What Happened on February 2nd – Murder in Hollywood

I think if I was an avid reader of Hollywood history, I would know this story and the people involved but I am not.  On February 2, 1922, police discover the body of 50 year old film director William Desmond Taylor in his Los Angeles bungalow. The call to the police had lead Lieutenant Tom Ziegler to believe there had been a “natural death”.  This had not been the case when he arrived.  The film director’s home was full of actors, actresses, and studio executives rummaging through the director’s belongings.  This makes me visualize vultures.  Taylor was lying on the living room floor with a bullet in his back.  I don’t think a film director could stage a more bizarre scene.

Taylor’s Alvarado Street home

William Desmond Taylor

The murder became a nationwide scandal and fed the moralist’s idea that Hollywood was depraved. Two of the actresses linked to Taylor got caught up in the scandal. Comedian Mabel Normand had been linked romantically with Taylor; however because she developed tuberculosis, she was sent to a sanitarium.  She died from this illness in 1930. 

Mabel Normand

Mabel Normand

Mabel Norman – 1923

When the mouse is away, the cat will play.  Mary Miles Minter, a teenager, became a star in Taylor’s silent films and fell in love with him. Her mother, Charlotte Shelby did not approve of the relationship.  Minter’s love note to Taylor, along with  her nightgown were found in the home after the murder.  Other important facts were also introduced.  Minter had once tried to shoot herself with the same type of gun used in Taylor’s murder. Charlotte Shelby had previously threatened the life of another director who had made a pass at her daughter. What’s a stage mother to do.  Shelby’s alibi witness received suspiciously large sums of money after the murder. Believe it or not, no one was ever prosecuted for Taylor’s death and the case remains officially unsolved.

Mary Miles Minter, her mother Charlotte Shelby and her grandmother Julia Miles

Charlotte Shelby

Mary Miles Minter

Many years later, in Minter’s unpublished autobiography, she admitted that she and her mother were at Taylor’s bungalow on the night of the killing. Famous director King Vidor told people that Minter had ambiguously admitted that her mother had killed Taylor after finding her daughter at Taylor’s home.

King Vidor

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