February 1, 1922: William Desmond Taylor is murdered at his home in Los Angeles. He was a few weeks shy of his 50th birthday. The murder remains officially unsolved.
He was born on April 26, 1872 in Carlow, Ireland, with the name William Cunningham Deane-Tanner. He became an actor, moved to New York, married actress Ethel May Harrison, and had a daughter named Ethel Daisy, before getting divorced.
After the divorce, he changed his name to William Desmond Taylor, and went west, where Hollywood was beginning. From 1913 to 1915, he acted in 27 films; from 1914 to 1922, he directed 59. In 1918, with World War I ongoing, he enlisted in the Canadian Expeditionary Forces, but the Armistice was signed while he was at sea, heading to Europe. He saw no combat, but met the minimum requirement to say he "did his part." He went back to directing, and seemed to be popular.
On the morning of February 2, 1922, he was found dead in his home at the Alvarado Court Apartments, at 404-B South Alvarado Street, in the affluent Westlake neighborhood of Los Angeles. He had been shot in the back. An autopsy showed it had happened the night before.
Clearly, it wasn't a robbery gone wrong: There was $78 in his pockets, and various other valuable items that could have been stolen were found safe. There were rumors that Taylor had been afflicted with mental illness -- supposedly, his divorce was connected to a disappearance in 1908 -- and had upset various people in Hollywood. With the Fatty Arbuckle case ongoing, this murder increased the poor light in which the film industry was being seen, with one newspaper editorial calling the area "our American Sodom and Gomorrah."
Also found on the body was a locket containing a photograph of actress Mabel Normand. It soon got out that Taylor and Normand were having an affair. Normand told the police she had been at Taylor's house at 7:45 PM on the night of the murder, and did not suspect that anything was going to go wrong. She was addicted to cocaine, and it has been suggested that her dealer may have killed Taylor. Given the greed of drug dealers, and the fact that so many valuables were lying around, this is hardly conclusive.
Faith MacLean, Taylor's next-door neighbor said the wife of actor Douglas MacLean, heard a noise at 8:00 (after Normand left), and saw someone going through Taylor's front door. Because of this person's apparent size, Mrs. MacLean thought it was a woman disguised as a man.
One suspect who fit that description was Mary Miles Minter, a 19-year-old actress who had written Taylor love letters, but her feelings were never reciprocated. But her mother, Charlotte Shelby, neither the first nor the last Hollywood "stage mother" to be incredibly manipulative of her child/client, didn't know that, and believed there was an affair. Both were accused of the murder, but there wasn't enough evidence to charge either one.
A more likely suspect was Edward Sands, who had worked as Taylor's valet and cook until 7 months before the murder. While Taylor was in Europe in the Summer of 1921, Sands had forged his name on checks and wrecked his car. Following the murder, Sands was never seen or heard from again.
So the murder of William Desmond Taylor, said to be the 1st murder that ordinary Americans seemed interested in from coast to coast, not only went unsolved, but there was never even enough evidence to arrest a single suspect. To this day, 100 years later, we don't know.
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February 1, 1922 was a Wednesday. Baseball and football were out of season. Professional basketball barely existed. There were 2 games played in the NHL. The Ottawa Senators beat the Montreal Canadiens, 4-2 at the Ottawa Arena. And the Toronto St. Patricks beat the Hamilton Tigers, 5-4 at the Barton Street Arena in Hamilton, Ontario.
The Tigers went out of business in 1925. The Senators became the St. Louis Eagles in 1934, and went out of business after one more season. The St. Patricks became the Maple Leafs in 1927.
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