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Taylorology Issue 58
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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 58 -- October 1997 Editor: Bruce Long bruce@asu.edu *
* TAYLOROLOGY may be freely distributed *
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CONTENTS OF THIS ISSUE:
Minter and Shelby in Paris
In Defense of Charlotte Shelby
"The Tragic Life Story of Mabel Normand"
Interviews with Taylor's Sister-In-Law
Mary Miles Minter and "Broken Blossoms"
Two Interviews with Mary Pickford
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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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A photo of William Desmond Taylor's grave can be seen at
http://www.accesscom.com/~epitaph/taylorwd.gif
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Minter and Shelby in Paris
The murder of William Desmond Taylor increased the breach between Mary
Miles Minter and her mother, Charlotte Shelby. Their dispute became public
in August 1923 (see TAYLOROLOGY 11), and a lawsuit was filed by Minter in
1925, seeking recovery of the money she had earned as an actress. In 1926,
after another public flare-up of the Taylor case (see TAYLOROLOGY 14),
Charlotte Shelby moved to Europe. She was followed in a few months by
Minter. In Paris, December 1926, a reconciliation occurred between Shelby
and Minter (see TAYLOROLOGY 35), and Minter's lawsuit was settled out of
court. The following interview took place in late 1927, while Minter and
Shelby were living together in Paris; this was the first public interview
given after the reconciliation. They later returned to Los Angeles, and
Minter verbally defended Shelby throughout the remainder of her life.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
February 1928
Jane Dixon
PHOTOPLAY
What Happened to Mary?
Once there was a little girl with golden hair, blue eyes and a face that
was fashioned for the camera. For the most part she was a good child;
a little selfish perhaps, slightly willful and not particularly clever.
She didn't have to be clever, because she was beautiful and she had a shrewd
mother. But she wasn't bad or vicious or mean.
For a few brief years, she had a most amazing run of luck. She received
one of the highest salaries ever paid to a star. By careful publicity, she
became the living symbol of innocent, happy girlhood. Her future was so
bright that she was hailed as the successor of Mary Pickford herself.
Then, at the height of the fairy tale, the clock struck twelve.
And as strange a series of misfortunes descended upon Mary Miles Minter
as ever befell a human being.
And after these calamities, Mary Miles Minter faded away as completely
as a discredited myth.
First there was the William Desmond Taylor case--Hollywood's one classic
murder. Taylor was found dead in his bungalow with a bullet through his
back. In the investigation that followed, love letters, silly and
pathetically girlish, were discovered written by Mary on butterfly-crested
notepaper.
Mary's name became inseparably linked with a particularly sordid and
sinister murder. The mystery never has been solved and stalks about even
now, like a restless ghost, to haunt those who were even remotely connected
with it.
Then Mary left her mother and brought suit against her for an accounting
of the money that the mother, as Mary's guardian, controlled for her. Not a
pretty spectacle--a girl suing her mother over money. Even when the case was
adjusted by a reconciliation between Mary and her mother, the memory of it
hung in the public mind.
Other suits followed. Mary was named as the corespondent in a divorce
suit. The United States government found that Mary and her mother owed money
for income taxes. The movies turned a cold shoulder on Mary. The public
heard that the slender child had turned into a plump young woman. Pursued by
all the malevolent demons, Mary fled.
How and where is Mary Miles Minter living?
What becomes of a star when the gleam of it is cut off by clouds that
scurry along between the eyes of earth and its stellar orbit? Perhaps the
star goes on gleaming. At any rate, Mary Miles Minter goes on living.
First, the place: In an unostentatious hotel in a quiet street just off
the fashionable Champs Elysees in Paris. On the top floor.
When I asked a hotel official to be shown to the apartment of Miss
Shelby, he denied all knowledge of any such person. I assured him that no
longer than an hour before I had telephoned Miss Shelby and had been invited
to visit her.
The official shook his head. His suspicion was by no means appeased.
He retired through a door, which he closed securely behind him. After
fifteen minutes he returned, summoned an attendant, whispered a long string
of instructions and motioned us toward the elevator. We proceeded upward
under escort.
In the beginning I rather resented this escort, who insisted on keeping
uncomfortably close to my elbow. Later I was grateful for his familiarity
with the terrain. Never, otherwise, could I have found my way through the
labyrinth of service halls, storerooms, unexpected turns and blind passages
leading to a heavy gray door which gave no indication of what might go on
behind it.
The attendant knocked on the door. A staccato knock of dots and dashes
that sounded like a signal. The whole thing struck me as being ludicrously
like a scene in a mystery play.
The door was opened by a slender, bird-like woman with searching eyes,
straight set lips and a crown of reddish hair. The woman was Mrs. Charlotte
Shelby, Mary Miles Minter's mother.
Yes, Mary is living with the mother she once accused of appropriating
her salary and whom she sued for approximately one million dollars of those
earnings.
Mary and mother are playing a sister act. Love me, love my mother.
Love me, love my Mary.
"God only made one Mary," says Mrs. Shelby.
"A girl's best bet is her mother," says Mary.
Just like the good old days, when Mary was at her crest.
There are those who contend that Mary and Mother Shelby are living in a
state of armed neutrality. I cannot say. There was no evidence of any hard
feelings during my visit.
Mary was suffering from the temper of a balky tooth. Mary's mother was
full of solicitation for her daughter. Mary must partake of tea and toast
even if she had to dip the toast in the tea. Mary must have an orange shawl
thrown across her couch so she would not get the draught from an open window.
Mary, Mary, and again, Mary!
Some there are who claim remembrance of Mrs. Shelby when, as Mrs. Homer
Reilly, she was the elocution teacher in the then small but vigorous town of
Dallas, Texas. She taught the young folk to speak their pieces for the
church festivals and the Christmas charades, it is said, and the pride of her
motherhood was baby Juliet Reilly, now Mary Miles Minter.
When there came a parting of the ways between little Juliet's mother and
father, the elocution teacher resumed her maiden name of Shelby and Juliet
Reilly became Juliet Shelby. Then Mrs. Shelby took her two little daughters
to New York where, it was believed, she cherished hope of realizing stage
ambitions for herself.
Her interest, however, centered around little Juliet who, being a
precocious youngster with an unusual doll-like face and winsome manner, soon
came into demand for child parts. Juliet's success was so marked that Mrs.
Shelby submerged her own ambitions in those of her daughter.
Little Juliet became Mary Miles Minter, the two latter names belonging
to her grandmother.
What a tortuous road the elocution teacher and her daughter have
traveled from Dallas, Texas, to the secluded, guarded apartment in Paris!
And what does Mary look like now? No use denying that the little girl
has grown up into quite a husky woman. Not even her most ardent admirers
dare claim that she touches on or appertains to the fashionable silhouette.
Added weight gives her a mature look, but it is not altogether unbecoming.
She gives the impression of being healthy, fond of the fleshpots, but none
too happy over their effect on her.
The golden curls that once were to rival Mary Pickford's are now bobbed
into a chic Parisian head-dress.
"Please, must you say anything about me?' Mary pleaded. "People are not
interested in me any more. They don't remember me. My name is forgotten."
"Nonsense, Mary," expostulated her mother.
"Well, then," said the shorn lamb, " I am studying. Music, mostly. No,
I don't play. Not even a jewsharp. But I can hear music, and I can love it.
I want to make music my friend instead of a mere passing acquaintance.
"Have you taken up philosophy?" I inquired. Philosophy is so modish.
And psychology. And psychoanalysis. The refuge of the misunderstood.
"You're getting deep," laughed Mary. "I have philosophy only so far as
I have lived it. And," she went on, "I haven't read a newspaper or a
magazine story about myself since 1923. What's the use? One blunder, one
mistake, one misfortune, and fame becomes infamy. The climb to public favor
is sweet. The fall is swift. The return journey is interminable.
"Not long ago, I was named as corespondent in a divorce case. A man I
had met only in a casual way. When the news reached me, I was in Italy with
my mother. Investigation brought out the fact that the wife of the casual
acquaintance had selected my name as being the most sensational one on which
to base a divorce suit.
"I wanted to sue the wife who had taken recourse to such unfair methods
in order to win her freedom, or whatever it was she hoped to win. My
attorney advised me against such procedure.
"'Drop it,' he said. 'Your friends know better. Folks who like to
believe such things will believe what they want, anyway, no matter how much
you exonerate yourself.'
"I took my attorney's advice. One blunder. One mistake. One
misfortune. The fireworks forever after."
"And if you had it to do over again? If you were just beginning your
career, how would you plan it?"
Mary smiled. She has taken too many wallops from life to be disturbed
by a powder puff.
"I would NOT go into the movies."
Take that, you youngsters and you oldsters with young ideas.
Not that Mary turns thumbs down on the movies. How can she? But,
according to her own confession, she has seen ten movies, aside from those in
which she appeared, in her lifetime. Two of the ten were Chaplin comedies.
"Moving pictures," confesses Mary, "are a wonderful art and a wonderful
industry. But--not for me.
"I should have remained true to the speaking stage," sighs Mary.
"I made my first appearance at the age of four. The play was 'Cameo Kirby'
and Nat Goodwin was the star. Perhaps I will return someday, somehow. Who
knows?"
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In Defense of Charlotte Shelby
Charlotte Shelby has always been considered one of the main suspects in
the Taylor murder--and rightly so, due to the circumstantial evidence against
her. But the case against her is far from proven, and the following are 12
points to consider in her defense:
1. It was reported that a man inquired at a local gas station a few hours
before Taylor was killed, asking the whereabouts of the Taylor residence.
The man was described as about 27 years old and could not possibly have been
Shelby in disguise--she was in her mid 40's. Also, Shelby had visited
Taylor's home at least once before, so she knew where he lived and would not
have had to ask directions.
2. The person observed and described (around 5 feet 9 inches tall) by Faith
MacLean as leaving Taylor's home after the shot was fired also could not
possible have been Shelby in disguise. Minter was 5'2" tall, and Shelby was
about the same height. Also, the MacLean's maid stated she heard the
footsteps of a man pacing in the alley behind the MacLean home (see
TAYLOROLOGY 56); presumably the maid could tell the difference between the
sound of a man pacing and a woman pacing.
3. In 1937 Charlotte Shelby requested a Grand Jury investigation into the
Taylor murder (see TAYLOROLOGY 22), and she cooperated fully with that new
investigation. It seems highly unlikely that the killer would have requested
such an investigation, re-activating the murder investigation which had lain
dormant for so long.
4. According to Detective Sanderson's 1941 letter (reprinted in WILLIAM
DESMOND TAYLOR: A DOSSIER), a short time after the Taylor murder, Shelby
instructed her chauffeur, Chauncey Eaton, to remove the unfired shells from
her .38 caliber revolver and dispose of them. Several months later, in
August 1922, Julia Miles, Charlotte Shelby's mother, threw the gun into a
bayou in Louisiana. But this sequence makes no sense. The murder weapon
itself would be far more incriminating than the unfired shells--why not
dispose of the revolver and the shells immediately? And why give the shells
to the (potentially untrustworthy) chauffeur? The sequence and manner in
which Shelby disposed of her gun and shells does not sound like she killed
Taylor with it.
