Tinseltown: Murder, Morphine, and Madness at the Dawn of Hollywood (20 page)

“I went on to bed,” Rae would later reveal, “and let them go on with their party.”

Around three o’clock she woke up with a start.

Rae looked around. The house was very quiet. Her husband was not beside her. Rae tiptoed out of bed and peered from her bedroom door. She had a clear view across the hall into the second bedroom.

What she saw sickened her.

Osborn and his niece Rose were naked in bed together, in each other’s arms.

Rae screamed. Her husband bolted out of bed and ran toward her, “making all sorts of excuses.” Somehow he was able to mollify Rae, and returned to bed with her. But in the morning Rae still felt sick to her stomach. Although she managed to drag herself off to work at nine o’clock, two hours later she became violently ill and returned home.

She found Don and Rose back in bed together.

Ever since she first arrived in Hollywood, when she was just eighteen, Rae had been devoted to Don. Without Don, Rae feared she’d be nothing. Where would she go in this terrible town? She had tried walking out on Don before—she had even tried taking her own life—but each time she failed. Each attempt to leave him left her feeling worse without him than she had with him. Rae was trapped.

Even in the face of her husband’s depravity, Rae couldn’t walk away.

A few nights after finding Don and Rose together, Rae came home from the burlesque theater, desperate to find a way to make the marriage work. But Osborn had other ideas.

He met her at the door with a gun. Swinging the weapon around in the air, he ordered his terrified wife out of the house.

Rae ran to the police, but they escorted her right back to Osborn. A wife shouldn’t walk out on her husband, the police counseled. Had she disobeyed him in some way?

Rae was horrified. Was every man in Los Angeles insane?

In utter terror she passed the night. Although the police had promised to keep watch on the house, Rae was convinced that Don would burst into the room at any moment and shoot her dead for what she had witnessed between him and Rose.

But as terrifying as the night was, it proved an epiphany.

In the morning, Rae packed her things and finally bid Osborn good-bye.

Osborn raged.

Rae had walked out on him. No woman walked out on Don Osborn.

Worse, Rae had something on him. That Osborn couldn’t abide. In a divorce suit, she could destroy him with what she knew. So the only answer was to get something on Rae as well.

Osborn found the hotel where his wife was staying. With Blackie Madsen posing as his father, he took the room across from Rae’s.

If his foolish little wife thought she’d escaped him, she was mistaken.

No one got away from Don Osborn.

Just back from a trip to London, refreshed and relaxed, William Desmond Taylor opened the door to the garage at Alvarado Court and stared in horror at his cherished car.

The McFarlan was a wreck. Its front end was smashed in, its windows shattered.

Taylor grinned, that strange way he had of expressing anger. Then he went looking for Earl Tiffany, demanding answers. The chauffeur told him that Edward Sands had run amok while Taylor was abroad. He had smashed the car and then taken off.

Taylor decided to check the house for other damages. In his room, he discovered that seven of his custom suits were missing. Downstairs at his desk, he opened the bank statement that had arrived in the mail and found inside a canceled check for $4,500—a check he hadn’t written. Turning the check over, Taylor saw that Sands had forged his name. More evidence of the valet’s perfidy lay on the desk: twenty checks on which Sands had practiced signing his employer’s name, each attempt a little better than the last.

Taylor stepped into the telephone nook under the stairs and rang the police.

A short time later, Detectives E. R. Cato and William Cahill arrived in their big black police car. After looking around, they issued a felony warrant for the arrest of Edward Sands.

But Taylor doubted the rogue would ever be found.

A fortnight later, he fired Earl Tiffany. The chauffeur had done nothing to stop Sands’s spree, and besides, he was
threatening now to keep a diary of where he went and what he did for the director. A man with as many secrets as Taylor was not keen on his chauffeur keeping a diary.

Now Taylor had two posts to fill.

A new chauffeur proved easy to obtain. Harry Fellows had been dependable and discreet, so Taylor tapped his younger brother Howard to take over the job. A trustworthy valet, however, was going to take a while longer to find, since this time Taylor would make sure to check references.

In the meantime, he had other matters to attend to.

