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* T A Y L O R O L O G Y *
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* A Continuing Exploration of the Life and Death of William Desmond Taylor *
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* *
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* Issue 58 -- October 1997 Editor: Bruce Long bruce@asu.edu *
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* TAYLOROLOGY may be freely distributed *
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CONTENTS OF THIS ISSUE:
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Minter and Shelby in Paris
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In Defense of Charlotte Shelby
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"The Tragic Life Story of Mabel Normand"
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Interviews with Taylor's Sister-In-Law
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Mary Miles Minter and "Broken Blossoms"
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Two Interviews with Mary Pickford
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What is TAYLOROLOGY?
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TAYLOROLOGY is a newsletter focusing on the life and death of William Desmond
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Taylor, a top Paramount film director in early Hollywood who was shot to
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death on February 1, 1922. His unsolved murder was one of Hollywood's major
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scandals. This newsletter will deal with: (a) The facts of Taylor's life;
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(b) The facts and rumors of Taylor's murder; (c) The impact of the Taylor
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murder on Hollywood and the nation; (d) Taylor's associates and the Hollywood
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silent film industry in which Taylor worked. Primary emphasis will be given
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toward reprinting, referencing and analyzing source material, and sifting it
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for accuracy.
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A photo of William Desmond Taylor's grave can be seen at
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http://www.accesscom.com/~epitaph/taylorwd.gif
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Minter and Shelby in Paris
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The murder of William Desmond Taylor increased the breach between Mary
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Miles Minter and her mother, Charlotte Shelby. Their dispute became public
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in August 1923 (see TAYLOROLOGY 11), and a lawsuit was filed by Minter in
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1925, seeking recovery of the money she had earned as an actress. In 1926,
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after another public flare-up of the Taylor case (see TAYLOROLOGY 14),
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Charlotte Shelby moved to Europe. She was followed in a few months by
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Minter. In Paris, December 1926, a reconciliation occurred between Shelby
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and Minter (see TAYLOROLOGY 35), and Minter's lawsuit was settled out of
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court. The following interview took place in late 1927, while Minter and
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Shelby were living together in Paris; this was the first public interview
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given after the reconciliation. They later returned to Los Angeles, and
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Minter verbally defended Shelby throughout the remainder of her life.
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* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
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February 1928
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Jane Dixon
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PHOTOPLAY
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What Happened to Mary?
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Once there was a little girl with golden hair, blue eyes and a face that
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was fashioned for the camera. For the most part she was a good child;
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a little selfish perhaps, slightly willful and not particularly clever.
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She didn't have to be clever, because she was beautiful and she had a shrewd
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mother. But she wasn't bad or vicious or mean.
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For a few brief years, she had a most amazing run of luck. She received
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one of the highest salaries ever paid to a star. By careful publicity, she
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became the living symbol of innocent, happy girlhood. Her future was so
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bright that she was hailed as the successor of Mary Pickford herself.
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Then, at the height of the fairy tale, the clock struck twelve.
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And as strange a series of misfortunes descended upon Mary Miles Minter
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as ever befell a human being.
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And after these calamities, Mary Miles Minter faded away as completely
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as a discredited myth.
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First there was the William Desmond Taylor case--Hollywood's one classic
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murder. Taylor was found dead in his bungalow with a bullet through his
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back. In the investigation that followed, love letters, silly and
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pathetically girlish, were discovered written by Mary on butterfly-crested
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notepaper.
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Mary's name became inseparably linked with a particularly sordid and
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sinister murder. The mystery never has been solved and stalks about even
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now, like a restless ghost, to haunt those who were even remotely connected
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with it.
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Then Mary left her mother and brought suit against her for an accounting
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of the money that the mother, as Mary's guardian, controlled for her. Not a
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pretty spectacle--a girl suing her mother over money. Even when the case was
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adjusted by a reconciliation between Mary and her mother, the memory of it
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hung in the public mind.
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Other suits followed. Mary was named as the corespondent in a divorce
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suit. The United States government found that Mary and her mother owed money
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for income taxes. The movies turned a cold shoulder on Mary. The public
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heard that the slender child had turned into a plump young woman. Pursued by
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all the malevolent demons, Mary fled.