5. By all accounts, Mary Miles Minter's love for Taylor continued throughout
her life ("I worshipped him in life...I worship him today."--MABEL, p. 177).
Yet Minter reconciled with Shelby in 1926 and Minter publicly defended Shelby
from then on. If Shelby had indeed killed Taylor (particularly if Minter had
witnessed the murder as is asserted by Kirkpatrick) then why would Minter
have reconciled with Shelby and defended her? Minter evidently did NOT think
Shelby killed Taylor. If Minter, who was very close to the situation and
loved Taylor, did not think that her mother killed Taylor, then why should we
think so? What information do we have that Minter did not have?
6. Charlotte Shelby certainly feared prosecution for the Taylor murder.
But Leslie Henry stated in a deposition that Charlotte Shelby in early 1926
expressed concern that Mary Miles Minter may have killed Taylor (see
TAYLOROLOGY 5). Under those circumstances it is understandable why Shelby
would have wanted to dispose of the gun--if that gun were found to have been
the murder weapon, then Shelby would be the person likely to be convicted of
the murder (having publicly threatened Taylor), even if Minter were the
actual killer. Better to take no chances and just get rid of the gun.
7. The evidence against Shelby is all circumstantial, and there are no solid
witnesses against her. Marjorie Berger defended Shelby until it was implied
that charges might be brought against Berger, at which point Berger reversed
her testimony. Margaret Shelby Fillmore was an alcoholic, and involved in a
bitter court battle over property and money at the time she made her
statements against Shelby.
8. As Shelby herself later pointed out, the Taylor murder ruined Minter's
film career. If the money generated by Minter's career meant everything to
Shelby, why would she kill Taylor and destroy Minter's career?
9. The statements by Eaton and Berger, made years after the murder, claimed
that Shelby knew of the murder too early on the morning of February 2. But
Minter's arrival at the murder scene around noon that day, as indicated by
her own statement (see TAYLOROLOGY 11) and the LOS ANGELES RECORD (see
TAYLOROLOGY 56), indicates the timetable of Berger/Eaton is wrong (see
WILLIAM DESMOND TAYLOR: A DOSSIER, pp. 338-9).
10. The path of the bullet was very unusual, entering Taylor's left side and
angling steeply upward. Several possibilities were mentioned by the police:
(a) the killer crouched low behind the door and shot Taylor as he entered,
firing upward; (b) the killer embraced Taylor in a "kiss of death," stuck the
gun in Taylor's side and fired upward. It is difficult to imagine Charlotte
Shelby participating in either of these scenarios--she does not appear to be
the kind of person to crouch down, and it's hard to imagine Taylor embracing
this woman who had threatened him.
11. Minter said that when Shelby notified her on the morning of February 2
that Taylor was dead, Shelby stated: "William Desmond Taylor has just been
found murdered in his bed." (See TAYLOROLOGY 11.) The inaccuracy of that
statement seems to fit with the circumstances under which Shelby reportedly
learned the information second hand--Edna Purviance called Mabel Normand,
Mabel Normand called her director Dick Jones on the Sennett lot, word spread
throughout the Sennett lot and reached Carl Stockdale (who was acting in
Mabel Normand's film), Stockdale called Shelby and told her. Having passed
through so many people verbally, the inaccuracy ("in his bed") is
understandable and plausible.
12. Minter also reportedly quoted Shelby as stating at that time (when
notifying Minter that Taylor had been killed): "Your lover is dead and I am
glad of it. I am glad the son-of-a-bitch is out of the way." That is a
natural reaction on Shelby's part if Shelby were innocent of the murder; she
opposed Mary's infatuation with Taylor, did all she could to keep them apart,
and was glad that Taylor would no longer be a problem. But if Shelby had
killed Taylor, then it would have been much more logical for a clever woman
like Shelby to feign concern and sympathy for the victim; not verbally
rejoice over his death and call him a "son-of-a-bitch"--drawing suspicious
attention to her dislike of him.
These 12 items, put together, cast "reasonable doubt" upon the assertion that
Charlotte Shelby killed Taylor. She may have killed him, or not. Like
Edward Sands, she remains a suspect, but only a suspect.
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The following biography of Mabel Normand, written before her death, has
a number of errors and myths, but it also contains some incidents and
anecdotes not found elsewhere. Harry Carr had worked as publicist for Mack
Sennett for several years, and knew Mabel Normand personally. (For the facts
of Mabel Normand's life, see the books by Betty Harper Fussell and William T.
Sherman.) The following is a Hollywood-type biography--partly true, partly
false, and partly material which may or may not be true.
Thanks to William T. Sherman for bringing this article to our attention.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
October-November, 1929
Harry Carr
SCREEN SECRETS
The Tragic Life Story of Mabel Normand
Mabel Normand will always be remembered as the little girl who littered
up the floor of her limousine with peanut shells.
As the girl who walked down the street with THE POLICE GAZETTE under one
arm and the highbrow ATLANTIC MONTHLY under the other.
As the girl with the brain of a philosopher and the ribald tongue of a
gutter-snipe.
As the girl whose intimate friends included a woman of international
notoriety, a gentle old priest, the queen of a night club, a learned judge of
the Federal bench and an old Indian squaw.
As the girl whose friends and associates absolutely adored her; whose
servants would willingly have committed murder in her behalf; yet who
suffered as no other girl in Hollywood ever suffered from scandal and unjust
gossip.
As the girl who all but ruined herself through self sacrifice; and met
only with ingratitude.
As the girl to whom hardship and poverty brought happiness; to whom
wealth and fame brought unhappiness.
The life of Mabel Normand is as full of contradiction as a chapter from
ALICE IN WONDERLAND.
Mabel has always been a little tomboy.
She was born on Staten Island in New York Harbor, in 1894. Her people
were miserably poor. She "jes' growed," like Topsy. The little girls of the
neighborhood were too tame. She played most of the time with the boys. She
could "skin the cat" on the limbs of all the trees, play "one ol' cat," wield
a shinny club, and put up a pretty good fist fight on occasion. [1]
Situated as Staten Island is, quite naturally the great playmate of all
the children was the sea. Mabel played tag with the Atlantic Ocean from the
time she could walk. It was important to her after life that she learned to
swim and dive when she was a little girl. It wasn't tame-cat swimming that
Mabel did. She could do any daring stunt in the water that the boys did.
Her first distinction was to win the diving championship of Staten Island.
Another fact that was to be an important factor in her life was that in
Mabel's gang was a little French-Canadian boy. His name at that time was
Louis Coti. In later years he altered the spelling to Lew Cody. He and
Mabel played "prisoners' base" and swam together, as little children. Now
she is Mrs. Lew Cody.
She wasn't all boy, however. She had the usual yearnings of little
girls for dolls and clothes. But her family had such a direful struggle for
existence that she never had money for either.
I have heard Mabel tell how she used to stand in front of the story
windows at Christmas time and look, until her little heart ached, at the
dolls that some little rich girl would find in her Christmas stocking. She
told me how one day she found her favorite window so frosted by the storm of
the night before that she couldn't see into the window. So she leaned
against the glass and licked a peek hole through the frost with her little
hot tongue.
At the time Mabel was growing up, it was the period of girls and
artists. "The Gibson Girl" upstaged the world from the covers of LIFE.
"The Penrhyn Stanlaws Girl" smiled out through a swirl of decoration.
"The Howard Chandler Christy Girl" beamed from bachelors' walls. A girl with
a lovely face found her footsteps drawn to the studios. Mabel was a
beautiful child--with big lustrous eyes, a face that glowed with animation
and intelligence. Her figure was superb.
Several girls of her acquaintance, among them Alice Joyce and Olive
Thomas, were posing for artists: they brought Mabel along. She posed for
many of the magazine covers and story illustrations. She posed for Penrhyn
Stanlaws, C. D. Williams, Cole Phillips and other famous artists. She got 50
cents and hour and $5.00 for posing for photographs for front covers.
Between times, she was a cloak model. Once every season, she and Alice Joyce
and several other girls went to Wanamaker's in Philadelphia, as part of a New
York fashion show.
Mabel got to be quite famous as a model. It was in the days of full
skirts with ruffles and she won a prize offered for the most beautiful
"Fluffy Ruffles" girl.
One day she and some of the other girls were reading a newspaper in one
of the studios. They saw an advertisement stating that twenty beautiful
girls were wanted at the motion picture studio of the Vitagraph Company.
At that time, Vitagraph came pretty near being the motion picture
business. Under the leadership of Commodore J. Stuart Blackton, the company
was beginning to reach out from little news flashes of flags waving from flag
poles, cows standing in running streams, engines steaming down the tracks,
and started little dramas.
Candidates appeared in swarms. Commodore Blackton says it was no job to
pick out Mabel form the swarm. She shone out in the line of waiting
candidates like a diamond on a sidewalk, she was so beautiful and so adorably
young.
Her first picture narrowly escaped being her last. In order to make the
tank deeper for diving, a pit filled with water and surrounded by planking
was constructed inside the other tank. They didn't know much about studio
engineering in those days. Just as Mabel was getting ready to make a dive
into the tank, the whole thing burst with a roar and a rush of water.
Everybody on the set was half drowned and heavy planks were flung about like
chaff from a threshing machine.
After the swimming picture was finished, the rest of the twenty swimming
young ladies were sent on their way. Mabel was offered a regular job.
Her salary sounded like staggering wealth. She got $25--every week!
At that time, there were several stars in the Vitagraph Company who were
headed for fame. Jim Corbett, ex-heavyweight champion of the world, was
making some physical culture pictures with the help of Florence Turner.
Anita Stewart was a lovely little girl just trying to break in. Maurice
Costello--father of Helene and Dolores--was the bright star.
Mabel's first picture was with Maurice Costello. It was called "Over
The Garden Wall." She played the part of a girl who disguised herself as a
maid to test the affections of her rich lover. [2]
Mabel didn't last long at Vitagraph. That corporation decided to
stagger along without her services--owing to a typically Mabelesque incident.
The old elevated railroad ran past the studio--right past Mabel's
dressing room. This was far too great a temptation for her tomboy heart.
She used to stand in the window and kid the passengers as they went by. Some
of them got sore and complained to the picture company officials, who looked
very grave at Mabel. That young lady was defiant. "What do the dirty dogs
want to look in my dressing room windows for?" she demanded. The discussion
led to this and that. It finally led to Mabel's looking for a job.
At that time the old Biograph was getting started on Fourteenth street
in New York. A long, lean actor named David Wark Griffith was begging for a
chance to direct a picture. A very much embarrassed Irishman, who had been
working his way from a pick and shovel on the streets to a job singing in a
chorus, was asking them if they needed a strong man. His name was Michael
Sinnott; but he preferred being called Mack Sennett. A little girl from the
stage was there with her mother. Her name was Mary Pickford. Blanche Sweet,
a young dancer, had come to do a dance scene in a picture and had lingered on
to become an actress.
