Tinseltown: Murder, Morphine, And Madness At The Dawn Of Hollywood – William J. Mann

In the early days of Hollywood, scandal threatened to bring down the nascent film industry.  Following the Fatty Arbuckle affair, the murder of William Desmond Taylor rocked the town, and the players behind what would become Paramount Pictures did everything they could to save their own skin rather than solve the murder of their powerful director.  Though the crime has remain unsolved for nearly 100 years, the author claims that he has pieced together the truth of what happened in Los Angeles on the evening of February 1, 1922.

When I first got this book, I had no idea that it was a true story.  Especially one starring the people who would build what would become Paramount and MGM.  Given that, it is somewhat surprising how long it took me to get in to it.  I started it for the first time over a year ago, not getting very far.  Even when I came back to it earlier this year, I had a hard time going more than 30-40 pages at a time.  At least until I got past the murder and the mystery of who did it became the primary focus.

Mann lays out many possible suspects, including actresses Mabel Normand, Margaret Gibson, and Mary Miles Minter, Minter’s mother Charlotte Shelby, and local ne’er-do-wells Don Osborn and Blackie Madsen.  His conjecture, that Gibson had helped Osborn and Madsen blackmail Taylor and that Madsen had subsequently shot Taylor, is supported by a supposed deathbed confession Gibson made in 1964.  Is that what truly happened?  Who can tell.  His theory does seem to match up with the evidence as he presents it.  The truth is we will likely never know for sure what happened to William Desmond Taylor in 1922.