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Taylorology Issue 23
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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 23 -- November 1994 Editor: Bruce Long bruce@asu.edu *
* TAYLOROLOGY may be freely distributed *
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CONTENTS OF THIS ISSUE:
"The Colorful and Romantic Story of Wm. D. Taylor's Remarkable Life"
Wallace Smith: February 21, 1922
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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. Primary emphasis will be given toward
reprinting, referencing and analyzing source material, and sifting it for
accuracy.
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A new book, "Dateline Hollywood: Sins and Scandals of Yesterday and Today,"
has been just been published by Friedman/Fairfax, written by Mark Drop.
It includes a short recap of the Taylor case that is woefully error-filled
(the author even misspells "Shelby" as "Selby" throughout). The author
appears to be totally unaware of the books by Kirkpatrick, Giroux and Long,
published within the last decade. The section on the Taylor case is
worthless.
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"The Colorful and Romantic Story of Wm. D. Taylor's Remarkable Life"
In the immediate aftermath of the Taylor murder, MOVIE WEEKLY
commissioned Hollywood writer Truman B. Handy to write a biography of
Taylor's life, which was serialized over five issues of the magazine. The
articles were based on some fragments of biographical material which had
appeared in the newspapers following Taylor's murder. Handy's imagination
filled in the rest. The result is padded, highly fanciful and of limited
value, containing many errors and transposed events. [1] (For more
substantial information on Taylor's pre-Hollywood years, see A DEED OF DEATH;
for information on his Hollywood years, see WILLIAM DESMOND TAYLOR: A
DOSSIER.)
But Handy's flawed series of articles--a "biography" without any dates--
was still the most substantial biography of Taylor published in the first half
of this century, and presently it is rather difficult to obtain copies. Thus
it is reprinted below.
March 18/April 15, 1922
Truman B. Handy
MOVIE WEEKLY
The Colorful and Romantic Story of Wm. D. Taylor's Remarkable Life
Part I
One of the most colorful, romantic careers in the motion picture
colony--a life as redolent with "atmosphere," brilliance and adventure as
that of any novelistic hero--was cut short when an assassin's bullet ended
the life of William Desmond Taylor, the director.
Irish student, actor, engineer, Kansas ranchman, Klondike miner, art
store proprietor, sportsman, director of photoplays and soldier in the World
War was he.
He dared the deepest, fullest experiences of life. Profound in its
searchings, broad and sweeping in its range, courageous in its intimate
contacts, his life history recounts the free, glorious adventures of a
crusader in quest of an ideal--romance.
And yet, while Taylor lived, he remained a grey man who subdued the
brilliant color of his career into the most somber of hues. He was not a so-
called man of mystery, yet even his friends cannot remember having heard him
sing of the glories of the past.
For he lived quietly, without affectation; steeped in the study of
books; engrossed in the art of his work at the film studio. His desire to
bury the dim shadows of his early life seemed paramount.
He had even changed his name. And, taking no one into his fullest
confidence, he lived in semi-reclusion.
Yet he stands as romantic a character as either D'Artagnan or Napoleon,
although when he lived he was a second John Ferguson--a man of dignity,
integrity and careful self-repression.
Even Taylor's childhood was surrounded with romance, although at such a
time he was not known as Taylor. It was a pseudonym that he adopted some
years later--his stage name. He was born a Deane-Tanner.
The Deane-Tanner family is famous in Ireland. And, over it the hand of
Fate seems to have hung heavily for generations. Records show that tragedy,
violence, mystery followed the Deane-Tanners with peculiar uncanniness and
marked each of the sons indelibly.
The Los Angeles director--murdered in his bachelor apartment--was the
son of Major William Deane-Tanner, of County Cork. In the father there was
the same gallantry, the same desire for adventure that epitomized the life of
the son. He was a constant, strong opponent of Irish home-rule--an old-line
aristocrat--and many were the speeches he made from Unionist platforms.
Yet, while his father was an aristocrat, Taylor--or William Cunningham
Deane-Tanner, as he was then known--was temperamentally a democrat.
As a child he was severely reprimanded by his father once for advocating
democracy among the employees of Maj. Tanner's estate at Mallow, and when the
stern parent once imposed a hardship upon young William's personal groom the
youth surprised his family by announcing that hereafter he would attend to
the full care of his horse himself.
Family tradition decreed that William would study either medicine or law
or engineering. The youth, on the other hand, secretly rebelled. Once he
threatened to join a company of strolling players. His father's influence was
brought to bear, however, and he was returned to school.
Again, when Maj. Tanner discovered that his son was sponsoring an
amateur theatrical "repertoire" company which comprised a group of Mallow's
humble peasantry, he threatened to disinherit William if such unwonted
actions were continued.
Then, for the first time, young Deane-Tanner tried to enlist in the
British Army. He was not exactly robust, however. The surgeons returned him
to his home and told him he had a bad heart, and he secretly rebelled again
and determined to live his own life as he chose.
For some months thereafter he lived separate from his family in a small
caretaker's house on the Tanner estate where he alternately studied and wrote
and completed a play which, however, never saw the light of production.
It is traditional for sons of upper-class England to be educated at the
classical colleges, therefore the lad was sent to Clifton College for
preparatory work in engineering.
"But I don't wish to be an engineer!" he kept protesting. "I would
rather--"
He was never allowed to utter the word. It galled his family to think
that he should look forward to the stage as a career. His mother was afraid
he would marry an actress; his father revolted at the thought that anyone of
his heritage should wear grease paint and crepe hair.
In accordance with the utmost wishes of his parents William enrolled in
college--but not under the family name.
"I have changed my name," he wrote his mother, "because I do not wish to
be shown any favoritism on account of my family. I want to rely on myself--my
own exploits--the same as any other man who does not happen to be backed by
family."
It was then that he assumed the name of William Desmond Taylor. And,
strange to say, the family did not register objections, recognizing for the
first time this manifestation of his indomitable spirit.
At college Taylor conducted himself very much after the fashion of Tom
Brown at Oxford. During his first year he was a "fag" for a coterie of the
older students, to whose whims he catered faithfully. [2] His second year,
however, showed him to be a champion of his under-classmates, and his
democratic utterances on various occasions caused a sensation in the school.
"I hate this life," he wrote to his family. "It is one of prudery--silly
snobbery and mawkish sophistry."
Even the rigid routine of Clifton failed to kill his ambitions for
theatricals. He became acquainted with various actors. Their life appealed to
him. Not being a rampant idealist he did not particularly believe in the so-
called "romance" of the theatre, for to him it was a business-like venture in
which he found himself tremendously interested.
Between his courses at Clifton he sojourned on the Continent. For a time
he was a resident of the student quarter of Paris, the life of which,
however, did not particularly appeal to him.
"I am not a good Bohemian," Mr. Taylor reminisced, one evening shortly
before his death, "I'm too practical."
And to change his venue, he crossed the border into Germany, wandered
for a time through the Teuton cities of Munich, Leipzig and Berlin--and
finally settled himself for a term in Heidelberg with his studies.
Shortly after his eighteenth birthday he was again in Manchester,
working on an engineering project. Maj. Tanner, his father, urged him to join
the engineering forces of His Majesty's army. And again came the examiners'
report that, physically, he was unfit.
To please his family and to satisfy himself that he could master a
vocation even though it were unpleasant for him, the young Taylor continued
engineering. One evening, at a supper party, an actor friend of his suggested
that Taylor accompany him to a performance of "The Private Secretary," a
popular stage success in which the English star, Sir Charles Hawtrey, was en
tour.
Between the acts, his friend took Taylor back stage. It was his first
time "in the wings" of a really first-rate company. He was interested in
everything he saw, and finally, when he was presented to Sir Charles, he
asked for employment in the company.
He was inexperienced, vastly verdant, in the ways of the theatre. Yet he
had the appearance and mannerisms of a born actor. Hawtrey subjected him to a
somewhat critical test and made him read lines from a play he had never seen
before.