Billy Bitzer, the veteran camera-ace who photographed "Broken Blossoms,"
"Intolerance," "The Birth of a Nation" and other Griffith masterpieces,
remembers when Mabel joined the Biograph company. He says she was at that
time the most beautiful girl he had ever seen.
The trouble was that she didn't get the breaks. Her flare was for
comedy and most of the Griffith pictures in those days were solemn and heavy
affairs.
The other girls, Mary Pickford and the Gishes, tried very hard to get
on. They were always experimenting with new makeups, making tests, etc.
But her job weighed very lightly on Mabel. So it can't be said that she made
a great artistic commotion in the picture world.
In those days, Griffith was turning out a picture a week. Mabel, Mary
Pickford, Blanche Sweet--and later the Gish girls and Florence Turner, were
in most of them. Whenever there was a comedy bit, Mabel played it. When
there wasn't, she frequently played heavy ladies with a dark past.
The first great adventure of her life came when Griffith brought the
Biograph company out West. They found an old house in Los Angeles and played
one-reel dramas.
Mabel lived under the chaperonage of Mrs. Pickford. Mabel was still the
studio tomboy. She was recognized as a holy terror. She lived with Alice
Joyce and another girl in one of the early day apartment houses in Hollywood.
From the first, Mabel showed brilliant promise as an actress. She had a
vivid sense of drama, a striking originality and an artistic sympathy. The
only trouble she had was in learning the technique of the screen. She wanted
to go through every scene like a whirlwind. The camera was out of breath
trying to keep up. But so great is Mabel's power of concentration and will
power that she finally became noted throughout the film world for her perfect
sense of time. Her screen scenes became models to be studied in that regard.
When I first knew Mabel Normand, she was a queen.
That was in 1916. The old Keystone comedies were then at the height of
their fame. The Keystone Kops were known all over the world. The pay checks
of the kops held many names afterward to be famous--Harold Lloyd, Mal St.
Clair, Slim Summerville, Ramon Novarro.
It was like a big fun factory. There were twenty-two producing
companies. When the studio automobiles drew up in front of the old Sennett
lot every morning to take the comedians out on location, it looked like an
army mobilization.
Comedies fairly poured out of the studio to the market.
It was a veritable kindergarten of genius and fame. Nearly every girl
and many of the men afterward became famous screen stars--Phyllis Haver, Mary
Thurman, Gloria Swanson, Louise Fazenda, Marie Prevost, Polly Moran, Wallace
Beery, Raymond Hatton, Raymond Griffith, Charlie Chaplin, Chester Conklin,
Ben Turpin, Mack Swain...
Mabel was the undisputed queen.
Everything in the Sennett lot was as Irish as Paddy's cart. Sennett had
a grand studio office built for himself with paneling made of teakwood and
mahogany; and always held all his business consultations in the Turkish bath
rubbing room. The big concrete studios were surrounded with old wooden
shacks so that the whole effect was of Hooligan's Flats. There were even the
goats and the stray cats and dogs wandering around having free fights in the
scenery. It was the breath of life to Mabel. She was never happy in any
other studio.
She was the most exasperating and the most adorable of stars. She was
never there when they wanted her. Every picture was an alley fight with the
director. And through it all, Mabel had about as much "side" and was about
as "upstage" as an old hat. If she had any fighting to do (which she had
about once an hour) she fought with Mack Sennett; she didn't take it out on
the hired help.
I recall one day when there was an important scene to do. They were on
location. One of Mabel's girl friends drove up. Mabel ran out to see her,
climbed into the car and did not come back for two weeks.
In the beginning, Mabel's comedies were all made with Sennett and Fred
Mace and Ford Sterling. As the company prospered and grew to proportions,
Sennett stopped acting and became an executive.
About this time, a new comedian hove in sight. He had been a hick
variety actor in Bisbee, Arizona. He got ambitious and came to Los Angeles,
where he acted in little burlesque shows on Main street. His name was Roscoe
Arbuckle. Sennett found him and put him into comedies with Mabel. To my
mind, these pictures were the high tide of two-reel comedies. In many of
them Mabel swam and dove. The success of these swimming-in-tights pictures
was such that it became impossible to supply the demands of the market. They
eventually led to the launching of the Sennett Bathing girls. In these
pictures, Mabel had pretty much her own way. The ideas were often her own
and the direction reflected her sure touch and daring originality.
I don't know why Mabel always wanted to appear as a roughneck. Even in
those days she had a brilliant, thoughtful mind. She read books of heavy
German philosophy that I couldn't even pretend to understand. She wrote good
poetry--and hid it. Never was there a girl of such perversity. She always
took a delight in putting her worst foot forward.
I remember when Charlie Chaplin joined the company. Sennett found him
--as every one knows--acting in a vaudeville sketch called "A Night in a
London Music Hall." Mabel took a dislike to him.
Sennett always treated every comedy recruit--no matter how famous--the
same way. For two or three weeks, he let him roam around the lot--neglected,
ignored--lower than the dust. It was during this lonely period that Charlie
found those old shoes, the little cane and the funny derby hat in a corner of
an old prop room.
When he finally got a part, it was in one of Mabel's comedies. She
could not see him at all and did not like him. Mabel was as Irish as the map
of Dublin. I imagine it would have been a singular Englishman who could have
walked into her heart.
She and Charlie used to fight like a dog and a monkey. She did most of
the fighting. She never called him by his right name. She invented the most
extraordinary and diabolical nick-names for him. He didn't like the way she
did comedy and she didn't like his brand. His technique was entirely
different from the one then in vogue.
Money to Mabel was just something to be thrown around. She put it in a
pocket that had no bottom, nothing but a hole. Compared with Charlie, Calvin
Coolidge was a prodigal wastrel.
Charlie should have been suspicious when Mabel asked him to go with
Fatty Arbuckle and three or four others for an evening at a night club at
Vernon. But--for once--he wasn't. Every one ordered everything on the menu
card. When the waiter came with the check every one but Charlie was dismayed
to find that he had left his pocket-book at home. Charlie had to pay--and
the bill was $40. He would not speak to Mabel for weeks.
Mabel had a heart of gold. I do not believe any such generous or self-
sacrificing soul ever lived in this world. She flung both her money and her
quick sympathies around as though dollars were leaves and she owned an
unlimitable forest.
Every workman on the lot adored Mabel. She used to borrow the "makings"
from them and smoke Bull Durham cigarettes on the sets. She knew all about
their children and how they were getting on in the world.
There was an old blacksmith who did all the iron work for the sets.
Mabel had helped him when he stepped on a chunk of hot iron and had to go to
the hospital. When his wife was operated on, she paid all the bills.
I happened to be wandering around the studio on the day before
Christmas. The old fellow came up and, with shy embarrassment, handed her a
funny little package--all rumpled up. Mabel unwrapped what was probably the
most outrageously ugly soft pillow cover ever seen in the world. She threw
her arms around the old fellow's neck and kissed him twice--once for himself
and once for his wife. After he had gone, she showed me the funny little
uneven stitches, made by trembling, old fingers. Then she sat down and
cried.
One thing I always liked about Mabel--the wives of her men friends were
also her friends. Mabel had no more inhibitions than a savage of the South
Seas. But there was nothing dirty about her private life. In fact,
somewhere under Mabel's reckless swear words was a Puritan morality.
On one memorable occasion Mabel was dining in the Alexandria--at that
time the fashionable gathering place of the movie stars. A famous woman star
who had just been the co-respondent in a divorce suit, came over to Mabel's
table. Mabel leaped up, flaming with anger. "Don't you talk to me--you--"
she cried. "I may not be a Sunday school character, but I never have broken
up homes and broken women's hearts. I let married men alone."
Dear harum-scarum Mabel! I remember once when she was coming to our
house for a seven o'clock dinner. She arrived at 10:30 and innocently asked
if she was late.
Texas Guinan told me how she looked out on her front steps one morning
in her house on Tenth street, New York, and there sat Mabel eating peanuts--
like a little street gamin. At that time one of the most famous motion
picture stars in the world, she had gotten lonesome and had decided to come
to have breakfast with Texas. She got there pretty early so she sat on the
front steps a couple of hours.
One of the most thundering hits in the history of motion pictures was
"Tillie's Punctured Romance." This was the first long comedy ever made. And
it was made with misgivings. The trade did not believe a funny picture could
hold the laughs for six or seven reels. Sennett cast it with a great
triumvirate--Mabel, Fatty Arbuckle and Charlie Chaplin. It was a record
breaker!
The exhibitors began yelling for more and Mabel was launched in
"Mickey." The making of it was one long chapter of grief.
The story was written in the first instance by Anita Loos--later to
become the author of GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES. And then the story was re-
written by about everybody in Hollywood.
There are many ways of winning the heart of a lady; but if Lew Cody won
Mabel in "Mickey," then it opens a new chapter in the art of love.
I remember that he chased her around and around the room, kicking over
chairs while the fair one yelled for help. She ended up hanging on the edge
of the eaves of a roof that overlooked a precipice. And in this case it was
a real roof and a real precipice. Mabel was always a star athlete and
absolutely without fear.
I don't imagine that one thought of marriage ever entered their heads
during the making of "Mickey." All I can remember about them was the way
they kidded on the sets. Mabel is the wittiest girl I have ever known and
Lew is famous all over the country as a wise-cracker and story teller.
And as in the case of Mabel, so is the case of Lew. Behind their
fooling is a wealth of sound "big" reading and genuine brain power. Anyone
thinking of their courtship, will imagine it as good vaudeville, but I am
willing to wager that they talk of books more than anything else.
You could write a book about the making of "Mickey." The adventures and
mishaps were plenty. It dragged along for a year or more until everybody was
disgusted and discouraged with the darn thing.
One little scene comes to my mind that is so characteristically Mabel
that I shall have to tell it.
She had a scene with a bull dog. He took his art too seriously and--
without meaning to--bit her very badly. There was a terrible commotion.
Doctors were arriving with first aid and Mabel was laid out for treatment.
Everybody had forgotten the dog. The poor, abashed fellow was covered with
mortification. With the most woebegone expression I ever saw in a dog's
eyes, he had crawled off into a corner of a set and lay there waiting for
heaven to strike him dead for his iniquities.
It was Mabel who saw him. She flung off all the doctors and the nurses
and the bandages and ran over to take the dog in her arms. "Look," she cried
indignantly, "you have broken his heart." And she proceeded to explain to
him that artists frequently fall under the spell of their art and hurt
people.
"Mickey" was finally finished and, after a long period, released. It
proved to be one of the greatest triumphs of the history of motion pictures.
It is still known to the trade as "the mortgage lifter." I imagine it is
still running somewhere. It brought Mabel an offer from Samuel Goldwyn of a
starring job at a salary then unheard of--$3,500 a week. She took the
job. [3]
She was riding on the crest of the wave when she left the old Mack
Sennett Studio to become a $3,500 a week star with Sam Goldwyn. She went out
with the tide. She was never very successful or happy off that funny old
Sennett lot.
