Tinseltown: Murder, Morphine, and Madness at the Dawn of Hollywood

by William J. Mann

  In the last few months, Taylor had become the movies’ most ardent defender against the increasing calls for censorship. In his deep, commanding voice, he argued in interviews and public speeches that audiences wanted pictures that reflected life as it was, not life as the moralists wanted it to be. “Give the public real human pictures with hearts in them, and life and love and passion,” Taylor told one reporter, “and the public will rise up and call you blessed.”

  He’d been especially busy these last few weeks as criticisms of the film industry mounted following Olive Thomas’s drug-related death in Paris. Few were as articulate as Taylor as spokesman for an industry in dire need of some major public-relations varnishing.

  That, ultimately, was what this assemblage at the Brunton Studios was about, though it was also what it was billed as: a tribute, a place for people to come together and grieve. The film colony was a small town. If it weren’t for the palm trees that stood in for maples and oaks, Hollywood could almost have been mistaken for a New England factory town, with movies replacing brass pipes or rubber tires as the local manufacture. Everyone knew each other, no matter what studio they worked for. They belonged to the same clubs; they ate at the same restaurants; they shopped at the same stores and attended the same dinner dances. Very few lived more than half an hour’s drive from anyone else—and how easy it was to zip around in this auto-centered city! Downtown sometimes got congested at rush hour, with Pierce-Arrow runabouts and Oldsmobile touring cars puffing exhaust. But the movie people had settled, for the most part, at the ends of the long streets that radiated outward from the city center, past the citrus groves and date farms and oil wells. Driving to the studios in the morning in their open-air automobiles, the film folk waved to each other as they passed on the street, and again as they headed home in the evening.

  So when someone died, it was a loss for the entire community. And when many died at once—and in violent and tragic circumstances, as had happened these last few months—it was an issue for everyone, not just the particular studio where the deceased had been employed.

  They came together this afternoon to memorialize their dead. Ormer Locklear and Milton Elliott, aviators who’d been killed in a movie stunt gone wrong. Pretty starlet Clarine Seymour, whose mysterious death had stunned everyone. Bobby Harron, he of the “accidental” revolver discharge. And of course Olive Thomas, whose tragedy was still being played out in the daily headlines. RUMORS OF DRUG AND WINE PARTIES. GAY REVELS IN UNDERWORLD OF PARIS. Even staid papers like the Los Angeles Times reported the “sinister rumors of cocaine orgies” that had swirled around pretty little Ollie.

  All around the country, editorials were lambasting the morals of the movie people. It was Taylor’s task, as industry point man, to mollify such critics. In his eulogy at the Brunton Studios, his goal was to put forward a respectable, decent face of the film colony.

  On the Longacre stage, the largest of the studio’s film sets, eight hundred mourners—“stars and stagehands, producers and supers”—were filing solemnly into the pews that had been hastily arranged by Brunton property men.

  With all eyes on him, Taylor stepped up to the podium to speak.

  Sitting in the audience that day were some of the most important people in the film colony. Adolph Zukor’s partner, Jesse Lasky. Zukor’s rival Thomas Ince. Zukor’s chief director, Cecil B. DeMille. Such top stars as Betty Compson, Harold Lloyd, Mae Marsh, Richard Dix, Thomas Meighan, Lila Lee, Charles Ray, Will Rogers, Bebe Daniels. And the biggest names of all, sitting front row and center, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, whose marriage, after Mary’s quickie Nevada divorce from Owen Moore, had caused its own scandal headlines.

  The whole world was watching them. Everyone in that audience was well aware of that fact. They were all depending on Taylor to say what needed to be said.

  He’d won their confidence over the past few months. In his most recent film, The Soul of Youth, Taylor had very wisely given a small part to Judge Ben Lindsey, a nationally recognized child advocate. It proved a masterstroke of publicity. After the experience of being in a movie, Lindsey became an enthusiastic supporter of Hollywood, offering a powerful counter to those who called movies too permissive and too dismissive of traditional values and religion. “The motion picture is doing great work,” he declared. The effect of movies on children, Lindsey insisted, was “overwhelmingly good.” Taylor’s sagacity in co-opting Lindsey to the movies’ cause had won him fans among the industry chieftains.