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How and where is Mary Miles Minter living?
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What becomes of a star when the gleam of it is cut off by clouds that
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scurry along between the eyes of earth and its stellar orbit? Perhaps the
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star goes on gleaming. At any rate, Mary Miles Minter goes on living.
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First, the place: In an unostentatious hotel in a quiet street just off
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the fashionable Champs Elysees in Paris. On the top floor.
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When I asked a hotel official to be shown to the apartment of Miss
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Shelby, he denied all knowledge of any such person. I assured him that no
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longer than an hour before I had telephoned Miss Shelby and had been invited
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to visit her.
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The official shook his head. His suspicion was by no means appeased.
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He retired through a door, which he closed securely behind him. After
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fifteen minutes he returned, summoned an attendant, whispered a long string
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of instructions and motioned us toward the elevator. We proceeded upward
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under escort.
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In the beginning I rather resented this escort, who insisted on keeping
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uncomfortably close to my elbow. Later I was grateful for his familiarity
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with the terrain. Never, otherwise, could I have found my way through the
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labyrinth of service halls, storerooms, unexpected turns and blind passages
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leading to a heavy gray door which gave no indication of what might go on
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behind it.
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The attendant knocked on the door. A staccato knock of dots and dashes
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that sounded like a signal. The whole thing struck me as being ludicrously
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like a scene in a mystery play.
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The door was opened by a slender, bird-like woman with searching eyes,
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straight set lips and a crown of reddish hair. The woman was Mrs. Charlotte
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Shelby, Mary Miles Minter's mother.
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Yes, Mary is living with the mother she once accused of appropriating
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her salary and whom she sued for approximately one million dollars of those
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earnings.
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Mary and mother are playing a sister act. Love me, love my mother.
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Love me, love my Mary.
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"God only made one Mary," says Mrs. Shelby.
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"A girl's best bet is her mother," says Mary.
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Just like the good old days, when Mary was at her crest.
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There are those who contend that Mary and Mother Shelby are living in a
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state of armed neutrality. I cannot say. There was no evidence of any hard
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feelings during my visit.
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Mary was suffering from the temper of a balky tooth. Mary's mother was
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full of solicitation for her daughter. Mary must partake of tea and toast
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even if she had to dip the toast in the tea. Mary must have an orange shawl
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thrown across her couch so she would not get the draught from an open window.
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Mary, Mary, and again, Mary!
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Some there are who claim remembrance of Mrs. Shelby when, as Mrs. Homer
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Reilly, she was the elocution teacher in the then small but vigorous town of
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Dallas, Texas. She taught the young folk to speak their pieces for the
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church festivals and the Christmas charades, it is said, and the pride of her
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motherhood was baby Juliet Reilly, now Mary Miles Minter.
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When there came a parting of the ways between little Juliet's mother and
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father, the elocution teacher resumed her maiden name of Shelby and Juliet
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Reilly became Juliet Shelby. Then Mrs. Shelby took her two little daughters
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to New York where, it was believed, she cherished hope of realizing stage
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ambitions for herself.
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Her interest, however, centered around little Juliet who, being a
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precocious youngster with an unusual doll-like face and winsome manner, soon
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came into demand for child parts. Juliet's success was so marked that Mrs.
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Shelby submerged her own ambitions in those of her daughter.
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Little Juliet became Mary Miles Minter, the two latter names belonging
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to her grandmother.
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What a tortuous road the elocution teacher and her daughter have
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traveled from Dallas, Texas, to the secluded, guarded apartment in Paris!
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And what does Mary look like now? No use denying that the little girl
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has grown up into quite a husky woman. Not even her most ardent admirers
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dare claim that she touches on or appertains to the fashionable silhouette.
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Added weight gives her a mature look, but it is not altogether unbecoming.
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She gives the impression of being healthy, fond of the fleshpots, but none
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too happy over their effect on her.
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The golden curls that once were to rival Mary Pickford's are now bobbed
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into a chic Parisian head-dress.