While she was starring for Goldwyn, it happened that Geraldine Farrar
was working in the same studio. Mabel made it her mission in life to see
that the illustrious Geraldine did not lose her sense of democracy.
A male opera star was playing in Farrar's picture and they playfully
carried their atmosphere with them. They used to sing little impromptu
dialogue at each other. As for instance: "Good Morn-ING! how are you this
mo-o-o-orn-i-i-ing?" And the tenor would reply from the balcony in front of
his dressing room, "V-e-e-ry well, I THANK YOU." Naturally this was too much
for Mabel. One day the opera stars were horrified to hear another voice
chiming into their duet with an outburst of song not calculated to add to the
dignity of either, or the peace and harmony of the situation.
Farrar was naturally nervous about being watched when she acted. She
complained to the management that Mabel stood around the scenery and rubbered
at her. The management tactfully suggested that Mabel find some other kind
of entertainment. Mabel insisted that she had to look at something and she
didn't know where else to look. Whereupon all the Farrar sets were boxed in
like a national bank vault. The world went very well, then--until it was
discovered that Mabel was peeking through a knot hole. The knot hole was
plugged up. One day Miss Farr heard a noise that seemed to come from above.
She glanced up to see that that terrible infant had shinned up a balcony and
was looking down at her from the roof.
If Mabel had thrown her money around before, she poured it out in floods
now. Every rag tag in Hollywood who could think of a sob story touched
Mabel.
In the middle of her engagement she made a little trip to Paris which is
still historic. One of the Paris dress makers sold her a gold gown for
$10,000; she bought enough jewelry to stock a store. Mabel still has one of
the most marvelous collections of gems in the world.
When she came from Paris--having paid all the expenses of her girl
playmates, she told what a grand time she had had. This made some of her
other girl friends feel so sad and neglected that Mabel took the next boat
back to show them a good time, too. Returning from this trip, she
encountered another sad and neglected coterie on the dock and took the next
boat for the third time. Altogether, those trips set Mabel back
$250,000. [4]
Her Goldwyn pictures were not very successful. They were just pictures.
Mabel was always essentially a comedienne and the art of comedy making is a
very special talent. The Goldwyn studio just wasn't equipped for the
job. [5]
In the end, she drifted back to Sennett's--I believe on an arrangement
with Goldwyn. In rapid succession she made three of the greatest comedies of
her career--"Molly-O," "Suzanna" and "The Extra Girl."
"Suzanna" was such a knock-out that Mary Pickford offered Sennett
$50,000 for the story and tried to persuade him to take a vacation from his
own studio and direct her in a picture. Mary told me she would rather have
had Mabel Normand's work in that picture to her credit than anything else she
had ever seen on the screen.
Providence at this time evidently decided that Mabel had been licking
the buttered side of the bread about long enough. Down on her head came a
series of the most singular misfortunes that ever befell a star.
She had a personal quarrel with Mack Sennett that, I think, broke her
heart. I think that Mabel had always loved this big handsome Irishman.
For two years, then, she lived almost the life of a recluse. She had a
woman companion who was half maid and half pal. Mabel read and wrote.
I have seen some of her poetry. It has a remarkable quality. None of it has
ever been printed. She keeps it in a locked book.
The day that William Desmond Taylor was murdered, Mabel woke up to find
herself the heroine of an international love episode.
I have among my papers a memorandum of Mabel's own account of her affair
with Taylor. It gives a breezy idea of the way Mabel talks: "Well," she
said, "it seems like Mr. Taylor was the odd man when we went to parties and I
was the odd girl going around with a married crowd--Ruth Roland, Henry King
and a lot of married couples.
"A lot of people thought Taylor was very fond of me and that I didn't
return it. Then they decided that we were engaged; then they made up their
minds that I wasn't very nice to him and that we had quarreled.
"I never had any quarrel with him--except for instance when we were at a
party or something and I would run away and pay attention to a lot of other
people. Bill would say, when we were going home, that I didn't treat him
nicely. And I would say: 'For God's sake, why do you stand around with that
trick dignity of yours? You make me sick.'
"Bill would say: 'Good God, don't you know I love you?'
"And I would say: 'Well, then for God's sake, don't be melodramatic
about it.'"
Mabel was the last person to see Taylor alive. She had come to his
apartment to get a book. He gave her the book: they talked for a few
moments; then he took her to her limousine. He was next seen dead on his
dining room floor.
Mabel was examined and cross-examined by the detectives. She insisted
that she knew nothing about the murder. She was such a delicious morsel for
gossip that the papers couldn't let her alone. In spite of some letters that
Mabel was very anxious to get back and which were afterward found in the
murdered man's riding boots, I think that it was never a serious love affair.
Every other person connected with the affair was allowed to forget it,
but some one was continually dragging the ghost of Taylor out and parading it
before her.
Years afterward, a district attorney, anxious for publicity, whooped it
up again and dragged Mabel back in--when she had finally struggled back to
another start in motion pictures.
"Say," she said, "if I have to repeat this again, I am going to set it
to music to relieve the monotony. I've already committed it to memory."
Mabel passed off the situation with gay courage, but it hurt. I have
never seen a girl so crushed and humiliated.
Mabel was ill for a long time after the Taylor murder case. Her health
had been failing for a long time. All this worry--these sleepless nights--
didn't help. Her picture career seemed to have faded away. Her finances
were in a terrible condition. It looked like seventeen kinds of ruin were
staring her in the face.
One thing about Mabel though; some one always seems to arrive with a net
when she is falling. In this case it was an attorney--Claude I. Parker and
his brother, Ivan Parker. Some of Mabel's most devoted friends are
professional men of highest standing.
I imagine that no attorney ever tackled a more terrible mess than
Mabel's finances. In her safety deposit box he found pay checks that had
lain for years without being cashed. Her check book looked like the daily
record of a charity institution. Checks for $1,000--checks for $3,500--
$2,000--$2,500...to people she scarcely knew.
By main strength and violence, her attorney would drag Mabel into his
office and she would sit like a guilty, naughty little girl while he went
over her check stubs.
"Now," he would say, "why in the name of the seven hinges of hell did
you give that woman $4,000?"
"Oh, Mrs. Thingamobob--whatever her name is..." Mabel would say. "Sure
I gave her the money."
"But why?" thundered the exasperated lawyer.
"Why, she needed it," answered Mabel--as though that were final and
satisfactory.
Mr. Parker told me that--in spite of her scatter-brain method of making
ducks and drakes out of good money--Mabel's memory is so extraordinary that
she could remember every check she had written. Her mind is like a
dictograph record.
She was finally straightened out financially. She now keeps her
returned checks pinned to the stubs. A trust fund of $50,000 has been set
apart for the care and protection of her mother and Mabel herself is safely
enjoying a good, sound income that is safe from all the sob sisters with
itching palms. When they found they had to tell their driveling stories to a
lawyer with thin tight lips, they faded away. Most of their undying
friendship for Mabel also faded. One of her tragedies has been the
ingratitude of the people for whom she has sacrificed herself.
About two years after the Taylor murder, another tragedy came slamming
down out of a clear sky and all but destroyed Mabel. She was as much to
blame for it as she was for the whale that swallowed Jonah.
It was a curious story. A love sick boy who had adored her from afar
had finally gotten into her life as a chauffeur, to be near her. In the
innocence of her heart, Mabel never dreamed that this quiet, subdued, polite
young boy in chauffeur's uniform was wildly, passionately in love with her.
His name was Horace A. Greer. Probably that was not his real name.
It is known that he was also called Joe Kelly. A rather mysterious young
fellow. It was said after the tragedy that he was the son of a rich family
in the east. He had, however, worked as a chauffeur for Charles Ray and one
of the Spauldings.
It was the last day of 1923. Mabel was very ill. She was going to the
hospital the next day to be operated on for appendicitis. But after all, New
Year's night was New Year's night with Mabel. [6]
Edna Purviance telephoned her to come over to her house on Vermont
avenue. "Court" was there. "Court" was Courtland Dines, a young millionaire
form Denver who was a Hollywood beau at the moment.
Greer drove her over and left her at the door.
"Come on, you dirty dogs," said Mabel, bursting into Edna's house.
"Step into your dance and let's go somewhere."
Mr. Dines, however, didn't want to go somewhere.
Greer, the chauffeur, went back to Mabel's house. He worked around the
house taking down Mabel's Christmas tree. Mabel's secretary and companion
telephoned her at Edna's house. She told Mr. Dines, who came to the phone,
that Mabel ought to come home; that she was ill and had to go to the hospital
the next day. "Oh, it's early yet," said Dines airily; "send over my
Christmas package." Mabel had forgotten to bring his present.
The secretary put her hand over the telephone and said to Greer, "He
won't let her come home. He won't let her leave the house." Quietly,
grimly, Greer said that he would take over Mr. Dines' Christmas present; and
went out to the car.
Let Mabel tell the rest of the story:
"Joe," she said (she always called him Joe, although his name was
Horace) "came in and he had the Christmas package. I noticed nothing unusual
about him. I left the room. I went into Edna's room. She had her evening
gown on, but it wasn't hooked up yet. I didn't want the chauffeur to see
Edna with her gown unhooked so I went in and said to Edna: 'Say, you dirty
dog, where's your powder puff?'
"Then all of a sudden I heard those terrible things. I thought they
were fire crackers. I used to throw fire crackers at Ben Turpin--poor old
Ben--all the time at the Sennett Company, until he threatened to quit his
job. That's what I thought they were--fire crackers. They were popping all
over the house."
But they weren't fire crackers. The young chauffeur had asked Mabel to
come home and Dines had sneered at his anxious devotion. Greer had drawn a
revolver and fired bullets into Dines until the revolver jammed. Then he
drove to the police station and gave himself up.
Dines did not die--but Mabel did. She died a thousand deaths. No one
will ever know what she went through. Edna Purviance is a slow, quiet, self-
contained girl. She had nothing to say to the reporters, so she escaped.
Mabel could not help being good copy. Every reporter who worked on the case
adored Mabel and would have strangled himself with his own hands to have
helped her, but they just wrecked her.
It just happened to be one of those times when Hollywood was looking for
a chance to be shocked. The women's clubs felt like passing resolutions
against somebody, so they passed them about Mabel. Why they picked on Mabel
is a mystery. It was a furious scandal. Mabel was the only one who was not
to blame in any remote way, so naturally she was made the goat. It just
about finished her screen career.
About three years ago, Mabel tried another timid venture in pictures.
Hal Roach of the Roach Comedies collided with an inspiration. He would bring
back some of the old-time stars in his comedies. He signed Theda Bara and
Mabel Normand and several others. It was an unfortunate adventure. None of
them got to first base. When they got them in the pictures, nobody knew what
to do with them. So Mabel surrendered her screen career with a sigh.