  What they faced was the old eternal battle between traditionalists and modernists, brought into stark relief by the end of the war. A new generation of moviegoers, finding, in Fitzgerald’s famous phrase, “all gods dead [and] all faiths in man shaken,” were flocking to pictures that reveled in a new sexual freedom, such as DeMille’s Old Wives for New and Male and Female. “Film subject matter was changing to fit the times,” Adolph Zukor acknowledged, and he believed their job as filmmakers was to “stay abreast” of the times.

  For every Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, there were many other films that celebrated a new kind of woman—free, unapologetically sexual—and new kinds of relationships that men and women could enjoy. Other films exposed the seamier side of modern life, with prostitutes, pimps, alcoholics, and gangsters all striding across the celluloid for everyone, including children, to see. Even if good (usually) triumphed in the end, the very depiction of such things was enough to give the church ladies palpitations.

  And so out had come the censor’s shears. In Pennsylvania, state-appointed moral guardians had even snipped out scenes of “a woman making baby clothes, on the ground that children believe that babies are brought by the stork.” What was next? asked the New York Times. “Will it be a crime to show a picture of a man giving his wife a Christmas present on the ground that it tends to destroy faith in Santa Claus?”

  Zukor and the other film chiefs loudly bemoaned this loss of artistic freedom. But the real pain they felt, of course, came from decreased profits. That was why Taylor had been dispatched to the Brunton Studios memorial to say some kind words about the industry and try to slow the march toward censorship in other states.

  In his deep, resonant voice, Taylor intoned the names of the dead: “Sweet little Clarine Seymour, radiant with youth.” He paused for effect. “Gallant, fearless Ormer Locklear.” Another pause. “True-hearted Bobby Harron.” And finally, with a tremble of emotion, “Generous, great-hearted Ollie Thomas.”

  The melancholy strains of Chopin’s famous Funeral March filled the Longacre stage. The Reverend Neal Dodd, pastor of St. Mary of the Angels Episcopal Church, known as the motion picture people’s church, gave a reading from scripture. The Metropolitan Quartet followed with the popular piece “The Rosary,” by Ethelbert Nevin. No matter that most of the studio chiefs were Jewish, or that, except for Harron, none of those being memorialized had been especially religious. This little show at the Brunton Studios had a wider audience than just those present. The good Christian ladies in Newark, and Birmingham, and Des Moines—the ones who could either mobilize for censorship or stop such a campaign in its tracks—were the ones the movie bosses really wanted to impress.

  At last it was time for Taylor’s eulogy. Standing tall and erect like the military commander he had been—during the war he’d attained the rank of captain in the British Army—Taylor orated in a rich, resounding voice that rang through the studio. He spoke in glowing terms of those who had been lost. No scandal was mentioned. Instead, Taylor spoke of honor, and devotion to duty, and friendship, and family. Many in attendance were moved to tears.

  “William Taylor’s beautiful tribute to the memories of the recently departed stars tried even the stoutest hearts,” the reporter from the Los Angeles Examiner observed, “and will never be forgotten by the motion picture folk who made the unique pilgrimage of sorrow to the studio.”

  “His sympathy,” declared another attendee, “was a thing of beauty. In it, with the utmost delicacy, he touched the tragic notes in
the violent passings of youths who had all life and accomplishments before them, while from his stock of supreme tenderness he pointed his moral, revealing with the philosophy of a thoughtful and clear-visioned soul, the light in all things.”

  Standing there before the high and the mighty of Hollywood, Taylor was their man, their voice. They saluted his oration with rousing applause. Pickford, Fairbanks, Ince—all of them commended Taylor for his advocacy. He seemed an impeccable propagandist to defend their industry, their livelihoods, their world. Difficult days still lay ahead; no one believed they’d put an end to the censorship movement overnight. But William Desmond Taylor had the strength, the authority, and the character to meet the challenges head-on.

  But looking out at his audience, Taylor knew something they did not.

  For all his noble bearing and dignity, he harbored some dark secrets of his own.