When he had finished, however, the star complimented him--and agreed to
take him to London with the company. After a series of arduous rehearsals,
Taylor finally stepped onto the stage of the Avenue Theatre in his makeup. He
played two parts. In the first act he was an old man and wore a heavy, grey
beard. During the second act, however, he had a romantic, juvenile role--
a mere bit.
This London engagement was almost a success. It would have been if
Taylor had not relinquished his first act beard. After the performance one
night visitors to his dressing room were announced--friends of his family. He
had qualms, for he realized what their discovery meant.
He entertained them. They promised to say nothing to his father about
his stage appearance. In another week, however, Maj. Tanner himself arrived
at the theatre, violently angry. When he asked for his son, William
Cunningham Deane-Tanner--a member of the company--the door-keeper shook his
head and refused him admittance because, he said, there was no such actor in
the cast.
"But he's my son!" roared the irate parent, "and you'll let me see him
or I'll have the King's army blow this place to pieces!"
A merry scene took place, with the doorkeeper holding the stage entrance
reverently. For once in his life Maj. Tanner found himself successfully
opposed. Presently the stage door opened and Taylor emerged.
Part II
For a week Taylor entertained his father with the lore of the theatre;
had him meet a number of the leading actors in London at that time--and
conclusively proved that he was neither already married to an actress nor had
any intention of being married to anyone "in the profession."
Admittedly, Maj. Tanner liked the life behind the scenes. He even went
so far as to say that he could understand how his son happened to like it.
Yet, in the next breath, he begged William to leave the footlights, to return
to the quiet, paternal acres near Mallow--to "settle down and make a man of
himself."
The young actor did not wish to oppose his father when he saw that there
were tears in the elder man's eyes, but at the same time, his fascination for
the stage had grown into a love for it.
It was the turning point of his career.
He begged his father's indulgence for the time being--until Hawtrey, at
least, could rehearse another man in his part, but Maj. Tanner remained
obdurate--parentally unreasonable--and spoke glowingly about the family honor
and all that.
Such talk failed to convince Taylor, and he spoke of going on tour with
the Hawtrey company.
"Leave the stage--for your mother's sake," at length pleaded the father.
"Since she heard the news that you are playing in the theatre she is
heartbroken. She can think of nothing else, and the worry is injuring her
health."
This reference to his mother moved the young actor where other arguments
had failed. With sadness in his heart he handed in his resignation to Hawtrey
and departed from London with his father.
The quietude of the old peat-bogs, the lazy, unprogressive life of the
Mallow citizenry palled on Taylor soon after he returned to the homestead
estate. He became restless and hinted that he was going to depart again for
distant parts.
There was constant fear in the hearts of the Deane-Tanners that their
scion would again play on the hated stage. Letters to Taylor from Hawtrey and
other actors confirmed their suspicions that his theatrical desires were by
no means dead.
News had reached England that a colony for remittance men--the
impecunious sons of leading families--had been successfully established in
American at Harper, Kansas. Maj. Tanner invested in acreage there, and
offered it to his son.
There was a reason, however, why young Taylor did not then want to leave
Mallow for America. It was unexpressed by him at that time--but when his
father discovered it he became all the more determined that his son should do
nothing unconventional to blot the family escutcheon.
As far as the father of William D. Taylor was concerned, everything
stood in readiness for the departure of his son from the Deane-Tanner
homestead at Mallow, Ireland, to America and the remittance-men's colony at
Harper, Kansas.
But Major Deane-Tanner had not reckoned with the will and desires of the
son who had so singularly "disgraced" his family by wanting to act on the
stage, nor had he considered that, possibly, Taylor might be in love.
It was, therefore, a considerable surprise to the stoic army officer
when his son refused to accept evacuation orders from him.
In those days, as in the later hours of his life, Taylor customarily
gave his confidence to no one. During the time that he lived separate from
his family in his caretaker's hut he saw little of his relatives during his
reculsion from them. However, it did not necessarily mean that he completely
isolated himself entirely from the rest of the world, nor that he would
prohibit himself the society of the gentler sex.
On the other hand, he turned romantic eyes in the direction of one of
Mallow's "younger set," the daughter of a family of townspeople whose
obscurity naturally precluded the possibility of their association with the
aristocratic members of the Deane-Tanner clan.
For generations old-time feudal spirit reigned in the hearts of the
Deane-Tanners. In fact, some of Taylor's uncles had been known to have fought
heroically for the hand and honor of some fair maiden, and, while Taylor
belonged to a later and more modern generation, he was none the less
chivalrous.
When he returned to Mallow from his short sojourn on the stage with
Hawtrey there was naturally a certain amount of discussion anent his
"adventure" rampant among the townspeople, and several feminine hearts
commenced to beat faster, and various traps were set to ensnare the
attentions of the handsome young actor.
On a pilgrimage into town there occurred the meeting that was destined
to leave its deep impress on young Taylor's heart. Its circumstances were
quite unconvential--yet quite as harmless as other circumstances of his life.
And they proved conclusively that Sir Walter Raleigh's w.k. gallantry toward
the fair Elizabeth was none the more gallant than Taylor's exploit with a
humble village girl.
One lazy afternoon, when the sun hung warm over Ireland and the odor of
the peat bogs filled the air, Taylor set out from his hut for a walk into
town. He had been at work on his play, and, as is frequently the case with
authors, had come to a stumbling-block in the construction of its plot. His
heroine was in danger! Her hero knew it and had started to help her--but
Taylor, the author, could think of no way in which to get the young woman out
of the difficulty, and his mind was reaching into practically every possible
cavern of thought. He was in a brown study, a mental complex, and his steps
toward town were mechanical, absent-minded.
Suddenly, however, he perceived that he was crossing a stream through
which he would have to wade to continue his journey. And, unromantically
enough, he removed his brogans and socks, and proceeded to step into the cool
water. He had hardly entered it when he observed, a few feet ahead of him,
the distressing sight of a pretty girl marooned mid-stream in a cart one of
whose wheels had broken. She was frightened herself and yet trying to calm
her equally-frightened mule, and, between the antics of the mule and the
broken cartwheel, she was having considerable difficulty in keeping the
conveyance from tipping her bodily into the splashing brook.
Taylor quickly realized the situation, and making a dash to the side of
the cart, lifted the young lady bodily from it and carried her in his arms
across the stream.
His heroism had its impress. Also be it known that the colleen was
traditionally pretty, and that after she had walked with her rescuer into the
village she had cast a romantic spell over him.
Form then on, through days and weeks the romance flourished and grew.
Taylor spoke of marriage, but his words were never taken seriously. All
through the spring and summer the two remained sweethearts, and the youth,
who was then in his early twenties, spoke to the girl of taking her to Canada
and of there making his fortune.
His romance he kept secret from his parents for he knew the attitude
they would take toward a member of their family who would consort with one of
the peasantry. But, to Taylor, the village girl represented his ideal, and,
furthermore, at heart he was a democrat.
To get money with which to marry and take his bride safely to Canada he
resolved once again to try enlistment in the British army. This latter fact
he told his father, who arranged for him to be sent to the recruiting station
at Sandhurst. Both the physical and mental tests were then extremely rigid
and for some reason he again failed to pass.
While he was away at the army school, his father got wind of his
romance. It infuriated him beyond words and he made a resolve to break it up.
His first step was to visit the girl and her family and to forbid her to see
Taylor again. The second step was to go to see his son at Sandhurst.
But before he could get to the recruiting school, Taylor, disconsolate,
dejected, returned to Mallow with the news that he had failed to pass the
examination. With his father already in a surly mood his homecoming was
unfortunate. Maj. Tanner met him with a scowl, and mocked him for his
weakness.
"You are dishonorable in love," he railed, "a disgrace to your family
and all that, but you aren't man enough to get into His Majesty's service.
You couldn't be a man--and yet you are a Deane-Tanner!"
The insinuation stung Taylor. He could see, from the attitude of his
family, that he was in disgrace among them. Even his mother's demeanor had
changed, and he felt that he was merely being tolerated.
He determined to seek consolation in his sweetheart and went to the
village to see her. When he got there, however, he found that her family had
moved and left no whereabouts--and he later learned that this was an act of
his father's, for Maj. Tanner had paid them to move to another village many
miles distant.