In a name, Mary.

The heartbroken nineteen-year-old weighed heavily on Taylor’s conscience. For so long, he’d kept Mary at arm’s length—for her own good, the director believed. But her entreaties had finally worn him down. When Mary arrived back in Los Angeles after her own trip abroad, she’d reached out yet again, asking to see him. This time Taylor agreed.

He was trying to be magnanimous. But he was playing with fire.

Mary’s spirits leaped. This was what she’d been waiting for. She fixed her hair and wore her prettiest dress. How fortunate that Shelby had been delayed in Chicago. If her horrible mother were home, Mary would never have been able to enjoy this reunion with her one true love. When Mr. Taylor arrived, he had flowers for her. And, Mary believed,
“a lovelight in his eyes that told me his affection for me had not diminished during my absence.”

Taylor’s attempt at kindness accomplished the exact opposite of his intention. Instead of healing Mary’s broken heart, he only welded it more securely to his own. After that meeting, the lovesick little actress came by Taylor’s house several more times. He tried to be patient with her. But he knew he’d soon have to set limits again, even as he dreaded the scene it would cause.

He was saved from such an ordeal by the return of Charlotte Shelby, who once again laid down the law and forbade her daughter ever to see the director again.

And if that old lech Taylor ever came near her delicate little cash cow again, Shelby told Mary, she’d kill him.

That summer, without a valet, Taylor was a very solitary man.

His neighbors noticed him returning from the studio at night, walking through the courtyard so elegantly, so ramrod straight, so carefully buttoned up in his tweeds and gabardines. A single light would go on when he entered his house, his silhouette flickering through the blinds as he sat down at his desk. There he would stay for hours at a time. Rarely did anyone stop by. Occasionally his scenic director from the studio, George Hopkins, visited. But his only other regular guest, Mabel Normand, was in New York that summer.

Such a private man, that William Desmond Taylor.

Late one August night, his neighbor across the courtyard, Neil J. Harrington, spotted movement around the director’s bungalow. Watching carefully, Harrington discerned a figure peering into one of Taylor’s windows. Whether Taylor was at home, Harrington wasn’t sure, but he did think the behavior of the person lurking outside was odd.

Finally, Taylor found his new valet.

Henry Peavey wore bright-colored golf stockings and knickers that made Mabel laugh when she met him later that fall.
“A funny colored boy with lots of mannerisms,” she said of Taylor’s new man. Yet despite being illiterate, Peavey possessed
“the assurance of one accustomed to associate only with the ‘best people,’” in the opinion of one observer.
The valet had come highly recommended by Vivien Cabanne, the former wife of movie director Christy Cabanne. The two had known each other since they were both youngsters in Berkeley, California, where Vivien’s mother, a seamstress, had made Peavey’s first pair of long pants. After the Cabannes divorced, Vivien had brought her old friend Henry down to Los Angeles to work for her, a far better gig than Peavey’s last job, traipsing around San Francisco as a messenger for the Corona Typewriter Company. Perpetually smiling, Peavey seemed very grateful for this chance at a new life.

He was efficient, too, even if he lacked the military precision of Sands. But Taylor’s new valet was honest. After everything Taylor had just been through, that made all the difference.

Still, he chose not to have Peavey live with him. With so many secrets stashed away in his closets and his drawers, Taylor figured it was better if his man arrived before breakfast and left after dinner. To compensate for the lack of room and board,
Taylor paid his valet an additional $5 a week for rent on top of his $25 salary. Taking a room on East Third Street, Peavey rode the trolley every morning to report for work by seven thirty sharp.

It seemed like an arrangement that would last.

Marcus Loew, wearing a large boutonnière of roses and baby’s breath, greeted guests as they entered the Ritz-Carlton ballroom as if he were the king of the movies. With his new skyscraper towering over Times Square, Loew seemed more puffed up than ever to Adolph Zukor. Kissing Lillian Gish and Norma Talmadge on the cheeks, Loew strutted through the ballroom with a huge smile on his face. Zukor fumed.