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"Please, must you say anything about me?' Mary pleaded. "People are not
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interested in me any more. They don't remember me. My name is forgotten."
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"Nonsense, Mary," expostulated her mother.
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"Well, then," said the shorn lamb, " I am studying. Music, mostly. No,
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I don't play. Not even a jewsharp. But I can hear music, and I can love it.
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I want to make music my friend instead of a mere passing acquaintance.
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"Have you taken up philosophy?" I inquired. Philosophy is so modish.
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And psychology. And psychoanalysis. The refuge of the misunderstood.
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"You're getting deep," laughed Mary. "I have philosophy only so far as
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I have lived it. And," she went on, "I haven't read a newspaper or a
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magazine story about myself since 1923. What's the use? One blunder, one
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mistake, one misfortune, and fame becomes infamy. The climb to public favor
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is sweet. The fall is swift. The return journey is interminable.
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"Not long ago, I was named as corespondent in a divorce case. A man I
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had met only in a casual way. When the news reached me, I was in Italy with
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my mother. Investigation brought out the fact that the wife of the casual
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acquaintance had selected my name as being the most sensational one on which
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to base a divorce suit.
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"I wanted to sue the wife who had taken recourse to such unfair methods
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in order to win her freedom, or whatever it was she hoped to win. My
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attorney advised me against such procedure.
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"'Drop it,' he said. 'Your friends know better. Folks who like to
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believe such things will believe what they want, anyway, no matter how much
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you exonerate yourself.'
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"I took my attorney's advice. One blunder. One mistake. One
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misfortune. The fireworks forever after."
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"And if you had it to do over again? If you were just beginning your
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career, how would you plan it?"
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Mary smiled. She has taken too many wallops from life to be disturbed
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by a powder puff.
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"I would NOT go into the movies."
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Take that, you youngsters and you oldsters with young ideas.
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Not that Mary turns thumbs down on the movies. How can she? But,
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according to her own confession, she has seen ten movies, aside from those in
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which she appeared, in her lifetime. Two of the ten were Chaplin comedies.
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"Moving pictures," confesses Mary, "are a wonderful art and a wonderful
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industry. But--not for me.
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"I should have remained true to the speaking stage," sighs Mary.
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"I made my first appearance at the age of four. The play was 'Cameo Kirby'
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and Nat Goodwin was the star. Perhaps I will return someday, somehow. Who
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knows?"
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In Defense of Charlotte Shelby
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Charlotte Shelby has always been considered one of the main suspects in
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the Taylor murder--and rightly so, due to the circumstantial evidence against
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her. But the case against her is far from proven, and the following are 12
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points to consider in her defense:
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1. It was reported that a man inquired at a local gas station a few hours
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before Taylor was killed, asking the whereabouts of the Taylor residence.
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The man was described as about 27 years old and could not possibly have been
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Shelby in disguise--she was in her mid 40's. Also, Shelby had visited
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Taylor's home at least once before, so she knew where he lived and would not
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have had to ask directions.
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2. The person observed and described (around 5 feet 9 inches tall) by Faith
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MacLean as leaving Taylor's home after the shot was fired also could not
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possible have been Shelby in disguise. Minter was 5'2" tall, and Shelby was
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about the same height. Also, the MacLean's maid stated she heard the
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footsteps of a man pacing in the alley behind the MacLean home (see
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TAYLOROLOGY 56); presumably the maid could tell the difference between the
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sound of a man pacing and a woman pacing.
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3. In 1937 Charlotte Shelby requested a Grand Jury investigation into the
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Taylor murder (see TAYLOROLOGY 22), and she cooperated fully with that new
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investigation. It seems highly unlikely that the killer would have requested
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such an investigation, re-activating the murder investigation which had lain
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dormant for so long.