His spirit broken, his honor as a man impugned, Taylor returned to his
home. Maj. Tanner was still irreconcilable and hinted that it would be
better, perhaps, if William were to take up his abode for a time in London--
out of sight of his mother and sisters.
It was impossible for Taylor to again live among his former friends with
a stigma upon him, however. Not that he was necessarily ostracised from his
family--his father's wish that he live in London was a more or less temporary
solution of the "problem," rather than an actual banishment of his son--but
Taylor felt, nevertheless, that it might be well for him to take advantage of
his father's former offer to send him to the newly-founded colony in America.
When he left England it was with a resolve never again to return to the
heart of his family, nor, in fact, would he permit his family to bid him
adieu at the sailing of his boat from Liverpool.
Other sons of British families were en route to America with him. Two of
the chaps and Taylor formed a friendly triumvirate, each bearing in mind a
certain formula of ideals relative to what he would do in Kansas.
The idea of being a farmer--of tilling his own soil--from the first was
somewhat odious to Taylor. He had been reared a gentleman, and, while a
democrat in spirit, the prospect of manual labor as a means of livelihood did
not appeal strongly to him.
One of his shipboard acquaintances intended seeking his fortune in New
York, being of the opinion that America's streets were paved with dollars,
easy for the picking. He urged Taylor to enter into a land-selling venture
with him.
"When I first came to America," the late director once told me, "I fully
believed that everywhere we would see Indians, baseball players and multi-
millionaires. It was, therefore, a shock to me when I first discovered New
York to be as busy a place as London--also when I realized that an English
pound bought far less articles than at home."
In New York he lived in a small boarding house that housed a group of
actors. Gradually he came to know them.
"We used to eat at the same table," he said, "where everyone had to
reach and struggle for food. If anybody were late to meals he stood little
chance of getting anything to eat. It was a case of the survival of the
fittest and I soon got so that I could grab equally as well as my table
companions."
All because of a plate of potatoes he "fell in" with the actors. The
manager of the troupe had come in late to dinner one evening, and when he sat
at the table he found that all he could get to eat would be dessert. In his
calm, courteous manner Taylor offered the man part of his own dinner,
consisting largely of potatoes. The man accepted and a friendship sprung up,
and Taylor was invited to the theatre to watch the company from the wings.
One evening he was visiting, when it was discovered that the stage
"heavy" had been taken ill. No one in the company could fill his part. Taylor
had, it happened, been reading the play only the night before. When
consternation reigned among the players, when it seemed as if the evening's
performance were ruined, he offered his services. They were accepted and he
went on that evening. Part of the time he was prompted from the wings--but he
managed to get through the performance creditably, with the result that the
show's manager offered him a permanent berth with the company, which was
scheduled to go on tour through the provinces.
This offer, however, he did not accept, for he was offered a salary so
small that, even in the late '90's, it was impossible as a living wage. It
was indeed fortunate for Taylor that he did not undertake the engagement, for
the company failed hopelessly the fourth day out and its members came
sneaking back into New York to seek other and perhaps more lucrative work.
Instead, Taylor started for Kansas. When he got there he was hopelessly
disappointed in the Englishmen's colony at Harper. The town itself was small
and unattractive. A number of the remittance men--all well-born and well-
bred, but incapable of actually supporting themselves by their own efforts--
were living in comparative poverty. All were discouraged and longed to get
back to Britain, but Taylor did not permit this fully to discourage him.
His acreage, bought for him by his father, was unimproved. He ordered
lumber and started the work of building himself a house.. When he had
finished this he set about planting a small kitchen garden. Many nights he
went to bed with blistered hands and aching, tired muscles--but after several
weeks, the garden was finally planted and Taylor settled down to note its
growth.
The extensive knowledge that he had of literature, of art, of culture in
general, stood him in good stead. He found that he could augment his
allowance from home by making speeches and delivering lectures, and finally
he began to enjoy the society of the Harperites, meager as it was.
Just as he was on the verge of harvesting his first season's crop,
however, something happened which came as a decided set-back. He had already
arranged for the disposal of the greater portion of his garden produce and
would shortly make a delivery. Came a drought, however, and he was forced to
sit by--together with other unfortunate farmers--and watch his produce
shrivel and dry, but he took the matter philosophically and started in once
again to replant his acreage. Other Englishmen, his neighbors, were becoming
discouraged. Several returned to their native hearths. Others drifted away
and were not heard of again.
Perhaps, in his heart, Taylor wished that he, likewise, could leave
Harper never to return, but his bank account was small and he determined not
to write home for more money. He was sowing his crop and waiting to harvest
it, not knowing whether or not his slender finances would pull him through
until the harvest time. It looked as if they would not, and he was commencing
to worry.
His entire life has been marked, it seems, by the hand of Fate. Whenever
he did not apparently know where to turn for help it would invariably come.
And when he needed it most during those dreary days in Kansas, it was on his
way to him.
But again it was the stage, and although he did not realize the fact, he
was destined again to return to the boards, for, in the Fanny Davenport
company there was a vacant berth which his talents fitted Taylor to fill.
Part III
Ranch life in Kansas--eighteen months of it in an Englishmen's
remittance colony--however alluring to native-born sons of the soil,
singularly failed to appeal to the more sophisticated sensibilities of
William D. Taylor.
He was not anxious to play again in theatricals, yet there was that
inherent histrionic instinct in him that made life away from the footlights
miserable for him. Perhaps it was the lack of adventure, of romance, that the
prosaic farm-life in Kansas afforded, but...
Fanny Davenport, the famous American actress of more than a decade ago,
was on tour with her repertoire company. Perchance she ventured into the
mists of Harper, the small town of which Taylor and his English associates
were residents. Her advent there was like a light in the clearing, for first-
class theatrical attractions were almost unknown in the Middle West a few
years ago.
And Taylor was enthralled. On her first night appearance he viewed her
from a first-row seat as she played "La Tosca." Even though her stage scenery
was somewhat worn by time and travel; even though Taylor could clearly see
the makeup on the actors' faces; even though he knew that, in reality, the
play was merely a play--he felt himself gripped by a strange, unconquerable
longing--the same desire to express himself that he had felt a few months
before when he stood in the wings and asked Sir Charles Hawtrey for a chance
to play on the stage.
After the performance a reception was held in Miss Davenport's honor,
and Taylor, being one of Harper's more prominent citizens, was, of course,
invited. He met the lovely star face-to-face and talked with her. And, of
course, expressed his appreciation of her performance.
"It was terrible!" she replied, looking a bit troubled. "We've just lost
one of our actors and, as you know, it's hard to find another out here in
Kansas."
Taylor was electrified. Again, the hand of Fate! Here was a chance for
him, perhaps, to get back into theatricals.
Yet, could he openly defy his father's wishes? Could he rightfully re-
enter a profession upon which his entire family looked with such utter
condemnation?
For the moment he kept turning the question over and over in his mind.
He was perplexed--because he wanted to ask Miss Davenport to give him a
trial. Precisely what he did.
"I felt at the time," he told some Los Angeles friends shortly before
his death, "that Fate decreed I should re-enter the show business. I knew my
family would be displeased--but, after all, was I not separated from them by
an ocean and several thousand miles? And hadn't they wished for that
separation?"
It was this process of reasoning that prompted him to apply to Miss
Davenport in the hopes of filling the missing actor's place.
"Can you play Mario in my 'Tosca'?" she inquired sweetly, and added,
"I believe you can. I believe you could do anything you really wanted to do!"
"Thanks," he answered. He was too dumbfounded to say more.
The star then wrote something on a card and handed it to him. This would
assure him of her sincerity. And would he kindly come to rehearsal the next
morning? For it would be necessary for him to play that night in "Gismonda."
When he arrived, more or less excited, at the theatre, he found that
Fanny Davenport herself had attended to the matter of his stage costumes.
However, Taylor's predecessor was a man of medium stature, portly and
altogether in physical contradistinction to him, for Taylor was tall, robust
and inclined to be thin.
