to set it right. Can
you criticize a man for that?
(The End)
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
January 3, 1923
SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER
...Simultaneously with Barker's appearance before the commissioner in
Oakland word reached here from Los Angeles that State and Federal narcotic
agents had raided the sanitarium of "Dr." C. B. Blessing in that city, which
advertises the "Barker Cure" as its principal attraction.
Correspondence between Barker and Blessing was seized, as well as
records of persons treated in the southern institution.
Prominent in the correspondence was the name of Juanita Hansen, motion
picture actress, to whom reference was made as a former patient in the Barker
sanitarium at Oakland.
...A letter from Barker to Blessing was found in which the Oakland
"reformer" told of the "kick" he had gotten out of seeing Juanita Hansen on
the screen in a motion picture, knowing that "she was then in bed in our
place."
...The entry of the Blessing establishment in regard to Wallace Reid
showed that he entered the southern sanitarium last October 19. His age is
given as 31, birthplace as Missouri, height 6 feet 2 inches, and weight 156
pounds.
Reid's normal weight is 190.
The record stated that Reid's use of drug, at the time of his
admittance, was three to six grains of morphine a day. The record concluded:
"Treatment of morphinism for two weeks and partial withdrawal accomplished.
Reid later entered another sanitarium, where he is recently reported as
improved in health.
[This item would seem to contradict Mrs. Reid's written statement that he had
been abstaining from drugs for at least six weeks prior to his admission to
the sanitarium. And her written statement strongly implies that his
admission to the sanitarium was not for drug addiction, but for dysentery,
which is also contradicted here.]
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
January 19, 1923
Louis Weadock
LOS ANGELES EXAMINER
Screen Idol Succumbs to Drug Curse
Los Angeles, January 18.-- "Wally" Reid has played his last scene.
After a long, hard fight against odds greater than those that he
overcame in the moving pictures in which he starred for eight years, he
died in a Hollywood sanitarium this afternoon, his hand in the hand of
his wife.
The doctor's certificate says he died from congestion of the lungs,
but everybody who knew him knows that the drug habit killed "Wally"
Reid...
During the forty-eight hours preceding his death she [Dorothy
Davenport Reid] did not leave his room in the Banksia Place Sanitarium.
During the last six weeks she had been out of his sight only for a few
minutes at a time, because whenever he awoke from his troubled spells of
sleep his first words always were "Hello, Dot," and his first gesture
was to reach out for her hand.
Until a very few days ago she and Dr. G. S. Herbert, who was his
attending physician, were so confident that Wally had won his fight that
they agreed to the proposal of Jesse L. Lasky, by whom he was employed,
that he begin work in a picture, shooting of which was to begin July 1.
But although he had not touched narcotic drugs for weeks the
ravages which their use had made upon his remarkable constitution were
so great that when a relapse came early today he had no stamina left
with which to pull him through.
Wally was only thirty-one years old...
Only once during his last illness did Wallace Reid exhibit any
interest in religious matters. That was when he asked if he might have
a Christian Scientist practitioner. His wife and her mother, both of
whom are Christian Scientists, assured him that he could, but by this
time he had changed his mind.
Funeral services for him will be held here Saturday. They will be
in charge of the Elks. While the services are in progress every moving
picture studio in the country will be closed as a mark of respect to his
memory. The body will be cremated in accordance with a wish of the
deceased.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
January 21, 1923
Louis Weadock
LOS ANGELES EXAMINER
Los Angeles, Jan. 20--In a bronze urn, which he himself had
designed, there rest tonight the ashes of Wally Reid.
His body was cremated late this afternoon following funeral
services that were attended by more people than have assembled at a
funeral here for a long time. Not only was the First Congregational
Church, which is one of the largest church edifices in the city, packed
to the doors, but in the streets near it the crowds were so large that
the police barred automobiles from those streets for a distance of two
blocks...
In the church during the service were, almost without exception,
all of the men and women whose names are the best known in the world of
moving pictures..."Fatty" Arbuckle...Pola Negri and Charles Chaplin and
Harold Lloyd...Bebe Daniels...Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and Sid
Grauman...a complete list would fill columns.
Drawn and haggard, the widow [Dorothy Davenport Reid] sat with her
mother [Alice Davenport], who, like herself, had been at one time a
celebrated actress and who, like her, had given up her professional
career that she might devote herself to making a home for her husband.
Reid's mother could not cross the continent in time to be present at the
funeral, nor could the Reids' closest friend, Adela Rogers St. Johns,
the writer, who is in British Columbia, Canada, and could not get here
in time...
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NOTES:
[1] See TAYLOROLOGY 8. Woolwine's denial was published in the NEW YORK
HERALD.
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For more information about Taylor, see
WILLIAM DESMOND TAYLOR: A DOSSIER (Scarecrow Press, 1991)
Back issues of Taylorology are available at
gopher://gopher.etext.org:70/11/Zines/Taylorology
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