Not long after that, Hollywood spilled over the coffee cups in the
morning in their astonishment at what they read in the morning paper. Mabel
had gone up the coast with a gay automobile party and had come back a married
lady. Her husband was her old school mate, Lew Cody--who in "Mickey" had
been the villain who pursued her.
Sudden? Yes, it was sudden. But that does not mean it was not a
decision well thought out. When Mabel and Lew started on a trip to Ventura
with a gay party they apparently had about as much intention of trying to
swim to China as they had of being married. But Mabel's decisions are
lightning flashes.
Her honeymoon was a characteristically "Mabel" as her bag of peanuts and
her ATLANTIC MONTHLY. She didn't like Lew's mansion in Beverly Hills,
anyhow, it was too much trouble to move her clothes; so she lived in her
house and he lived in his house and occasionally they went to call on each
other. Lately, however, they moved in Lew's house.
Much of the time since their marriage, they have been separated by
circumstances. Lew went into vaudeville and has been on the road almost
continuously. Both he and Mabel have been ill a great deal. One time last
winter when she was ill in a hospital in Altadena with her life despaired of,
Lew was almost as ill in Chicago. All they could do was send each other
telegrams.
They go out very little socially, on account of Mabel's health; but they
are most in demand of any married couple in Hollywood. Lew, in fact, is
almost a professional dinner guest. I dare say that he is invited to two-
thirds of the public banquets given in Hollywood. He is the most brilliant
after-dinner speaker I have ever heard. And that goes even for Will Rogers.
Mabel would be a riot socially if she had the slightest interest in it
--with her beauty, her charm and her scintillant brains. I would give a good
deal to hear Lew and Mabel both going at once as I used to hear them in the
old days.
Since her marriage, little has been heard of Mabel. She lives in
Beverly Hills, the motion picture suburb of Los Angeles. Sometimes she goes
out to parties. She reads a lot, writes a lot, and hides her writings in a
locked book.
Twice during the last few years her life has been despaired of. She
says it is "just a cold." Her beautiful body is sadly wasted, but her spirit
is aflame as ever. She is just as inquisitive, as eager and as keen as ever.
But sometimes the Mabel that nobody knows has her hours of sorrow and
despair.
I have a letter from Mabel that I treasure dearly because it is a side
of Mabel that very few know--the sincere, sorrowful, sweet child underneath
the reckless little tomboy who throws fire-crackers at the actors. It reads:
"Dear Harry:
"Somehow or other tonight I am in a very lonely mood, so I am going to
write you of something that I have always intended telling you when we should
meet, but I have decided that it is very selfish of me to keep it any longer.
"A very dear friend of mine who knows you personally and who has always
been one of my most loyal and staunchest friends--something, Harry, that one
cannot buy--to who I have gone with my many troubles, because you know
unhappiness makes sensitive people cowardly--and whom I have never left
without some encouragement and solace..." (She goes on to tell me of a hidden
kindness done me by a very eminent lawyer--a kindly deed of which I had never
been conscious. She wanted me to know it--that I should ever more deeply
appreciate his friendship.)
"You know, Harry," she continues, "there is a mystic power in the ties
which friendship throws around the human heart and I am sure he is one of
your truest and most loyal friends.
"Shall we call him the judge?--and I will leave you to guess the rest.
"Give my regards to Mrs. Carr and the family and this will be a secret
just between you and me and I am happier now than when I began to write this
letter.
"Ever your friend,
"Mabel Normand."
I know Mabel--all her faults and her failings and her golden
virtues...and her great heart and her great soul--and I am proud of her
friendship as I have been proud of the friendship of few men or women.
She is a great actress and a great woman.
*****************************************************************************
*****************************************************************************
Interviews with Taylor's Sister-In-Law
February 4, 1922
LOS ANGELES EXAMINER
Woman Tells of Dual Life
Additional details of the dual life led by William Desmond Taylor,
motion picture director, murdered Wednesday night, were revealed last night
when The Examiner located his sister-in-law, Mrs. Ada P. Deane-Tanner, in
Monrovia.
It was an extraordinary recitation which Mrs. Tanner related regarding
the dead man.
His real name, she said, was William Desmond [sic] Deane-Tanner and it
was his brother, Dennis, that she married.
Only twice in her life had she ever seen this mysterious figure, known
to Hollywood and to the picture world as William D. Taylor.
Once was on the birth of her daughter, 13 years ago, in New York city,
when he came to see his brother's child and wife on her hospital bed.
The other time was in Los Angeles, six years ago, when she went to the
studio to find him.
According to this woman's story, as she told it in her little Monrovia
home last night, William D. Taylor, the director, during the past six years
and up to his death absolutely refused to admit he was her brother-in-law,
and yet, when her health broke down a [sic] years ago he began sending her a
monthly allowance, which she was receiving regularly up to the time of his
death.
He wouldn't admit that he was her relative but he supported her, though
never seeing her.
A more astounding part of the story is Mrs. Deane-Tanner's recital of
the manner in which her own husband in 1912 disappeared from sight never to
be seen again.
"I don't know whether he is alive today or not," she said. "William D.
Taylor's brother left me for the office one day and never was heard from or
seen since.
"I asked Mr. Taylor, as he called himself here, about my husband's
disappearance in letters to him, but he said that he had not (in 1921) seen
or heard from my husband for fourteen years. This I know wasn't so, as my
husband was by my side when my brother-in-law called on me at the birth of my
daughter, twelve years before, in 1921, now thirteen years ago."
Mrs. Deane-Tanner refused to say what her husband's business was, but
intimated that he had a considerable income.
When he disappeared, she said, she spent a small fortune trying to find
him, in detective bills and in other ways, but though she had the earth
scoured to the best of her ability in an effort to trace the man, she was
never able to get an inkling of what happened to him in those minutes between
his leaving their home and the time when he should have--but never did--
arrive at his office...
When Mrs. Deane-Tanner six years ago heard from a friend here that her
brother-in-law was in Hollywood under an assumed name, she went to the studio
to find him.
She finally, she said, secured an interview with him, but he
persistently refused to admit he was Deane-Tanner, though she was positive he
was the same man who stood above her bedside an smiled at her new-born baby.
So she left and had nothing more to do with Taylor-Tanner until her
health began to fail a year ago. She had a 12-year-old daughter with her and
was in need of funds, having spent all she had searching for her husband and
educating her daughter.
So she again went to Taylor or Tanner, this time writing him and telling
him of her predicament. He replied to her, again denying that he had ever
been Tanner, but at the same time he sent her a check and ever since has been
giving an allowance.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
February 4, 1922
LOS ANGELES TIMES
...Mrs. Deane-Tanner in Monrovia said the last check from Mr. Taylor
came about January 20, last. She said she came to Monrovia nine years ago
and got in touch with him six years ago, appealing to him for help.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
February 5, 1922
LOS ANGELES EXAMINER
Divorced Wife Reveals Brothers' Tangled Lives
Mystery Story Related by Mrs. Deane-Tanner
Sister-in-Law of Murdered Director Says Two Husbands Who
Disappeared Were Not the Same Man; Dennis Never Found
Out of the tangled lives of two brothers, deputy
sheriffs last night
were endeavoring to find the secret of the death of William D. Taylor.
Both had been married; both were fathers; both had everything to hold
them at home.
But both mysteriously disappeared from their homes and their old haunts.
One is dead, after a reappearance in a new land--the West--and died in
the glory of a success in his chosen field.
The other has never reappeared--unless in some way the other brother is
connected with the murder of William D. Taylor.
The amazing story of a double life, as told exclusively in the city
additions of The Examiner yesterday from the lips of Mrs. Ada Deane-Tanner,
sister-in-law of the dead man, was elaborated upon yesterday by her.
Reports had reached officials here yesterday from the East and from San
Francisco that Mrs. Deane-Tanner had not married Dennis, the brother, but had
married William, the director, who was murdered here last Wednesday night.
This Mrs. Deane-Tanner yesterday emphatically denied, in her modest
Monrovia home, in East Lemon street, just around the corner from the home of
Coroner Willis O. Nance.
"I can prove," she said, "that I am not the director's widow. I am his
sister-in-law. I have a marriage license here somewhere which shows I
married Dennis, not William. The records in New York City will show separate
licenses on separate years for the marriages of Dennis and William. Dr.
Pomeroy, the county health officer, by brother-in-law, knew Dennis, my
husband, and can tell you he is not the man shown in photographs as the
famous director."
This was her convincing story, told in a whisper from the couch, where
she lay ill from the shock of the tragedy and the sudden forcing of her and
her history into the glaring limelight.
Mrs. Deane-Tanner admitted to The Examiner yesterday for the first time
that she had divorced her husband in Los Angeles six years ago.
The divorce, she said, was granted by Superior Judge Charles Monroe on
the grounds of desertion and nonsupport.
At the time of the divorce case, Mrs. Deane-Tanner said, she recited, in
brief, the story of the mysteriously disappeared husband and as there was no
contest the divorce was granted.
At the time, however, no mention of the relationship between this
unknown woman and the famous director was made and even her relationship to
Mrs. Pomeroy was not known.
In a large way, backing up and corroborating the story told by the old
woman, was the story given to The Examiner by Dr. Pomeroy himself.
"I cannot say for sure," stated the county official, "that William
Desmond Taylor was not Dennis Gage Deane-Tanner.
"But I can hardly believe that they were one and the same man.
"I've seen pictures of the murdered man, though to my knowledge I never
saw him in the flesh, and this man is not the man I knew in New York as my
relative by marriage."
Dr. Pomeroy admitted that he had naturally not seen Dennis Deane-Tanner
since his disappearance in New York years ago, but he stated that he has a
good recollection on his appearance and that he was unquestionably not
William.
"I never saw the two brothers together," he continued, "and in fact,
I never saw the elder brother, William. But there must have been two
brothers, as Dennis frequently mentioned William. I met him several times in
the East."
Dr. Pomeroy also corroborated his sister-in-law's story that she had
employed detective agencies to search for her husband when he disappeared,
but that no trace of the man had ever been found.
The theory of certain officers that for the solution of the crime the
investigators should go back to New York, 1912, instead of Los Angeles, 1922,
met with little enthusiasm from Mrs. Deane-Tanner yesterday, although she
admitted that in the mysterious past of the two brothers some common motive
might be linked.
"I am more inclined to believe," she said, "that the solution of the
crime lies in some quarrel or misunderstanding of recent origin--something
growing out of the associations he has formed since coming to this Coast.
Somehow I can't believe that the disappearance of my husband and William's
disappearance had any connection, and though I wouldn't at all be surprised
to learn that my former husband is still alive, I can't believe that he could
possibly be connected with his brother's death in any way--even as a possible
fellow victim."
The sister-in-law of the murdered man made light of a theory that some
old English feud might have been behind the mystery in the lives of both
brothers--some overwhelming tragedy which, if disclosed, would make trivial
the astounding revelations so far before the public.