And the "Gismonda" costumes, originally tailored to the lines of their
former wearer, reached not quite to his knees! The farther the rehearsal
progressed, the more ridiculous Taylor looked in his skin-tight wardrobe.
Something would have to be done--and yet Taylor would have to take the entire
time for the remainder of the day to study his role even though it was not a
vastly important one.
Their sojourn in America, in a portion of the country where conveniences
were considered as luxuries, had taught a number of the English residents of
Harper to perform innumerable useful tasks that formerly would have seemed
ambiguous. One of Taylor's friends, in addition to farming, had learned the
art of tailoring as an avocation. It was to him that Taylor went--and while
the man lengthened here, padded there, and shortened another portion of the
costumes, Taylor studied his part for the night's performance. Half the time
he was standing, modeling, for his costume fitting while, at the same time
his script in hand, he learned his lines and cues.
When other members of the company, tired by travel, became discouraged,
Taylor invariably cheered them or sympathized with them. When the character
woman had trouble with her husband--a stage hand with the company--and
threatened to divorce him, it was Taylor who played the role of mediator and
got the couple to settle their differences.
But at the same time, there were various instances of levity experienced
as well as of gravity. For instance, in a small Pacific Coast town where the
company were presenting "Fedora," "Cheopatra" and "Joan of Arc" in one-night
succession, three hotel associates of Taylor's invited him to sit in with
them on a card game. They had hardly commenced to play, the money pot had
hardly commenced to boil, when a visitor rapped on the door.
The person proved to be a middle-aged, nervous woman whose appearance
was disheveled.
"I came," she faltered, "to borrow your drinking-water glass."
"Certainly!" said Taylor, postponing the game for a moment to get it for
her.
A few moments later she rapped again and was admitted. She wanted more
water. A third and a fourth time she came and went, and finally knocked a
fifth time. By this time the men's curiosity was thoroughly aroused.
"What," inquired Taylor, "did you want all those glassfuls of water
for?"
For a moment she seemed reluctant to tell.
"Well, you see, I'm living up on the fourth floor where we ain't got no
water, and bein' as my lace curtains took fire, I thought I'd just borry you
gentleman's water glass to put it out with."
The tour was a long one, from one end of the continent to the other.
Taylor's acting experiences were always progressive and he became a popular
favorite with both his audiences and his public. In the theatre he was a
diplomat and a statesman. Outside of it, however, he indulged in none of the
customary pastimes of the average traveling actor, but, instead, he occupied
himself with a serious study of books and art.
While in Portland, Oregon, he heard a group of men discussing the newly-
opened Alaskan gold fields. Here was a new type of adventure! New worlds to
conquer! New riches! And, after all, romance! The men, it seemed were making
up an expedition into the Klondike. Taylor watched their preparations,
listened to their conversations--heard them tell of wonderful, ice-covered
bonanzas--and longed to be with them. One of the men offered him a berth, but
his theatrical contract withheld him.
In Boston Taylor closed his engagement with the Davenport company,
having been with the organization some three years. He was offered an
engagement with a stock company in Chicago, and started for there. But,
however, his finances were low, and when he arrived in St. Paul in company
with a man who was desirous of opening a lunch counter, he accepted the
proposition and stepped into a new character.
The restaurant venture proved a bugbear. Just at a time when it
commenced to be a paying proposition, his partner decamped with the profits
and, again, he was thrown out of funds. His spirit now seemed almost broken,
and St. Paul, to him, was a nightmare. Whereupon he departed from the twin
city and arrived, practically penniless, in Chicago.
A friend there noted his plight, but this man, too, was in straits.
Together they secured a position canvassing in country towns--selling one of
those pneumatic "household necessities" that every housewife wants. The
Chicago agent was a kindly soul and gave them four dollars advance.
It happened that both Taylor and his companion were good gamblers. Not
that that time-honored profession had been anything more to Taylor hitherto
than a mere pastime. Yet, however, its ancient mesmerism has helped many a
man out of the gravest debt.
And so, with their four dollars in their pockets, Taylor and his friend
went into one of Chicago's Loop gambling halls. A crap game was in progress
and both entered themselves and their money. When the stakes were counted it
was discovered that each had won considerable--enough to buy them the
necessities they both needed. Again the hand of Fate!
Both Taylor and his friend had pawned their overcoats. It was bitter
cold, an incentive for the men to awaken the pawnbrokers. This they did, and
with overcoats again on their backs, they set out to feed themselves.
Just as he was not destined to be a farmer, Taylor found that canvassing
small towns for "household necessities" was not his forte.
He had been born with a bent for sketching and drawing, and, before in
his life, he had made crayon portraits of his friends. It occurred to him to
try to capitalize on this talent, when he found that it was impossible for
him to locate successfully with a theatrical company in Chicago.
He rented a studio, bought a few dollars' worth of drawing material and
started out to make his fortune. One of his ordinary drawings cost him forty-
five cents to produce. On its completion, he would set out to sell it. Some
days he made large sums of money, and, inside of two months, he had made
enough to go to Milwaukee and there to become the owner of an art store.
In Milwaukee the dapper, continental-looking young man soon became a
town personality, for he dressed like a Beau Brummel and had all the
mannerisms of a European courtier. But the art business in Milwaukee was not
good, and he left once again for New York to open his shop on fashionable
Fifth Avenue.
There was one song which expresses Taylor's philosophy, and as follows,
it is one which he customarily sang whenever he felt particularly ebullient.
During his days in the New York art colony he sang it often, for his sojourn
in Gotham was a happy one. It reads:
Oh, my name is Pat O'Leary,
From a spot called Tipperary;
The heart of all the girls I am a thorn in.
But before the break of morn,
Faith 'tis they will be all forlorn.
For I am off for Philadelphia in the morning.
CHORUS
With me bundle on me shoulder,
Faith there's no man could be boulder.
For I am leaving dear old Ireland, without warning;
For I have lately took the notion,
For to cross the briny ocean.
And I'm off for Philadelphia in the morning.
There's a girl called Kate Malone,
Whom I hope to call my own,
And to see one little cabin place adorning;
But me heart is sad and weary,
How can she be "Mrs." Leary,
If I start for Philadelphia in the morning.
CHORUS
When they tould me I should lave the place,
I tried to have a cheerful face.
For to show me hearts deep sorrow I was scorning.
But the tears will surely blind me
For the friends I lave behind me,
When I start for Philadelphia in the morning.
CHORUS
For though me bundle's on me shoulder,
And though no one could be boulder,
I am leaving now the spot that I was born in.
Yet some day I'll take the notion
To come back across the ocean
To me home in dear old Ireland, in the morning.
--Words and music by Robert Martin.
His art shop netted him sufficient royalties for him to indulge in
society and sportsmanship. He became a member of the yacht club at Larchmont,
and his week-ends would be spent there and on cruises. A number of New York's
wealthiest men were there, and, at one time, a party, including Taylor,
planned a cruise around the world.
Once, F. Augustus Heinze, the copper magnate, hurried into the club
announcing that he had bought a new ocean-going yacht, and inviting various
of his friends, among them Taylor, to accompany him on a cruise to the
Mediterranean. His invitation was accepted, and his guests began making
plans, but, at the last minute, Mr. Heinze was informed by his chief steward
that the vessel's bunkers would hold only coal enough for a trip of 300
miles! This was an experience that Taylor would traditionally recite--and in
several instances he applied it to film personages whom he was directing,
when they would affect the so-called actorial "temperament."
It was while he was a prominent luminary in the New York art and sport
circles that he became acquainted with the girl who was later to become his
wife.
He had seen her in the original "Floradora" company, met her and wooed
her. For some reason Taylor and the girl, Miss Ethel May Harrison, chose to
be married secretly. No one except the bride's mother was to be admitted into
confidence until they should have sailed on their honeymoon trip to Dublin.
But the news of the marriage became known, and when its principals were on
the verge of departing they were surprised by a ceremony.
His wife was known in New York as a very accomplished young woman who
had been brilliantly educated by her father before her entrance into
theatricals. Taylor was handsome, gallant, popular. Hence, the match was one
of note.