  Of course, everyone had secrets in Tinseltown. Mabel, Gibby, and Mary had trunkloads of them. Even the mighty Adolph Zukor had Brownie Kennedy in his past. The film colony was a bubbling cauldron of hidden lives.

  But the secrets of the man charged with its championship, William Desmond Taylor, would make the rest seem tame indeed.

  CHAPTER 5

  A RACE TO THE TOP

  In his eighth-floor office on Fifth Avenue in New York, Adolph Zukor cursed.

  Another movie mogul was going to beat him into the sky in Times Square. A skyscraper was going up on the northeast corner of Broadway and Forty-Fifth Street that would include offices and a state-of-the-art theater. Construction was projected to cost nearly $2.5 million, and the building would top out at sixteen stories.

  Exactly double the height at which Zukor sat at the moment.

  Worst of all, the mogul who would beat him was Marcus Loew.

  Zukor and Loew had been friends and rivals for a very long time. In the beginning, they’d been partners, too. They had run a business called Automatic Vaudeville, a penny arcade on Fourteenth Street, in the heart of the city’s tenderloin, surrounded by saloons and dance halls and immigrants looking for a cheap way to pass the time. For a penny, these uneducated laborers could peer into the peep shows and watch sexy girls swivel in serpentine dances. Their first year in business, Zukor and Loew raked in more than $100,000, a pirates’ booty of pennies and nickels. Soon they had a chain of arcades.

  But then they had split. Neither man was the type to share power easily. Both wanted to be the boss, so Zukor and Loew went their separate ways to run their own shows. Still, they remained intertwined in each other’s lives. In those early days, the two men lived across the street from each other on 111th Street and Seventh Avenue. Their wives went shopping together, and their sons played on the same baseball teams. Loew found success with a chain of theaters that showed only moving pictures, without any vaudeville—a radical move at the time. And of course, as the most powerful producer of moving pictures in the world, Zukor became one of Loew’s biggest suppliers.

  If only they could have maintained such a symbiotic relationship.

  But Zukor wanted more. When he started accumulating his own theaters, placing himself in direct competition with Loew, his former partner retaliated by taking over Metro Pictures, a struggling movie studio in Hollywood. That put him in direct competition with Zukor in film production, and Creepy was not pleased. Why was Loew always trying to show him up?

  And now he would beat Zukor into the sky, too.

  The two men couldn’t have been more different. Zukor dressed conservatively, trying not to look like the parvenu he was. Loew was “a dandy in a high hat and fur coat,” Zukor said, and Loew didn’t disagree. “I wear ’em to impress ’em,” he said. Where Zukor was private and deliberate, Loew was loud and impulsive, “a jolly mixer type, knowing everybody.” Zukor rarely socialized anymore. His days of raucous laughter and high spirits were over. Now he could be found in some dark corner at Delmonico’s restaurant, presiding over late-night, smoke-hung, business-heavy dinners. At another table across the way, Loew continued to party, with friends and acquaintances constantly pulling up chairs. But no one stopped by Zukor’s table unless summoned.

  About the only quality the two men shared was ambition. As Loew admitted, “You must want a big success and then beat it into submission. You must be as ravenous to reach it as the wolf who licks his teeth behind a fleeing rabbit.” Zukor would never have been as upfront or loquacious about it, but he would have entirely agreed with the sentiment.

  They played out their rivalry on the tennis court. Loew, bigger and stronger, nearly always won. When he suggested they don boxing gloves for a little sparring in the ring, Zukor declined. He was not lacking in courage, and he was certainly not averse to risk. But Zukor’s risks were always calculated. He understood the wisdom of a strategic retreat.

  What Loew lacked was Zukor’s foresight. As savvy a businessman as he was, Loew had failed to see the potential of feature-length films. The “flickers,” he argued, would always remain ten to fifteen minutes long. No one would sit still much longer than that. So when Zukor imported the nearly hour-long French film Queen Elizabeth, starring Sarah Bernhardt, Loew had placed a sympathetic arm around Lottie Zukor’s shoulders. Her husband, Loew told her, “had lost his head.” His money was sure to follow.