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4. According to Detective Sanderson's 1941 letter (reprinted in WILLIAM
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DESMOND TAYLOR: A DOSSIER), a short time after the Taylor murder, Shelby
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instructed her chauffeur, Chauncey Eaton, to remove the unfired shells from
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her .38 caliber revolver and dispose of them. Several months later, in
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August 1922, Julia Miles, Charlotte Shelby's mother, threw the gun into a
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bayou in Louisiana. But this sequence makes no sense. The murder weapon
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itself would be far more incriminating than the unfired shells--why not
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dispose of the revolver and the shells immediately? And why give the shells
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to the (potentially untrustworthy) chauffeur? The sequence and manner in
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which Shelby disposed of her gun and shells does not sound like she killed
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Taylor with it.
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5. By all accounts, Mary Miles Minter's love for Taylor continued throughout
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her life ("I worshipped him in life...I worship him today."--MABEL, p. 177).
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Yet Minter reconciled with Shelby in 1926 and Minter publicly defended Shelby
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from then on. If Shelby had indeed killed Taylor (particularly if Minter had
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witnessed the murder as is asserted by Kirkpatrick) then why would Minter
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have reconciled with Shelby and defended her? Minter evidently did NOT think
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Shelby killed Taylor. If Minter, who was very close to the situation and
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loved Taylor, did not think that her mother killed Taylor, then why should we
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think so? What information do we have that Minter did not have?
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6. Charlotte Shelby certainly feared prosecution for the Taylor murder.
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But Leslie Henry stated in a deposition that Charlotte Shelby in early 1926
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expressed concern that Mary Miles Minter may have killed Taylor (see
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TAYLOROLOGY 5). Under those circumstances it is understandable why Shelby
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would have wanted to dispose of the gun--if that gun were found to have been
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the murder weapon, then Shelby would be the person likely to be convicted of
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the murder (having publicly threatened Taylor), even if Minter were the
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actual killer. Better to take no chances and just get rid of the gun.
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7. The evidence against Shelby is all circumstantial, and there are no solid
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witnesses against her. Marjorie Berger defended Shelby until it was implied
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that charges might be brought against Berger, at which point Berger reversed
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her testimony. Margaret Shelby Fillmore was an alcoholic, and involved in a
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bitter court battle over property and money at the time she made her
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statements against Shelby.
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8. As Shelby herself later pointed out, the Taylor murder ruined Minter's
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film career. If the money generated by Minter's career meant everything to
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Shelby, why would she kill Taylor and destroy Minter's career?
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9. The statements by Eaton and Berger, made years after the murder, claimed
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that Shelby knew of the murder too early on the morning of February 2. But
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Minter's arrival at the murder scene around noon that day, as indicated by
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her own statement (see TAYLOROLOGY 11) and the LOS ANGELES RECORD (see
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TAYLOROLOGY 56), indicates the timetable of Berger/Eaton is wrong (see
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WILLIAM DESMOND TAYLOR: A DOSSIER, pp. 338-9).
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10. The path of the bullet was very unusual, entering Taylor's left side and
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angling steeply upward. Several possibilities were mentioned by the police:
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(a) the killer crouched low behind the door and shot Taylor as he entered,
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firing upward; (b) the killer embraced Taylor in a "kiss of death," stuck the
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gun in Taylor's side and fired upward. It is difficult to imagine Charlotte
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Shelby participating in either of these scenarios--she does not appear to be
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the kind of person to crouch down, and it's hard to imagine Taylor embracing
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this woman who had threatened him.
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11. Minter said that when Shelby notified her on the morning of February 2
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that Taylor was dead, Shelby stated: "William Desmond Taylor has just been
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found murdered in his bed." (See TAYLOROLOGY 11.) The inaccuracy of that
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statement seems to fit with the circumstances under which Shelby reportedly
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learned the information second hand--Edna Purviance called Mabel Normand,
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Mabel Normand called her director Dick Jones on the Sennett lot, word spread
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throughout the Sennett lot and reached Carl Stockdale (who was acting in
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Mabel Normand's film), Stockdale called Shelby and told her. Having passed
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through so many people verbally, the inaccuracy ("in his bed") is
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understandable and plausible.