The couple traveled to some extent, and finally to them was born a
daughter, Miss Ethel Daisy Deane-Tanner, who now remains as her father's heir
and is a student in a fashionable young ladies' finishing school on the
Hudson.
For some reason, which Taylor carried untold with him to his grave, his
marriage was not a success. A few months after the birth of his daughter he
commenced to drink heavily. Business cares seemingly did not trouble him. He
was entertained lavishly in society and his prominence in art and sport
circles continued.
But, however, he became known as a "heavy drinker." It was noted at one
of the Vanderbilt Cup Races which he attended that he was a bit inebriated.
For several days thereafter he disappeared and nothing was heard from until
he telephoned his office from a hotel asking that $600 be sent to him
immediately.
For what silent purpose he desired that money, which was at once
delivered to him, he never divulged. But, having received it, he removed his
effects from the hotel, gave no further address, and departed.
A search for him was instituted. Nowhere could he be found--and some of
his friends suspected foul play. But the fact remained that he had gone, and
for many months there was no word received from him.
IV
In a room of a far downtown New York hotel, a worn, anxious man showing
the aftereffects of intoxication, paced the floor nervously. He would walk to
the window ever so often and look out. He seemed to be expecting someone.
A knock on the door...he is nervous, yet cheered. It is a
messenger...and William D. Taylor, the expectant, seems gladdened.
The messenger brought him what, a short while before, he had telephoned
to his office for--six hundred dollars. The money, in greenbacks, he pocketed
eagerly, and he could hardly wait for the messenger to depart before he took
his hat and also departed.
For blocks he walked--down through crowded business streets, small by-
ways where sidewalk peddlers hawked their wares, narrow alleys where
tenements flanked the sidewalks and children played noisily, dirtily, in the
streets. At length he reached the waterfront--and it was there, among the
dross, that he intended to seek solace for the time being from his inner
woes.
Taylor was worried. For several days past he had been drinking rather
heavily. Trouble with his wife, certain of his friends asserted. But this
pilgrimage of his into the slums was not necessarily a new thing for him,
for, frequently in those days, he would relieve his mind of its varied cares
by participating in the life the "other half" of society lives.
On numerous other occasions--on other pilgrimages--he had thus communed
with his less fortunate brothers. Throughout his entire life, however, he
never regarded wayward humanity as beneath notice. Other artists, at other
times, have communed likewise--and, like him--have returned to their uptown
habitations mentally refreshed and spiritually enlivened for their contact
with the other half's suffering.
There were wharvesmen on the Battery who used to call Taylor "Bill."
And, in tiny Washington Square, there was even a gin-sotted old woman who
referred to the handsome art connoisseur as "her son," for he befriended her
at a moment when a policeman was on the verge of arresting her as a vagrant.
With the shades of early evening falling, with the lights of boats in
the river twinkling on the water, Taylor sought refuge in a "joint" wherein
corned beef and cabbage formed a questionably delectable menu for the lower
strata of New York's humanity. He was seated at a table eating and drinking;
various acquaintances, knowing that he would have money to "stand treat,"
joined him--and a good-natured revelry ensued wherein Taylor was host to as
varied an aggregation of types as could be possibly found. Some were already
in their cups, and he was the merry toastmaster, singing his "Pat O'Leary"
song and getting them to join in the chorus.
And the party continued until late. He arose to go and paid for his
"feed," and when he walked out of the establishment two dark-visaged men who
had been standing by, watching him--men who had not joined in his merry-
making--followed.
Up dark streets he picked his way, headed for the more happy section of
New York that was his home. Around a corner...into an alley...a short
cut...hurried, muffled steps behind him...a sudden blow...and Taylor fell to
the sidewalk, stunned...two men going through his pockets.
Having robbed him of his remaining greenbacks, the thugs picked him up
and carried him back up the alley, through other alleys--and eventually to a
wharf where a wind-beaten schooner lay with the muddy waters of the East
River lapping its sides. They took him into a darkened hole below decks and
left him to revive--and when he came to, he could hear the pounding of waters
on wooden ship walls, and could realize that he had been--shanghaied.
The trip was a long one, months in the making. The ship, a "tramp,"
sailed at random into many ports on many seas. Africa, the Canary Islands and
the Mediterranean were included in its itinerary, and Taylor had become used
to the seaman's hard labor lot to which he had unwittingly fallen.
At an African port he had an opportunity to leave the ship, but the life
appealed to him and he stuck to its standards. There were other landings made
and other seas sailed--and, finally, one day, the weather-scarred "tramp" put
into the harbor at Portland, Ore.
With money in his pockets, new life in his body, Taylor set about
rehabilitating himself according to his precepts of a gentleman. He heard of
a repertoire company forming to play in Eastern cities, and, by virtue of his
past experience with Fanny Davenport, was able to qualify as one of its
actors.
But, on arriving in Montreal, he found that the fortunes of the company
were not altogether lucrative. The actors fought among themselves, and
discord reigned generally.
A group of men were making plans for a trip into the Klondike, where
gold offered alluring enticements--sufficient reward for the hardships that
an Alaskan expedition would surely bring forth.
But Taylor was used to hardships. In his heart was the continual desire
for adventure, and he felt that no hardships that he would experience on a
gold-hunting expedition could in any way compare with those he had rather
recently undergone as a seaman on the tramp schooner.
He set out from Montreal via the famous "long route" across Canada.
Eventually he found himself crossing the Canadian Rockies--and still he and
his fellow voyagers kept on.
History tells of the rough-and-tumble assortment of characters that went
into the Klondike in those boom days. There were the dregs of humanity and
the dross of civilization gone "north of 53" to seek their fortune, but
Taylor was undaunted. He had met rough people before in his life; in fact, he
enjoyed the freshness of their viewpoint, the primitive quality of their
inherent conventions.
At first he worked with other prospectors in the ice-clad Alaskan
fields. Later, however, he found it to his advantage to keep a store for
miners, and this proved to be a bonanza for him. In Nome he fell ill with
typhus fever and nearly died, and, weakened, he began to yearn once again for
his home in the States. With a small fortune in his pockets he returned, and
finally made his way to Boston, where he was a member of the famous Castle
Garden theatre company.
But at that time of his life--when he was merging from youth into the
fullest of manhood--when he had found his ideals alternately strengthened and
shaken, shaken and strengthened--he could not control his desire to see the
land of the midnight sun. Alaska seemed to be in his blood.
And, beside, he was embittered, made sorrowful by the outcome of his
marriage, for he learned that his wife had divorced him.
Again he set out for the frozen north; and again do we find him fighting
in the eternal struggle of mankind for his stake. The scratching of the earth
for its gold did not directly appeal to him and, in Dawson, a town that had
sprung up mushroom-like and comprised only the most basic fundamentals of
civilization, Taylor soon came to be known as "the man who could play a
banjo."
But he had both ability and ambition. Merely playing a banjo--even
though its metallic tones brought him ready money from the amusement-hungry
denizens of the north country--failed to satisfy him. The proprietor of a
small theatre, wherein a company of stock actors labored, unceasingly,
recognized, in Taylor, a man who could carry on the work successfully.
He was engaged as producer and stage director. Often he would act--and,
frequently, he would paint the scenery to suit his requirements.
None of the old sourdoughs who are now scattered throughout the country,
living on the wealth they amassed in those days, are impressed by a name so
imposing as William Desmond Taylor. But they all remember him as "Bill," who
produced what they considered very high-class plays at "Arizona Charley's"
popular house. Some recall him as Jimmy Taylor--and, to others, he was known
as 'Gene.
But, according to an old miner acquaintance of Taylor's, the carefully-
groomed, reserved, quiet Englishman harbored a secret sorrow, which, with
him, was deep and everlasting.
And it was apparent to his two housemates, a prospector and a poet, both
of whom had gone north to recoup lost wealth and fortunes. He would work at
his theatre until late at night and frequently, on arriving home, would be
steeped in deep thought.
But he never divulged the reason for that sorrow--and persons who knew
him could only sense what he was suffering by the deep sighs that
occasionally made themselves heard, much against his wishes.
For Taylor's was "a grief that you can't control," to use the phrase of
a poet.