  Queen Elizabeth turned out to be a huge hit, launching the era of feature-length films. Zukor made sure Loew received a report of the box-office receipts in the mail. Anonymously, of course.

  Yet what finally separated the two old acquaintances was something more personal. Loew was loved, while Zukor was feared. Reporters told stories about Loew’s friendship with his elevator boy, whose troubles the film mogul would listen to every day as they rose from floor to floor. Zukor’s elevator boy knew to keep mum when taking the boss up. Loew’s employees feted their employer on every birthday, but Zukor’s staff shrank from the man they called Creepy. Loew was modest and gave credit to others: “I have had the help all the way along of a great many very capable men.” Zukor only ever spoke of his own efforts. Loew said he’d been lucky in his career. Zukor insisted luck had had nothing to do with his success.

  But only bad luck could explain why his beloved daughter Mildred, whom he called Mickey, had fallen in love with Loew’s son Arthur.

  Zukor believed Loew had encouraged Arthur’s courtship of Mickey, knowing full well that the romance would get under his skin. But both fathers had been surprised when Mickey had accepted Arthur’s marriage proposal. Grumbling all the way, Zukor had paid for a lavish wedding with 350 guests in the Crystal Room at the Ritz-Carlton—as much to impress Mickey’s father-in-law as herself. Moving-picture cameras, of course, had recorded the momentous event.

  If anyone was hoping that a family alliance might tamp down the rivalry between the two men, they would have been disappointed. The marriage of their children only exacerbated the competition between the fathers-in-law. “Then you did not let blood ties interfere with business?” an attorney would ask Zukor, years later. “No!” Zukor replied, as if it were the most foolish question ever posed.

  Sitting at his desk, Zukor uncurled a map of New York. Circled in red were the theaters that belonged to him. In blue were those that belonged to Loew. That fall, Zukor’s rival had bought six more theaters, bringing his total to forty-one. And word was that he was getting ready to acquire more.

  Zukor scanned the rest of the map with his sharp eyes. Dozens of other theaters remained uncircled, just waiting to be snagged by one of them.

  Controlling the exhibition of movies was key to all of Zukor’s future success. The numbers told the story. The combined annual income of all American producers was $90 million—but the combined revenues of all American movie theaters was $800 million. Zukor wanted a piece of that. The most substantial piece, in fact.

  A year earlier he’d taken personal affront when some of the biggest first-run theaters in the country had formed First National Pictures. The exhibitors had organized in response to Zukor’s increasing cont
rol of the market, but the Famous Players chief saw the move as offensive, not defensive. Ever paranoid, Zukor felt “raided.” His first reaction was to try to buy out First National. When that failed, he decided to hobble it. He’d acquire as many theaters as possible before First National could get to them.

  Now Zukor owned close to three hundred theaters throughout the United States, most of them showing only his Paramount pictures. His plan was vertical integration of the industry: he would make the pictures, distribute them, and exhibit them. Zukor wanted what all capitalists ultimately want: to eliminate the competition and create a monopoly for himself.

  But acquiring all those theaters hadn’t been easy. In many cases, Zukor had had to coerce or bully the local exhibitors into coming on board with him. In this, he had found a determined opponent in Sydney S. Cohen, the head of the Motion Picture Theater Owners of America (MPTOA). With Cohen around, Zukor was finding it increasingly difficult to get his way. “Cohen must be destroyed,” the Famous Players chief wrote in a memo to his staff, “and his organization broken down.” The note found its way into the hands of the exhibitors, and open war broke out between Zukor and the MPTOA.

  Of course, Marcus Loew had moved right in to take advantage of the situation—or at least, that’s how Zukor perceived it. At the MPTOA’s most recent gathering, Zukor’s daughter’s father-in-law had riled up his fellow exhibitors even further by thundering from the podium that no producer should want to “drive the exhibitor out of the game”—a clear indictment of Zukor. That, he said, was “killing the goose that lays the golden egg.” When Loew finished speaking, those uncouth theater owners—most of them illiterate immigrants, Zukor sniffed—cheered and stamped their feet. A beaming Loew basked in their applause.