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12. Minter also reportedly quoted Shelby as stating at that time (when
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notifying Minter that Taylor had been killed): "Your lover is dead and I am
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glad of it. I am glad the son-of-a-bitch is out of the way." That is a
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natural reaction on Shelby's part if Shelby were innocent of the murder; she
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opposed Mary's infatuation with Taylor, did all she could to keep them apart,
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and was glad that Taylor would no longer be a problem. But if Shelby had
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killed Taylor, then it would have been much more logical for a clever woman
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like Shelby to feign concern and sympathy for the victim; not verbally
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rejoice over his death and call him a "son-of-a-bitch"--drawing suspicious
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attention to her dislike of him.
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These 12 items, put together, cast "reasonable doubt" upon the assertion that
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Charlotte Shelby killed Taylor. She may have killed him, or not. Like
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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
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a number of errors and myths, but it also contains some incidents and
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anecdotes not found elsewhere. Harry Carr had worked as publicist for Mack
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Sennett for several years, and knew Mabel Normand personally. (For the facts
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of Mabel Normand's life, see the books by Betty Harper Fussell and William T.
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Sherman.) The following is a Hollywood-type biography--partly true, partly
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false, and partly material which may or may not be true.
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Thanks to William T. Sherman for bringing this article to our attention.
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* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
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October-November, 1929
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Harry Carr
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SCREEN SECRETS
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The Tragic Life Story of Mabel Normand
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Mabel Normand will always be remembered as the little girl who littered
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up the floor of her limousine with peanut shells.
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As the girl who walked down the street with THE POLICE GAZETTE under one
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arm and the highbrow ATLANTIC MONTHLY under the other.
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As the girl with the brain of a philosopher and the ribald tongue of a
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gutter-snipe.
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As the girl whose intimate friends included a woman of international
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notoriety, a gentle old priest, the queen of a night club, a learned judge of
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the Federal bench and an old Indian squaw.
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As the girl whose friends and associates absolutely adored her; whose
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servants would willingly have committed murder in her behalf; yet who
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suffered as no other girl in Hollywood ever suffered from scandal and unjust
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gossip.
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As the girl who all but ruined herself through self sacrifice; and met
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only with ingratitude.
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As the girl to whom hardship and poverty brought happiness; to whom
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wealth and fame brought unhappiness.
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The life of Mabel Normand is as full of contradiction as a chapter from
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ALICE IN WONDERLAND.
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Mabel has always been a little tomboy.
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She was born on Staten Island in New York Harbor, in 1894. Her people
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were miserably poor. She "jes' growed," like Topsy. The little girls of the
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neighborhood were too tame. She played most of the time with the boys. She
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could "skin the cat" on the limbs of all the trees, play "one ol' cat," wield
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a shinny club, and put up a pretty good fist fight on occasion. [1]
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Situated as Staten Island is, quite naturally the great playmate of all
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the children was the sea. Mabel played tag with the Atlantic Ocean from the
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time she could walk. It was important to her after life that she learned to
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swim and dive when she was a little girl. It wasn't tame-cat swimming that
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Mabel did. She could do any daring stunt in the water that the boys did.
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Her first distinction was to win the diving championship of Staten Island.
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Another fact that was to be an important factor in her life was that in
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Mabel's gang was a little French-Canadian boy. His name at that time was
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Louis Coti. In later years he altered the spelling to Lew Cody. He and
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Mabel played "prisoners' base" and swam together, as little children. Now
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she is Mrs. Lew Cody.
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She wasn't all boy, however. She had the usual yearnings of little
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girls for dolls and clothes. But her family had such a direful struggle for
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existence that she never had money for either.
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I have heard Mabel tell how she used to stand in front of the story
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windows at Christmas time and look, until her little heart ached, at the
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dolls that some little rich girl would find in her Christmas stocking. She
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told me how one day she found her favorite window so frosted by the storm of
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the night before that she couldn't see into the window. So she leaned
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against the glass and licked a peek hole through the frost with her little
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hot tongue.
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At the time Mabel was growing up, it was the period of girls and
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artists. "The Gibson Girl" upstaged the world from the covers of LIFE.
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"The Penrhyn Stanlaws Girl" smiled out through a swirl of decoration.