The money Taylor made in the north he invested unwisely in the United
States. Came a letter to him one day telling him that his presence was needed
in San Francisco. As silently as he had slipped into Alaska, he slipped out
of it. Perhaps, he kept thinking, he could live quietly in the States on his
earnings--perhaps...!
But, as the hand of tragedy has pointed so poignantly in his direction
all through his life, so does it point again toward him. For, in San
Francisco, his solicitors informed him that he had lost his savings.
He was penniless!
Again there was that heart-rending search for work--something, anything,
to do to keep food in his mouth and a roof over his head. And yet even though
his talents were many, he suffered horrible privations for days, for work was
scarce.
Finally he met Harry Corson Clarke, the globetrotting actor, who was
preparing to take his company on tour to the Hawaiian Islands. He offered the
down-and-out man a chance, once again, to return to the stage, and Taylor
took it. Nevertheless, his craving for the money-fields of Alaska had not
been stilled. He told his employer tales of the northern Eldorado--of the
chances a man had to rehabilitate himself in the graces of his God and his
fellow men. And further, he would say that he had a claim "up there" that he
wanted money to work--a claim that would make him fabulously rich if he could
but get sufficient backing to open it.
Always with this ambition of getting fabulously rich in mind, he set
sail for Honolulu with the Clarke aggregation. Rehearsals were in progress
while the boat journey was being made, and by the time the company reached
their mid-Pacific destination, the show was ready to go on.
For a month Taylor acted in the play. And then, one day, he learned that
carpenters were needed to help build a new theatre which was in course of
construction.
Alaska! His dream of getting money to work his claim.
Once again did his mind revert to these musings. And, to earn more money-
-or, as he afterward said, to "bring Alaska some months nearer"--he got work
as a carpenter.
It was a trying ordeal, this working by day with hammer and saw and
acting in the theatre at night, but Taylor did it for the remaining two
months that Clarke played in Honolulu.
His one thought--his sole ambition--was then to make a success of his
mining claim in far-off Alaska. But, even though he had worked unceasingly
for three months, he had worked only for three months, and his earnings were
insufficiently great to enable him more than to make a start at getting his
bonanza started.
He was in San Francisco, again casting about for lucrative employment--
again beginning to yearn for the ice-fields--and again setting out to conquer
new worlds. In New York he had been friendly with the family of an actress,
and Fate would have it that that same family should then have been in San
Francisco.
And Taylor--the dapper, polished man who once had been one of the
leading members of the fashionable Larchmont Yacht Club, who had been known
in Gotham's art circles as a scholarly beau brummel, who had won and lost a
small fortune, and who was finally more or less a bit of driftwood on the
California Coast--set about making the details of his misfortunes wholly
unknown.
He gave gay parties for his New York friends. It was a bit of his old
self that came to light again. Apparently he had forgotten the tragedy that
seared his heart--the one thing that had induced his previous disappearance
from New York's society and had kept him from trying to resume his old-time
social intercourse in his former haunts.
He was living like a gentleman, at a fashionable hotel, although he
realized that his savings were dwindling and that each dollar spent kept him
farther from his mining claim.
And it began to look as if he would have to start all over again--as if
he were not, after all, to be able to reap the benefits of his mining
discovery in the Klondike. His bank-book told him he could not be lying--yet
there it was before him, its columnar pages proclaiming the fact that he had
only a few dollars standing between him and utter starvation.
And, as he looked and pondered--and wondered, perhaps, how the hand of
Fate would again strike him--he found himself seized once more with that same
melancholy that, before, had nearly broken his life.
For he was practically a pauper--and he could not summon courage to
apprise his friends of the situation. Yet he could not possibly continue his
gentlemanly existence among them.
What would he do?
Part V
Bank books have a peculiar potentiality of blasting people's hopes.
And it was the question of approaching poverty that again confronted
William D. Taylor in San Francisco--a few short weeks after he had returned
from the Hawaiian Islands and was, seemingly, on the road once more to
prosperity.
He had been living like a gentleman. Former New York friends of his were
in the Bay City. He was entertaining them, and being entertained by them,
lavishly.
And then one day, the bank book that he prized so highly, warned him of
impending poverty. He commenced to lapse into that former melancholy state of
his.
What, he asked himself, would be the use for him again to try to "make
his stake?"
Was not Fate constantly against him? Had not the handwriting on the wall
invariably made its appearance to him?
Again he sought solace by communing with the "other half" of humanity.
This time found him near 'Frisco's famous waterfront. He failed to return to
his hotel for several days. But, had he returned, he would have found his
problem solved for him.
The San Francisco agents of a certain influential mining corporation
with interests in Alaska had been looking for him. Yet, he could not be
found.
Several days elapsed and, finally, early one morning Taylor returned.
There were lines of care, of worriment, in his face. He seemed to have grown
suddenly older. The clerk handed him a letter, which he took lackadaisically
and hardly bothered to read. Nor would he, perhaps, have read it had he not
been interested by the name of the solicitors' firm in the corner of the
envelope.
Its contents were a surprise, and, as he read, his spirits began to
rise, for the letter informed him that there was a purchaser waiting to buy
his Alaskan properties.
The price offered was generous. Once more would Taylor be on comparative
easy street. Again with money in the bank, with his own self-estimation
heartily increased by the advent of good fortune, Taylor commenced casting
about for new lines of progress. For the time being he had no reason to go to
Alaska. And the thought of his own sorrow in New York precluded his desire to
go there.
It was his San Francisco friends who offered the suggestion that he try
his hand at making moving pictures in Los Angeles.
"They're paying a lot of money," someone said to Taylor. "And the work
is very easy. We have a friend there who..."
And thereupon was propounded the story of how a new bonanza lay in the
manufacture of what were then extremely infantile attempts at entertainment.
Throughout Taylor's entire life one finds that the pioneering spirit
actuated many of his movements. Pioneering on a farm in Kansas, at restaurant-
keeping in Milwaukee, in art-dealing in New York, in prospecting in Alaska.
And, again, his interest in motion pictures became intrigued.
A number of actors from the legitimate stage were commencing to change
their views toward the silent drama, and were entering it. Far-sighted
persons were beginning to visualize in films a great art rather than a mere
fancy.
Thomas H. Ince, for instance, had built a veritable city of motion
picture "sets" on a stretch of land along the ocean front near Santa Monica,
Cal. Western Alaska, frontier and out-of-door dramas found their locale in
the sage-covered hills that surrounded the film village. New recruits, from
every walk of life, were applying at the Inceville gates for admission to the
studio--asking for work, for anything that would give them an opportunity to
make their mark in the great infant industry.
And, several miles inland, in Los Angeles, studios were being built and
the landscape about them began to take on an active production atmosphere,
for activity had commenced to buzz on the canvas-covered stages that were
springing up like mushrooms.
And Taylor went, one day, to the old-time Kay-Bee studios, to cast his
lot with the film folk. He told officials there of his past experience on the
stage with Fanny Davenport, of his experiences with Harry Corson Clarke. And
an actor there, while he was talking in the office, recognized him as having
been a former associate on the stage in New York and augmented his briefly
related story.
The result was that Taylor found himself engaged to play before the
motion picture camera in a picture called "The Iconoclast."
"Rehearsal at what time?" he inquired--and discovered his remark to be
met with a glance of blank amazement.
"Rehearsal--in pictures?" came the reply. "We rehearse first and shoot
the film afterward, all at once."
It was a life different from anything to which Taylor had ever been
accustomed.
"I used to marvel," he recounted once, not long before his tragic death,
"at the free and easy air of everyone in the studio. Everything seemed to
depend on the sun. If it would shine we would have a full day; but, at times
when Old Sol was contrary, we would sit around the studio swapping yarns
until he finally decided to make his appearance."
This, of course, was characteristic only of the early days, for now film
work is made at all times possible by the use of high-powered lights which
equals, if not surpasses, natural sunlight. And it is a factor which has made
picture production a business venture and has created actual working hours at
a studio.
Taylor--the man with a colorful background, the cultured gentleman--was,
from the time of his entrance into pictures, a distinctive figure in them.