Mrs. Deane-Tanner's elaborated story of her relationship in this maze of
tangled lives is as follows:
"My maiden name was Ada C. Brennan. I was the daughter of Mr. and Mrs.
C. K. Brennan of New York. Both my parents are dead.
"I was married to Denis Gage Deane-Taylor [sic], a man considerably
smaller than his brother, though of similar general appearance, in 1907 in
New York.
"By that marriage I had two daughters, Muriel, now 14, and Alice, now 12
years old.
"In 1912 I had lung trouble and my husband sent me to the Adirondack
Mountains for a rest cure. When I had been there a week I suddenly received
a telegram from my mother in the metropolis to come home at once. I
immediately took a train for the city and when I arrived I learned that my
husband had disappeared.
"We hunted high and low for him. We employed detectives and did every
manner of things possible to make likely his discovery, but in vain. To this
day I have never heard from or heard of my husband.
"After futile waiting and wondering and heart-broken nights trying to
live until the next hard day of raising two children, fatherless, I sued for
divorce and was awarded a decree.
"During the time I was married I became very friendly with Mrs.
Frederick Young of New York. She was the former wife of Edward Thaw, a half
brother of Harry K. Thaw.
"I was also a good friend of Ethel Putnam, daughter of George H. Putnam,
and her sister, Dorothy; one year on a tour of Europe stopped at Kent,
England, to visit Mr. Deane-Tanner's family. Thus I learned something of
William Deane-Tanner, though I met him personally but several times in my
life.
"Both these sisters finally were married and I have lost track of them--
don't even know their names now.
"Finally, after futile searches for my husband, I and my children moved
to Monrovia, to stay at the home of my sister, Mrs. Pomeroy, at 240 East Palm
street, and after they moved, I came to this address.
"My husband, while with me in New York, worked for A. S. Vernay, 12 East
Forty-Fifth street, as an interior decorator, and when he disappeared Mr.
Vernay could find no business reason for his having done so. His books, as
were his brothers books four years before on his disappearance, were perfect
and his work had been most satisfactory, Mr. Vernay said.
"On November 28, 1915, here at Monrovia, I was notified that Mrs. Young,
my friend, had died and had left to me a bequest which amounted to roughly
$1000 a year for life. With other moneys I had, this annuity would have made
it possible for me to have taken care of my children amply for life, but
through litigation, on some technicality, I never was able to get my bequest.
"Mrs. Young died on November 6, 1915, and her estate was compared to be
of some $1,000,000. We had always been good friends and she was most kind to
me at all times.
"In the letter advising me of the bequest it was stated that as soon as
the estate was settled I would receive the money quarterly."
Turning back to her brother-in-law, now dead, she went on:
"My first child, Muriel, was born in New York city in 1908, in November,
and after her birth I met my brother-in-law for the first time. Denis'
brother came up to see me and his little niece, but we talked only a short
time. He was considerably larger than Denis, but similar to him in general
appearance, as I have said.
"From then on I saw him only occasionally.
"His disappearance, the talk of the town at that time, however, I shall
not easily forget.
"It was the day of the notable Vanderbilt Cup race on Long Island, in
November, 1908. William had witnessed the race, and had been seen there by
scores of his friends, as he was popular.
"The next day the earth had swallowed him. He was gone, had disappeared
and it was several years before he was heard from again, and then only
indirectly.
"His wife, the former Ethel Hamilton, Floradora girl, was devoted to him
and they had but few quarrels, but her grief was no greater than my husband's
at his brother's loss.
"He was inconsolable and for months though of nothing else. If he had
any suspicion of how and why his brother had gone he never whispered a word
of it to me and I never for a moment thought, or think now, that he knew.
"That there was anything in their mutual past that could have caused
this tragedy I cannot believe.
"Of course, William's relations with his wife, which I have referred to,
I knew only by gossip, but naturally took it at the time at its face value."
Before her death, Mrs. Young made a trip to California and while here
learned that William Deane-Tanner, known as William D. Taylor, was at work in
motion pictures and "was doing well," according to Mrs. Deane-Tanner's story.
"Petey" he was known then, and apparently when Mrs. Young communicated this
information to the former show girl in New York, Taylor's wife, she was
surprised to learn that the girl already knew of her husband's whereabouts
and was not surprised to learn that Taylor was here in pictures under a new
name.
Nevertheless, it was a shock to the Deane-Tanner's friends there,
because the young wife was not supposed to know anything of her husband's
whereabouts.
Mrs. Ada Deane-Tanner's attempts to interview Taylor, the director, on
her arrival here, his denial of identity, and his finally sending her an
allowance, though still denying that he was related to her, was told
exclusively in yesterday's Examiner and this story was not changed in the
least by the sister-in-law yesterday.
His letter to her, telling her that he would send her the money, Mrs.
Deane-Tanner said, she still had and would produce, with the marriage license
only if forced to by the authorities, saying that she saw no reason for doing
so.
Mrs. Deane-Tanner in Monrovia yesterday was being advised by several
men, one connected with a bank there and the other an attorney, but neither
of these men would make a statement.
Being ill, she was attended by a neighbor and her children were being
taken care of elsewhere.
Miss Kate Collins, principal of the Wild Rose school in Monrovia, where
the two children attended, was high in her praise of the two kiddies.
She said she remembered when the Deane-Tanners arrived there, because of
their relationship to Mrs. Pomeroy, but had no knowledge until reading The
Examiner yesterday of her relationship to the film director.
Both Muriel and Alice, she said, were among the brightest in their
classes, Muriel being in the eighth grade and Alice in the sixth.
Both she described as always cheerful and anxious to help others, and
Alice, she said, is of the "smiley" type, always with a cheerful grin
greeting her friends and teachers.
One of the girls, Muriel, is said to have a marked resemblance to her
murdered uncle, both Mrs. Deane-Tanner and one of her advisers said
yesterday.
Chief of Police E. A. Bovee of Monrovia, is taking an active interest in
the case, giving the sheriff's office all help possible in his end.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
February 7, 1922
Lannie Haynes Martin
LOS ANGELES EXAMINER
Mrs. Tanner Denies Rumor of Dual Role
In order to refute the statement by wire from her aunt, Mrs. John
Ketcham of Buffalo, N. Y., Mrs. Ada Deane-Tanner of Monrovia, divorced wife
of Dennis Deane-Tanner, stated in detail yesterday numerous points and
occurrences which preclude the possibility of William Deane-Tanner and Dennis
Deane-Tanner being one and the same man.
"It was just a few days after the birth of my first little daughter,
Muriel, in 1908, that I first saw William Deane-Tanner, my husband's brother.
He came out to see his new niece and while there was a resemblance in the two
men it was not so striking that they could have been taken for each other
under any circumstances. My husband was about five feet nine inches in
height while his brother was over six feet tall and the brother wore a
mustache at that time and my husband was smooth shaven. My husband had had
his nose broken while at college when engaging in strenuous athletic sports
and this gave his face an identity that could not be mistaken.
"William Deane-Tanner disappeared about a year after I saw him and my
husband grieved terribly over the strange occurrence and missed his brother
very much. I went to see his wife at the time. She was a very beautiful
blonde with light golden hair and the most perfect skin and very slender.
She seemed perfectly dazed with wonder as to why he had left her.
"I was married in 1907 and for five years my husband was everything that
the most exacting or the most idealistic wife could demand or desire. He was
tender, thoughtful, generous, patient, clean-minded and the soul of honor.
Suddenly I was taken ill and the doctor said I must be sent to California.
This distressed my husband so that we decided to try the Adirondacks first to
see if the mountain air there would not bring me back to health and strength.
So my husband helped me pack, looked after every arrangement for the trip and
took me and our two little children up to a comfortable, picturesque house in
the mountains and then went back to his business. in a few days I got a big
express package with some heavier flannels for me and an immense box of
candy, all tied up with fancy ribbons.
"William Deane-Tanner was called 'Petie' by his intimate associates in
New York. I do not know who gave him the name and I do not think the
brothers saw each other often. My husband did not come out with his brother
when he came to see me as he was at his place of business and could not
leave. But there was no possibility of their being the same man.
"That was the last communication I ever received from my husband.
He never wrote a line to me after leaving me there and I never saw him again.
This was nearly four years after the disappearance of his brother. After his
brother left, his mother and sister, in London, with whom I corresponded,
often wrote of how they were grieving over William's strange dropping from
sight. His mother said she was sure he must be dead or that she would hear
from him. When my husband disappeared and I wrote them they never answered
my letters and though I wrote a number of times I have never heard from them
again and lost track of them.
"It is true that my husband had the same fits of despondency that
William is said to have had. He would have depressed, gloomy spells that I
could neither account for nor make him shake off. He rarely spoke of his
people in England, but I merely attributed that to the characteristic
reticence of the English to discuss their affairs and I never had any reason
to suspect that there was any tragedy or skeleton in the family that he was
hiding.
"The only other time I ever saw William Deane-Tanner was when I went to
ask him if he had ever seen or heard from my husband. He was so very stern
and repelling and acted so like a man of stone that I was chilled and hurt,
but I wrote to him and told him the reasons and proof by which I knew he was
the man I claimed him to be. It was after that that he began sending me the
allowance. The way I came to hear of him being out here friends of mine in
New York saw him on the screen and recognized his face and learned that he
was now a director at Lasky's.
"His sister's name was Mrs. Eaudel-Phillips and I gathered that they
were people of independent means though not extremely wealthy. Both my
husband and his brother were educated at Clifton and were then sent to
Germany and France to finish their education and my husband spoke both French
and German fluently."
Mrs. Deane-Tanner spoke of little mannerisms that the brothers had in
common, such as holding a cigarette in a peculiar way, and of tossing the
head back. She said that in disposition and temperament, in education,
tastes and habits they were much the same, and she stated that although her
husband saw but little of his brother, he was very deeply attached to him,
and that after the brother's disappearance her husband grew more and more
moody.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
February 7, 1922
NEW YORK HERALD
Monrovia, Cal., Feb. 6--Mrs. Ada Deane-Tanner...declared here today...
"I would like to correct published statements about my husband, Dennis.
He never associated with other women.
"I feel confident that if Dennis is alive his existence could not
possibly have any connection with the murder. The brothers were very much
devoted to each other."
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Mary Miles Minter and "Broken Blossoms"
In an interview published after the release of "Broken Blossoms," Lillian
Gish discussed the film and stated "I wanted Mr. Griffith to get a little
golden-haired child, but after a session with hundreds of kiddies he finally
decided it was useless to attempt to get a child who could act and look the
part. The story calls for a 12-year-old girl. Mr. Griffith took a
producer's license and made the picture Lucy 15. I had misgivings that I
might not be able to look 15, but I followed his instructions, hoping for the
best." [NEW YORK TELEGRAPH, May 18, 1919]
Some months earlier it had been reported that D. W. Griffith had
requested the services of Mary Miles Minter for one film, but she was then
under contract to the American Film Company, and Samuel Hutchinson, the head
of American Film, refused to loan her to Griffith. [NEW YORK TELEGRAPH,
January 12, 1919]
Combining the information in those two items, it appears very probable
that Griffith wanted Minter for the lead role in "Broken Blossoms." It is
interesting to speculate what would have happened if Griffith had been
successful in securing Minter for the role. Either film history might have a
much higher opinion of Mary Miles Minter, or else "Broken Blossoms" might
have been only a minor Griffith film like "Dream Street."