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"The Howard Chandler Christy Girl" beamed from bachelors' walls. A girl with
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a lovely face found her footsteps drawn to the studios. Mabel was a
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beautiful child--with big lustrous eyes, a face that glowed with animation
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and intelligence. Her figure was superb.
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Several girls of her acquaintance, among them Alice Joyce and Olive
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Thomas, were posing for artists: they brought Mabel along. She posed for
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many of the magazine covers and story illustrations. She posed for Penrhyn
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Stanlaws, C. D. Williams, Cole Phillips and other famous artists. She got 50
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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."
|
|
|
|
*****************************************************************************
|
|
*****************************************************************************
|
|
|
|
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."
|
|
|
|
*****************************************************************************
|
|
*****************************************************************************
|
|
|
|
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
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between Elizabeth Barrett Browning and her father, of whom she once wrote:
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"It is my fancy to conjure your beloved image between myself and the public,
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so as to be sure of one smile, and to satisfy my heart while I satisfy my
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ambition, by associating with the great pursuit of my life its tenderest and
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holiest affection."
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The impression, then, I want to give of America's favorite motion
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picture actress is not so much of the actress as of the woman, tender and
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lovable, of high ideals, democratic in principle and philanthropic of
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impulse. A womanly woman, philosophic and profound, yet retaining the simple
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faith of a child.
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|
Yesterday at Pleasanton we chatted through the few spare moments while a
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big production is being filmed. We sat upon the verandah of the old-
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|
fashioned hotel; up and down the broad street lined with picturesque elm
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trees moved a company of people out of the life of "Rebecca of Sunnybrook
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Farm." Above the droway hum of June insects, grateful for the warm days of
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|
summer, the distant chur-r- of mowing machines and other sounds of summer
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|
that are far and clear, rose the murmur of may voices all in happy, jocund
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|
mood. Little girls and boys, even babies, had their part in the animated
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|
scene. Men dressed for the part of stage drivers and of haymakers, school
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|
girls in the old-fashioned dress, and maiden aunts all selected with precise
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|
judgment for the parts they play. And patiently listening to complains,
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|
cheerfully giving advice and directing this, that and the other about the
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next scene, the location, and those he wanted in it, accomplishing it all
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|
with the ease of a master, was Mr. Marshall Neilan.
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|
It was all so natural and simple; there was nothing stagey or affected
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|
about it. To complete the scene gentle old horses attached to a quaint stage
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|
coach dozed sleepily in the mid-day heat, and two restless ponies, which
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|
might have been the very ones "Rebecca" used when she went to sell soap,
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|
restlessly pulled at their tether. Only one feature of modern life linked
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|
the scene to the present and crushed the illusion that it was the very New
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|
England village which "Rebecca" knew so well, and that was the constant
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|
coming and going of automobiles.
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|
"I suppose I ought to begin by asking your favorite color, your favorite
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|
perfume, your favorite fruit and so on," I said to Miss Pickford. She
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|
laughed. "No, the first question people always ask me is 'How do you like
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|
working in the movies?' or 'How do you like seeing yourself on the screen?'
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|
and 'Do you like the stage better than the pictures, and how many children
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|
have you?' And one thing I always tell everybody," she continued, with a
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|
smile, "is that my hair has always been blonde."
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|
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
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|
said. "I don't do very much for it, but they seem to think it a lot and one
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|
of the children asked the Sister if Mary Pickford was not their patron saint;
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|
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
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|
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
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|
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."
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|
"Would you rather help children or old people?" I asked her.
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|
"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."
|
|
|
|
*****************************************************************************
|
|
*****************************************************************************
|
|
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.
|
|
*****************************************************************************
|
|
Back issues of Taylorology are available on the Web at any of the following:
|
|
http://www.angelfire.com/az/Taylorology/
|
|
http://www.uno.edu/~drif/arbuckle/Taylorology/
|
|
http://www.etext.org/Zines/ASCII/Taylorology/
|
|
Full text searches of back issues can be done at http://www.etext.org/Zines/
|
|
For more information about Taylor, see
|
|
WILLIAM DESMOND TAYLOR: A DOSSIER (Scarecrow Press, 1991)
|
|
*****************************************************************************
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