When the sun would keep his company waiting for "shooting time," he would not
customarily engage in the various varieties of small talk that so many of the
actors practised, but one would see him studying, reading, or watching some
phase of the work being done that had seemingly griped his entire attention.
"The Iconoclast" was finished, and he found himself cast for another
role. But the powers-that-be at the studio could visualize in him, in his
experience something more than a mere actor, and offered him the chance to
direct.
In those days it was uncommon for a director to be able to act in his
own plays. Taylor could do it and occasionally did. But it was something that
he did not entirely care to do.
"I have wanted either to direct or to act," he often remarked. "But I
wanted to do one or the other. A combination of work is not a good thing. Too
many cooks spoil the soup."
The former American company was setting out to dazzle the eyes of the
screen world with a stupendous thirty-episode serial, "The Diamond From the
Sky." It was an epoch, for serials hitherto had been more or less fugitive
things of disconnected continuity and wild-eyed thrills. Taylor was requested
to direct it, and for a year was occupied in making it.
And it was this picture that established him as one of the true artists
of the film industry. His method of reserve in handling actors, in keeping
his company in harmony, in getting a dollar's best efforts for a dollar's
pay, became known to the various Los Angeles producers, and his name, when
mentioned, was spoken of with that same reverence that characterized it a few
years hence, when its possessor was a member of high standing in the
exclusive Larchmont Yacht Club.
His home, an unpretentious place, well-appointed with regard to Taylor's
concepts of art, had an atmosphere of color and refinement. Books everywhere,
and objects of art made the Taylor home a center of culture. There was none
of the flamboyance evident such as characterized the home of various made
newly-rich through their motion picture successes, and the persons accustomed
to gather there represented the more cultured, the more artistic class of
film devotees.
To Taylor, his venture into the serial field was an education, and he
used the play largely as an e
xperimental laboratory to try effects.
"We had autos going over cliffs," he has said, "people falling from
balloons, train accidents and all sorts of trained animals from an octopus to
an elephant."
When Fox started in producing "The Tale of Two Cities," once more there
came to Taylor the hankering for greasepaint. He was offered a role in the
play of which William Farnum was the star, and he took it gladly. And in it
he was an invaluable aid to the director, for his knowledge of literature and
of art made many of his suggestions worthy of deepest consideration.
One of the slain director's chief characteristics was his love for
children. In "The Tale of Two Cities," for instance, in scenes where numerous
youngsters would take part, he could be found in ardent conversation with
them, sharing their joys and sympathizing with them in their sorrows.
Some months later this very attribute of his proved a valuable business
asset as well. He had become a director of the Famous Players-Lasky forces--
had directed Dustin Farnum, George Beban, Kathlyn Williams, Constance
Talmadge and other stars with aplomb, and finally was asked to create, for
the screen, versions of both Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.
An unsympathetic man would not have been able to visualize either of
Mark Twain's famous boy characters had he not understood their psychology. To
Jack Pickford fell the role of Tom Sawyer, and Robert Gordon, then an almost
unknown young actor, was to play Huck Finn.
Months later had these two actors been available, Taylor's perhaps
greatest work would not have been accomplished. But, as Fate would have it,
when he set about making a production of "Huckleberry Finn" for Lasky, there
was no boy actor obtainable for the title role. And Taylor set about to find
someone suitable to the role.
From a number of boys who had reported at the studio he selected Lewis
Sargent. The chap's very boyishness, his air of unspoiled youth, were what
interested the director, and although young Sargent knew practically nothing
about the art of acting, Taylor took him in hand and worked unceasingly with
him.
It happens that Mark Twain created Huck to be a boy of many freckles,
and these are a facial quality that are difficult to show on the screen. In
order for Sargent to have his film freckles properly adjusted to his makeup,
Taylor would daily paint them on the lad's face with an iodine brush, and, so
that he could readily visualize the true Mark Twain character, Taylor for
hours would tell his juvenile star stories that would stimulate his youthful
imagination.
And, as the result of Taylor's careful training, Lewis Sargent blossomed
from a natural, untrained boy into a trained, capable actor who readily
starred in both "Huckleberry Finn" and "The Soul of Youth," and who could
take his place in the annals of film history as a truly talented portrayer of
types.
When Taylor was directing his actors he continually maintained an
attitude of cultured reserve that could not be broken down. To certain
boorishly-inclined persons it was a definite barrier between themselves and
Taylor, the man. To others, however, it signified dignity and capability.
And, many a time, it prevented actors from showing anger of "temperament," so-
called, when they were acting in front of the Taylor camera.
His age, for he was in the early forties during his screen career,
placed the director in a more or less fatherly attitude toward the younger
actors who would work with him. Mary Miles Minter regarded him with all the
love that any young girl customarily shows for a male parent. To Ethel
Clayton, whom he directed in such productions as "Beyond" and "Wealth," he
seemed more like an uncle, and one of his most broken-hearted mourners, at
the time of his death, was Betty Compson, whom he directed in "The Green
Temptation."
To the young women he directed he was counselor, sympathizer and sharer
alike in joys and sorrows. Mabel Normand, for instance, would ask his opinion
of all her scenarios before she would commence their production, and, on the
fatal evening of his death, she had gone to his home to receive an armful of
books that he had selected for her at his bookseller's.
Men--and bachelors--usually have a set of particular cronies--men
friends of their own age who receive their confidences and jointly share in
the varied joys of a middle-aged man's life. Such a group of men there was at
the Los Angeles Athletic Club, of which Taylor was a member.
But, even though this coterie could consider themselves as the film
director's intimate friends, there was none in the crowd who received his
fullest confidence, particularly in the matter of his erstwhile marriage some
years ago in New York.
But these men--all of them in their late thirties and early forties--
remember the day, during the war, when Taylor entered their midst announcing
that he had enlisted in the Canadian forces.
It was the war that offered the supreme test of Taylor's physical and
moral calibre. He, being well over the age limit, had every claim to
exemption. Instead, however, he maintained a specified contempt for various
younger men who were frantically trying to dodge service, and it was, hence,
not a great surprise to his friends when he announced his enlistment as a
private.
But there was one of his associates, a kindly, motherly woman,
Mrs. Julia Crawford Ivers his scenarist for years, who could offer a
plausible reason why he should not undertake the hardships of war. Woman-
like, Mrs. Ivers for months had been ministering to Taylor's stomach trouble,
from which he had been a sufferer for years. At the studio she had a
miniature kitchenette installed in her office, and would daily prepare the
director's lunch for him and give him a menu of viands that he could eat
digestibly.
And it was because she feared a return of the stomach affliction that
she did not want him to go to war, but he went and suffered agonizingly.
The war--his last great adventure--left its impress upon him. He was
sufficiently mature to realize the full significance of its heart-crushing
suffering. Yet he was young enough to be an optimist after it was over. And,
in the eternal struggle, he had progresses as singularly as he had progressed
as a private citizen, for while the beginning had seen him as a "buck"
private with the British Fusileers, the armistice saw him ranked as a
lieutenant.
And it was not until after the war that Taylor really accomplished his
best work on the screen. "The Furnace," "The Witching Hour," "The Soul of
Youth," stand out as being truly great pictures and proclaim their producer
as being not merely a man with a megaphone, but as an inspired figure in the
midst of a great art.
And it was because the film industry knew Taylor and respected him--
because they readily epitomized his life and his success--that the mourners
at his bier were legion. There is no one in the motion picture industry who
will speak unkindly of his memory, and his name stands respected and beloved
as that of a gentleman, a friend, a scholar--and a true artist.
The End
*****************************************************************************
Wallace Smith: February 21, 1922
The following is another of Wallace Smith's sensationalizing dispatches on
the Taylor case.
February 21, 1922
Wallace Smith
CHICAGO AMERICAN
Love scenes of a moving picture director and a famous film star -- the
real life drama acted by William Desmond Taylor and his last love in
screenland -- today became a vital sensation in the hunt for Taylor's
mysterious assassin, a hunt that may end with the arrest of the actress.