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Two Interviews with Mary Pickford
TAYLOROLOGY 55 reprinted 11 interviews with Mary Pickford, originally
published between 1913 and 1922. Below are two more interviews with her,
from 1913 and 1917, sent to us by William M. Drew (thanks!). If anyone has
more Pickford interviews from 1913-1922 which they would like to see
reprinted in TAYLOROLOGY, please forward them to us.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
March 19, 1913
Frederick James Smith
NEW YORK DRAMATIC MIRROR
Unspoiled by Fame is Mary Pickford
"We all love Mary," said the kindly old German doorkeeper of the
Republic Theater. "She's so sweet. I remember six years ago when she played
one of the children in 'The Warrens of Virginia.' Many audiences have passed
in and out my door in those six years, but I remember her as if it were
yesterday. 'Little Buttercup' was what I used to call her. She was so sweet
and pretty then, but not half so sweet and pretty as she is now."
After all, that is the secret of Mary Pickford's success. It is her
personality--a personality of tenderness and sweetness. There was an appeal,
a sympathy about her playing in photoplays which made her pre-eminent among
film actresses. Her varying moods were reflected in the pathos of the
lurking gleams of mischief which flashed from her eyes. The way her golden
hair caught the sunlight and the piquant pout of her lips were unforgettable.
But, after all, there was a personality that gripped the heart.
Strangely, as the blind Juliet in the wonderful fairy spectacle, "A Poor
Little Devil," it is her voice, silvery and vibrant, which moves us. The
pathos of her perfect creation of the little sightless girl, waiting in her
magic garden for "the little friend of all the world" to return to her, is
marvelously touching. Her great eyes seem to see nothing; her playing is
simple and moving, and her voice plays upon our heartstrings. Again, her
personality weaves a spell of its own--just as in the old days it reached out
from the screens of motion picture theaters in every land on the globe.
As the interviewer saw it, Miss Pickford's dressing room wasn't a bit
like that of the typical footlight favorite. It was more like a quiet little
room at home, for Mrs. Charlotte Pickford, her mother, and Lottie Pickford,
her sister, also until recently well known in pictures, in turn introduced,
sat with the little star. The sister admitted she might possibly return to
photoplays. A moment later a young man appeared at the dressing-room door.
"Here's brother Jack," said Miss Pickford. "He's in pictures, too." Like
Miss Pickford, he is a splendid rider. It is truly a theatrical family, for
Mrs. Pickford herself was twelve years on the stage, including three seasons
with Chauncey Olcott. "Mary won't let me act any more," admitted her mother.
Like her daughter, Mrs. Pickford has a charming personality.
It is plain that Mary decides everything for the family. "What I came
up to find out," demanded Jack, "is what kind of evening clothes I'm going to
get." And Mary decided everything to the color of the vest within a few
moments. "I think----" said Mary, and that settled it.
"While I am under a three-year contract with Mr. Belasco," began Miss
Pickford, "I may return to the pictures for eight or ten weeks next Summer.
I have a number of offers. Then, again, I have always longed to go abroad.
There is a vaudeville possibility, too. I don't really know just what I
shall do.
"I love the pictures and I love the stage. There is a monotony about
playing the same role night after night; but it is hard, too, to play out
under the hot Western sun in the desert. Many times, after a day's playing
for the pictures, I returned at sunset, too exhausted to touch a bit of food.
But I honestly love pictures, and they will never lose their place in my
heart. Why, nights I dream of starting for California. The excitement and
the ever-changing scenes hold a lure over you. I just can't keep away from
the picture theaters. On Sunday nights I go in spite of mother, and other
days I catch myself studying the film posters as I pass by." Miss Pickford
admitted an admiration for Edith Storey, that she is a Mary Fuller fan, and
that she thinks Alice Joyce "so very beautiful--she never makes a false
move."
"I love it all," sighed Miss Pickford; "but I don't want to be a star.
I like, best of all, when I am in pictures, to work under some one like
Mr. Griffith, the Biograph director. It lifts the feeling of responsibility
off your shoulders to know that you have an able director back of you, and so
you can throw yourself into your work.
"I believe I loved Willful Peggy best of all my film characters. I have
written quite a few scenarios. "Lena and the Geese," "Getting Even," "The
Awakening," "May and December" and "Madame Rex" for the Biograph Company were
mine; and so were "Caught in the Act" and "The Medallion" for the Selig;
while I wrote "The Dream" and "The First Misunderstanding" for the Imp
Company. Sometimes now I work on scenarios when I have nothing to do."
"Won't you tell me some of your exciting adventures?" asked the
interviewer.
"Once, responded the actress, "I had three narrow escapes in a single
picture, "Two Brothers." The first time my horse bolted out of a California
mission yard, clattered down the town streets and into its barn. I almost
left the horse on the way in." Miss Pickford's golden ringlets shook with
laughter. "The second time," she continued, "the horse suddenly laid down in
a race scene and rolled over. The last time several of us were galloping on
horseback behind a rickety carriage as we were pursued by bandits. My horse
got away again, and two of the cowboys finally stopped me from continuing
indefinitely out of the picture.
"In an Imp photoplay, "The Sultan's Garden," I had to jump into the
Hudson. It was cold, and besides, I didn't know how to swim then. To cap it
all, the helmsman of the vessel caught me between the dock and his oncoming
boat. He was so confused that he steered right at me. Mother was standing
on the dock half frightened to death. But they dived in and pulled me down
under the water, the boat passing right over us. Then the vessel hit the
dock, and mother got a terrible tumble backward. But mother has braved a lot
of things for me.
"Once, out in California, she prayed alongside of the race track while I
ran a high-powered car around a curve in "A Beast at Bay" for the Biograph
Company. The first time around Mr. Griffith shouted 'not fast enough.' That
made me mad, so I let it out and took my foot off the clutch. The owner was
crouching in the back of the car on the floor while I took the curve at fifty-
four miles an hour. He said afterward that he had shuddered, not at what
would become of the car, but what he thought was going to happen to me.
Mother just closed her eyes and prayed."
Mrs. Pickford admitted that she had paused long enough in her prayers to
hear Mr. Griffith mutter "Good girl!" as the machine swept by. "Mary's arms
were trembling when the car came to a stop," the mother declared; "not
because she was afraid, but because of the strain of handling the great
machine as it pounded around the track." But Miss Pickford confessed that
for once she was proud of herself.
"I have been on the stage for fourteen years," she continued. "I made
my debut at five years of age as Bootles's Baby with the Valentine Stock of
Toronto, Can., where I was born. A manager offered us all positions in Hal
Reid's "The Little Red School House," and I became a real actress. We were
in stock. Lottie and I played two boys in "The Soudan" with Jessie
Bonstelle, we were seen as twins in "The Wilderness;" appeared in "The Fatal
Wedding," and acted with Chauncey Olcott. Then Mr. Belasco selected me to
play the little sister, Betty, in "The Warrens of Virginia," with Charlotte
Walker. Next I went into pictures.
"Mr. Belasco, to whom I owe a great deal, when he came to produce 'A
Good Little Devil,' remembered me. He may have seen me in the pictures.
Anyway, he was good enough to give me the role of Juliet." It is quite plain
that Mr. Belasco and Mr. Griffith are Miss Pickford's two idols.
Then the little actress, being also an uptown dweller, offered a lift in
her automobile. At the stage door a crowd of little girls, with a few grown-
ups, waited to greet her. To one little joyous girl went a promised picture,
and to the others a kindly word and a smile.
Reaching Broadway, Brother Jack dropped out to investigate bargains in
evening suits, and a little later Miss Pickford stopped at a store for a
moment's shopping while the machine waited.
Then her mother confided: "There are not many girls like my Mary.
Years ago she used to say, 'Mother, you're going to ride up Fifth Avenue in
your own car some of these days.' And she hasn't forgotten in her success.
Mary is sweet and good, isn't she?"
And the interviewer confessed that the little actress's first word had
convinced him that the secret of her charm of personality lay in her true
kindliness and purity of heart. Here, indeed is an actress, not quite
twenty, unspoiled by the hand of fame.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
June 17, 1917
Maude C. Pilkington
SAN JOSE MERCURY HERALD
A Chat with Mary Pickford Behind the Camera
Everyone knows Mary Pickford BEFORE the camera, but few people are
acquainted with the human Mary Pickford BEHIND the camera; not because she
grants this rare privilege in a patronizing manner, but because her moments
are so carefully divided up that she has little time she can call her own.
Miss Pickford's appearance on the stage of the T. & P. theatre on the
evening of Tuesday last for the benefit of the orphan children of the Home of
Benevolence was an act expressive of her simple, generous nature. After a
busy day, a day that would severely tax the strength of a more robust person,
she drove to San Jose from Pleasanton and back again the same evening. The
same spirit prompted her to go to San Francisco to assist at the Liberty loan
meeting, against the importunings of her manager and friends. "But," said
Miss Pickford, "if I could be of any assistance in a cause like that I just
had to go. The least we who stay at home can do is to make the boys who do
go comfortable, and that can only be done if the government has plenty of
money.
"You see, I want to do all I can and it is very wonderful of people to
want me; I would like to do more, but my first consideration must be my
company and my work. I feel that I must never indulge in grouches or moods,
I must work a little harder and a little longer than even the extra girl;
I must be an inspiration and an incentive to those around me. I made up my
mind to these things when I decided to be a star and to earn $500 a week
before I was 20 years old; in short, to be nice to everybody all the time.
And so when I go out and tire myself as I have done the past week, so that
even my heart is tired, I cannot give my very best to my work and my
company."
Miss Pickford is a natural aristocrat, if her ideal simplicity and utter
lack of studied effort make for aristocracy. She is vivacious and versatile,
and along with the ambition of earning $500 a week, she has acquired an asset
of greater value--a sunny disposition. This has brought her the endearing
admiration of her company. "She is always doing something sweet and
thoughtful and surprising," one of them said to me, "and so how could we help
but love her?"
To write about Mary Pickford one must first write about her mother, who
idolizes her distinguished daughter. "She has been such a comfort to me all
my life," she says, the while patting a hair into place or smoothing a ruffle
on Mary's gown. The tender relation between the two is not unlike that
between Elizabeth Barrett Browning and her father, of whom she once wrote:
"It is my fancy to conjure your beloved image between myself and the public,
so as to be sure of one smile, and to satisfy my heart while I satisfy my
ambition, by associating with the great pursuit of my life its tenderest and
holiest affection."
The impression, then, I want to give of America's favorite motion
picture actress is not so much of the actress as of the woman, tender and
lovable, of high ideals, democratic in principle and philanthropic of
impulse. A womanly woman, philosophic and profound, yet retaining the simple
faith of a child.