They were love scenes as done by experts away from the screen -- by the
man who had directed from Mary Pickford down in similar scenes of the screen
and by the woman who has acted a hundred such incidents under the eye of the
camera.
They may not have been quite up to the screen article, but, recited by
the man who witnessed them, they made a background fitting the theory of
Undersheriff Eugene Biscailuz that this actress was the one who killed
Taylor.
Taylor's love scenes in life were narrated today by Henry Peavey,
Taylor's houseman, whose charge that this same actress murdered his employer
-- told in these dispatches yesterday -- did seismographic things to this
section of the continent.
Not that it jarred some of the officials, who seem to show a strange
indifference to developments in the case. Because of Henry Peavey's position
in life they chose to disregard what he said, despite the fact that he knows
more than any living person -- save one -- of what had been going on in the
Alvarado St. home.
But even those disinterested ones were forced to take notice today when
Peavey again put aside his crochet work and made startling disclosures of
Taylor's affairs. Among them were the love scenes.
The actress may not be named, but it is known that she was questioned
by the police. Peavey's story contradicted her own account of her relations
with Taylor and it gives the lie to her statement that, although she visited
Taylor the night of the murder, she had never been there alone before. [3]
"But she was," said Peavey, "she was there just the night before
Mr. Taylor was killed. And just a little before that she was there and she
took down some of her pictures from the wall and cut them up with a scissors.
And I've seen him take her in his arms and kiss her. He was very much in
love with her and I've seen nights when he couldn't read but would put down
his book and just keep looking at her picture and sighing.
"I know she was at the house the night before because that night I made
a custard. Mr. Taylor didn't come home for dinner that night and the custard
stayed there. When he came home I asked was there anything I could do. He
said no, except to squeeze out some oranges and lemons for cocktails with
gin. Then I went home.
"Next day the custard pan was empty and the cocktail glasses stood by
the sink. And I saw her the next day and she told me she had eaten most of
the custard. I remember especially because she said it was pudding and it
wasn't at all -- but custard.
"Sometime ago I guess they had a quarrel or something. She came in one
night, tore down two or three of her pictures off the wall and sat down on
the floor with a scissors and began cutting the pictures into bits.
Mr. Taylor said something to her and she said she guessed she could cut up
her own pictures if she wanted and he said he guessed she could, too.
"But they made up again, I reckon. Because after that I saw him take
her in his arms and hug her and kiss her. They kissed like that when they
were in his study, the night before Mr. Taylor was killed. She was kissing
him as hard as he was kissing her.
"He sure was in love with her. I'd see him many a night start to smoke
a cigarette and read a book. After a while he'd put the book down and get
one of her pictures and prop it up against a jar or something where he could
see it right handy.
"Then he'd try to read again. But he couldn't read long. He'd have to
keep looking at this picture, through the cigarette smoke. It was just like
you see sometimes in the movies.
"He was always wondering if there wasn't something she wanted around
her house. When she was away in the East he had me go to her house and ask
the maid if there wasn't something he could get for her. That's the way he
was.
"And he'd send her telegrams every night when she was away. I don't
know what was in those telegrams, of course it wouldn't do for me to read
them. Anyway, I can't read. But it got so that when I'd come in the girl at
the telegraph office would say, 'Hello, did I have another message from Bill
to ----?' calling her by her first name.
"Oh, yes he was in love with her all right. And I am sure she is the
one who killed him."
Peavey's story was told on the twenty-first day that has passed since
the slaying and all of the leaders of the various investigations admit that
they have been baffled. They do not admit as yet that they have blundered.
But there seems to have been at least one more blunder since the first
two hours after the finding of the body, during which it was insisted that
Taylor had "come to his death of natural causes."
That was the heavy-handed elimination of Taylor's favorite watch as a
clew.
Much had been expected of the watch when it was found that its delicate
mechanism had been stopped, apparently by some sudden impact. The sheriff's
theory was that the fall of Taylor's body had stopped the watch. This made
the time registered by the watch of vital importance, inasmuch as it was
known that the woman under suspicion had been in Taylor's study at the
fateful hour mutely spoken by the watch.
It was seized yesterday by detectives and rushed to a jeweler's shop.
There an expert -- as these dispatches narrated -- scientifically tested the
timepiece to find out what had caused it to cease ticking. He was puzzled.
Finally he asked questions and the detectives went back to Public
Administrator Bryson.
"Why, that watch has been handled by twenty men since it was brought
her," said Bryson. "They wound it and struck it and generally fussed around
with it."
The expert shrugged his shoulders. "No wonder I can't tell exactly
what happened," he said, "it has been handled too much."
Thus vanished another clue -- as the mysterious nightdress of peach
color disappeared and the handkerchief initialed "S" and perhaps, the clues
that the slayer left behind.
It is even rumored in this city of rumors that certain influences are
working black magic with such clues.
It was even reported that a prominent moving picture producer had hired
a Los Angeles detective to work on the mystery -- not to solve it but to clog
the trail as much as possible. The detective is said to have admitted that
he is in the producer's hire. [4]
Considerable importance was attached to this connection because of the
fact that the producer in question had conducted a notorious affair with an
actress whose name has been linked with that of Taylor.
Although the heart affair was considered at an end some time since, it
is known that the producer still is interested professionally in the young
woman involved in the slaying.
The theory of blackmail, present since the day the body was found,
seemed strengthened with the finding of a secret bank account said to have
been maintained by Taylor in New York since the Fall of 1919. The bank was
said to be the Fifth Ave. branch of the Guaranty Trust Company of New York
and the sum deposited there was over $7,800.
The public administrator was informed today that only $18.96 of this
amount remains to Taylor's credit and there are no canceled checks or any bit
of writing among Taylor's effects to account for the vast difference. [5]
Other banks with which he dealt, it has been learned, cashed checks
frequently for $700 and $800 and one of $4,000.
According to Taylor's intimates it was unlike him to handle his affairs
in this slipshod manner. In these mysterious withdrawals the detectives see
the possibility that Taylor had for years paid large sums to blackmailers who
knew the secret of his life.
And, according to one theory. Taylor was killed by this gang when he
finally made a stand and refused further to bow to their demands for blood
money.
Another possibility seemed to have been exploded when the district
attorney's men released from custody one Daniel McShea, a taxicab driver,
after questioning him for two hours. McShea was reported missing by a woman
claiming to be his wife. Unfortunately he chose as the time for his
disappearance approximately the hour arbitrarily set by the police as the
hour of the assassination. He was said to have presented a complete alibi
and to have persuaded the operatives that he knew nothing of the murder.
In the Altadena foothills, where Mabel Normand, once reported engaged
to Taylor, is recuperating from the shock of her friend's death, came word
that her manager hopes she soon will be able to complete the picture
interrupted by the tragedy.
Until then the star seems to crave seclusion. Four guards were found
today pacing the snow powdered estate where Miss Normand is resting. They
met the visitor long before he reached the range of the house and quite
firmly informed him that Miss Normand could not be seen.
*****************************************************************************
NOTES:
[1] Some of the major errors: the Deane-Tanner family home was at Carlow, not
Mallow; in Kansas he was a rancher, not a farmer; he worked as a canvasser
and in a restaurant prior to joining Fanny Davenport (not afterwards); he was
never "shanghaied"; he enlisted in the British (not Canadian) army.
[2] Needless to say, the slang term had a different meaning at this time.
[3] Peavey is clearly referring to Mabel Normand.
[4] Charles Jones was reportedly working for Mack Sennett.
[5] Much ado about nothing. Taylor was making "Anne of Green Gables" in the
East at this time, which took several months to film. The local bank account
(hardly a "secret" one) was undoubtedly for the deposit of his paychecks.
When he returned to Los Angeles he then had the funds transferred to his Los
Angeles bank, leaving only a small amount in the New York bank to keep the
account open, in case he should need to use a New York bank again.
*****************************************************************************
For more information about Taylor, see
WILLIAM DESMOND TAYLOR: A DOSSIER (Scarecrow Press, 1991)
Back issues of Taylorology are available via Gopher or FTP at
etext.archive.umich.edu
in the directory pub/Zines/Taylorology
*****************************************************************************