Yesterday at Pleasanton we chatted through the few spare moments while a
big production is being filmed. We sat upon the verandah of the old-
fashioned hotel; up and down the broad street lined with picturesque elm
trees moved a company of people out of the life of "Rebecca of Sunnybrook
Farm." Above the droway hum of June insects, grateful for the warm days of
summer, the distant chur-r- of mowing machines and other sounds of summer
that are far and clear, rose the murmur of may voices all in happy, jocund
mood. Little girls and boys, even babies, had their part in the animated
scene. Men dressed for the part of stage drivers and of haymakers, school
girls in the old-fashioned dress, and maiden aunts all selected with precise
judgment for the parts they play. And patiently listening to complains,
cheerfully giving advice and directing this, that and the other about the
next scene, the location, and those he wanted in it, accomplishing it all
with the ease of a master, was Mr. Marshall Neilan.
It was all so natural and simple; there was nothing stagey or affected
about it. To complete the scene gentle old horses attached to a quaint stage
coach dozed sleepily in the mid-day heat, and two restless ponies, which
might have been the very ones "Rebecca" used when she went to sell soap,
restlessly pulled at their tether. Only one feature of modern life linked
the scene to the present and crushed the illusion that it was the very New
England village which "Rebecca" knew so well, and that was the constant
coming and going of automobiles.
"I suppose I ought to begin by asking your favorite color, your favorite
perfume, your favorite fruit and so on," I said to Miss Pickford. She
laughed. "No, the first question people always ask me is 'How do you like
working in the movies?' or 'How do you like seeing yourself on the screen?'
and 'Do you like the stage better than the pictures, and how many children
have you?' And one thing I always tell everybody," she continued, with a
smile, "is that my hair has always been blonde."
But there are far more important things to discuss with Mary Pickford
than these trivialities, so we began on the various institutions in which she
is interested. "There is the Boyle Heights Orphanage in Los Angeles," she
said. "I don't do very much for it, but they seem to think it a lot and one
of the children asked the Sister if Mary Pickford was not their patron saint;
so you see it is very hard to have to live up to a reputation like that.
"Then, one day in New York I was feeling a little melancholy and I went
over to St. Joseph's Home for the Blind to a bazaar. First, I saw the old
ladies sitting about, quite happy and chatting gaily; then I went downstairs
and there were the babies. Next I went out to the courtyard, it was just the
dusk of evening and there were strong men, young and old, and everyone of
these people were blind! And I said to myself, 'Am I ever ungrateful enough
to be unhappy? Here I have health and youth and devoted friends!' And I
felt cleansed and reproved, and whenever I feel unhappy I just think of that
room in the dusk. And it would do the majority of people good who complain
and rail against God to go into one of these homes."
"Would you rather help children or old people?" I asked her.
"Old people," said she. "Old age and suffering and no loved ones about
seem the terrible tragedy to me. Children can dream their dreams; life
stretches out before them a beautiful country bounded with fairy walls.
Perhaps someone will adopt them or help them; perhaps they will marry some
good person and live happily, but with old folks all that is past."
From this we went on to talk of the opportunities for girls in the film
world today. "It all depends upon the girl," said Miss Pickford. "They talk
about temptation in our business. I don't know anything of it; I have always
had my mother with me, but I would not advise anyone to leave a good home
unless they had someone to go everywhere with them."
We drifted into a comparison of the speaking stage and the movies.
"It is a real pleasure to appear before a cultured, intelligent audience and
to feel the magnetism, and there is more art to the stage. On the other
hand, everything is artificial, while in the pictures one works with natural
scenery and surroundings and people can really come into greater prominence
in a shorter time. I think the picture a wonderful business and I will
always love it, but I don't know whether it will always love me. The stage
as I see it," she continued, "is to the grown-up what fairy tales are to
children. The more illusion there is about it, or the picture, the more
pleasure it gives. I do not approve, therefore, of showing how things are
done, for when once the make-up is revealed the charm is lost. My ambition
is to become bigger and better than ever and to retire gracefully at the
flood-tide of power and live comfortably the rest of my life. I want to
learn cooking and be a thorough and proficient housekeeper. I am going to
master French and study music and literature. All this when I don't have to
live on schedule; when I can say, 'I am gong to the mountains' and take a
trainload of books. Another thing I intend to do when I have the time is to
indulge in a hobby," said Miss Pickford. "I think everyone from the factory
girl to the financier should have a hobby, preferably an outdoor hobby. But
I must snatch my meals at all hours, sometimes I must spend half the night
out on a raft in evening clothes, drenched to the skin; then relaxation
becomes a hobby."
I asked Miss Pickford her favorite of all the roles she has played.
She hesitated for a moment and then replied, "'Tess of the Storm Country'
and 'Poor Little Rich Girl.' It is hard to tell which I liked the best.
Then 'Rags,' I think, comes next. The first big part I ever played was in
'The Violin Maker of Cremona.'"
This led me to ask how she happened to go into the movies and where.
"It was in New York," she said, simply. "Fourteenth street. I had been two
seasons with David Belasco, but I needed more money. I was only 15 then.
However, I was just as happy when I earned $25 a week as I am now, for with
every ounce of success comes a pound of responsibility. And another thing I
want to say is that I cannot bear airs and graces. Nobody in the world is
important; the world may miss people for a while, but the world goes on just
the same. We are here today and gone tomorrow--the main thing is to make
people happy. Once I went up in an aeroplane and as I looked down on the
earth at the people moving about I though how very small we must all look to
the angels in Heaven; no larger than atoms."
Miss Pickford's formula for happiness is a very simple one. "First
people must work to be happy; when they do not work and then pay for all they
got they are very unhappy people. I think that people who live in a small
town, who marry young and have to work and plan, even to buy the rug for the
front room, are so much happier, and healthier, too."
"Of what is your life made up?" I asked, and with a rare smile and a
toss of her head, she replied, "Four-fifths work and one-fifth rest!"
It seems an extraordinary thing that one who has been accustomed to vast
audiences practically all her life, as before taking up the picture work she
appeared frequently in metropolitan cities, who has achieved the position and
fame that is Miss Pickford's should not have by this time become accustomed
to the ordeal. But it has been so with many of the world's greatest artists.
Jenny Lind, for example, idol of the artist world 50 years ago, had often to
be carried fainting from the stage; could not, indeed, sing at all until she
had overcome the paralytic nervousness which invariably overwhelmed her when
she first looked into the face of an audience.
With Miss Pickford it probably is due to an extraordinary
conscientiousness to live up to the high standards she has set for herself.
"The first feeling I have is that I must apologize for my height, or lack of
it, or my hair, or my eyes," she humorously told me. "But the other night in
San Jose when the audience said 'three cheers for Mary Pickford,' I felt so
at home that I really had an awfully good time."
From philosophic subjects she quite nimbly jumps back to her childhood
days. "I have never had anything so good to eat in my life as 'hokey-pokey'
ice cream," said Miss Pickford. "In Canada we used to run with our penny
when we heard the 'hokey-pokey' man coming."
It was now time for her to change costumes, so she bade me good-bye,
giving me a cordial invitation to go out to the 'location' that afternoon and
added, "Oh, yes! Please say that I love to be loved!"
Mr. Charles Ogle, who played opposite Miss Pickford in "The Romance of
the Redwoods," is taking a prominent part in this production and this
exceptional actor is quite as delightful off the screen as on. He gave up
the practice of law to go on the stage from which it was only a step into the
movies, where he has been for the past nine years.
Our conversation naturally turned to Miss Pickford. "She is the most
wonderful actress on the stage today; you can find no one like her. She is
so winsome and quaint and yet doesn't lose individuality. She has
personality and magnetism, but first of all she is a capable actress."
Her director, Mr. Marshall Neilan, has many men older than himself in
the company, but they all recognize his ability as a director and he readily
seems like the "father" of the company, as he expressed it. Mr. Neilan
played with Miss Pickford in "Madame Butterfly." "Circumstances threw us
together and I became her director," he said, "and she is a very unusual
woman. She has brains and creative ability and is always a big help in
directing. I call her the Bernhardt of the screen and predict that people
will never want her to quit."
We talked of the natural setting and attractiveness of the country about
the Niles Canyon for their work. "We have nothing in Southern California
like it. The big black walnut and elm trees are typical of New England and
the only place in the west where such scenery can be found."
It was now time to go out to the "location" and we all departed. The
scene where Rebecca sells soap was to be played that afternoon and with Miss
Frances Marion, her scenario writer, I stood watching Miss Pickford and Miss
Daw as they drove up to the farmhouse where Rebecca sells $200 worth of soap
and then comes out victoriously waving the greenbacks and bowing the farewell
of a grandiloquent lady. "Well," said she, "we are the beginnings of
ladies." Over and over this scene they went, until it thoroughly satisfied
the director.
Miss Marion is well started on what promises to be a remarkable career;
she is a Californian, her home being in San Francisco. Like others
associated with Miss Pickford, she is devoted to her, and speaks
enthusiastically of her ability. "There is nothing she cannot do. She has
written 32 stories; tonight we have to get some costumes ready and she will
have some hand in it. Look at her there now, she is writing letters between
scenes. I have seen her watching bees or ants for hours, studying them with
as keen an interest as if rehearsing a scene. And she can put herself on a
plane with a child easier than anyone I ever knew. 'Children and animals are
the most natural actors in the world,' she always says. She receives on an
average of 1000 letters a day and every letter is read by her secretary, and
those expressing any sweet appreciation are put aside and read and enjoyed by
Miss Pickford."
Anyone who imagines a star in the moving picture world does not have
hard work to do is mistaken. Douglas Fairbanks in his popular book "Laugh
and Live," says, "The correct definition of self-indulgence is failure--
because self-indulgence is comprised of an aggregation of vices, large and
small, and failure is the logical sequence thereof." So there perhaps, we
have one of the secrets of the movie stars success. And I want to leave the
impression that these genial, delightful people work early and late and hard,
that they love Mary Pickford just intensely as does the public, and are not
jealous, even though the public claims her as "their Mary."
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NOTES:
[1] Mabel Normand was born in 1892, not 1894.
[2] According to Mabel Normand's own accounts she had worked at Kalem and
Biograph prior to working for Vitagraph. She made also made other Vitagraph
films prior to "Over the Garden Wall."
[3] Mabel signed her contract with Sam Goldwyn long before "Mickey" was
released.
[4] Mabel Normand's first trip to Europe was not made until 1922, after her
Goldwyn contract had ended. She did made two trips to Europe in 1922, but
she was between pictures for Sennett at the time. When she came back from
the second trip she returned to Hollywood; she did not make a third trip to
Europe at that time.
[5] Mabel Normand's pictures for Goldwyn were successful, more successful
than its pictures with other stars.
[6] The Dines shooting took place on January 1, 1924, not December 31, 1923.
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For more information about Taylor, see
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