He’d come out tonight, September 7, 1921, for a private preview of Loew’s production of Dumas’s
Camille
, a modern, stylized adaptation starring Madame Alla Nazimova. The eccentric Russian diva, in extravagant furs and feathers, had flown out from the Coast to be there herself. At her side was her slinky-eyed, pomaded costar, the year’s hottest new sensation, Rudolph Valentino, whose previous film,
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
, was still raking in cash for Loew’s Metro Pictures. The nascent producer stood there beaming, confident he had another smash hit on his hands with
Camille
.

Zukor fretted that once again, Loew was trying to do him one better.

Loew’s business interests had become nearly as integrated as Zukor’s. Buying up theaters left and right, Loew owned more than a hundred by now.
“Unless Marcus Loew slows up in this business of acquiring theaters,” wrote the
New York Times
, “some city, somewhere, some time, is going to achieve fame unique . . . as the only place without a Loew house.” Now he was looking across the Atlantic as well, sending his son Arthur to England, France, Belgium, Sweden, Portugal, and Spain in a couple of weeks,
“in the interests of Metro Pictures.” Naturally Zukor’s daughter Mickey would accompany and assist him.

That summer, Loew seemed to be taking everything near and dear to Zukor.

At least the sneak preview of
Camille
was held at the Ritz, not
Loew’s new State Theatre, the opulent movie house at the base of his skyscraper. Like its proprietor, the State was gauche and flamboyant, with imported Sienna marble wainscoting and walls finished in walnut and gold leaf. Hundreds of goldfish swam in a giant reflecting pool in the lobby. Over it all, Loew ruled from his perch on the sixteenth floor.

That Zukor attended the
Camille
preview was a testament to his pride and resilience. As he had demonstrated in Minneapolis, he would not retreat into seclusion when things got tough—and these past several weeks had been the toughest of Zukor’s movie career. In July
the Tufts trial had gotten under way with an overflow crowd listening raptly as all the lurid details were exposed. “An orgy of drink and lust” was how one prosecutor described the night at Mishawum Manor. Dragging on through the summer, the trial had Christian reformers declaring that Zukor had been poisoned by “the greed of Gehazi and the sins of Sodom.”

And if the film chief had hoped for a quick resolution once final arguments were made on August 11, he was disappointed when the five justices of the Supreme Judicial Court announced they would take their sweet time with the evidence. Now, with nearly a month gone by, there was still no verdict. Zukor dreaded the return of the headlines—and the snickering behind his back—once the decision was finally announced.

Yet as embarrassing as the trial in Boston had been, the end of the month brought an even worse calamity for Zukor. The Federal Trade Commission finally launched its attack.

As he took his seat to watch
Camille
, Zukor knew that everyone around him, despite their warm greetings in the lobby, was rooting for him to fail. Even those who held no personal animus against him were hoping this latest challenge to Zukor’s supremacy would succeed—because if it did, they’d all have a much easier time of things.

Late in the day on Tuesday, August 30, Famous Players was officially cited by the FTC for violating antitrust laws.
“As a result of conspiracies and combinations and through acquisition and affiliation,” the conscientious Houston Thompson declared, “the Famous Players–Lasky Corporation is now the largest concern in the motion picture industry.” Much of the company’s unchecked growth had been accomplished by “coercion and intimidation,” Thompson charged. In short: Famous Players was a trust. And the job of the Federal Trade Commission was to break up trusts.

Thirty days. That was how long Zukor and his subsidiary companies were given to answer the complaint before hearings would be held and a trial date set. In public Zukor acted unworried, making light of stories that had him
“gobbling up” the industry. “For dinner it seemed I started off with a theater or two,” he said, “followed by a producing company, and ended with a few stars lured from other companies, served up with cream and sugar.”

But back at the office, his lawyers were working day and night to come up with a defense that would keep their multimillion-dollar conglomeration together. If they failed, Zukor’s dreams would have to be cut back, reconsidered. And cheapening his vision was something Zukor could never abide.

Yet for all that, as he filed out of the screening of Loew’s
Camille
, Zukor was likely smiling.

One thing he’d learned in his nearly two decades in the film industry was just what made a good movie. He knew a hit the moment the rushes flashed on a screen. He could stand outside in the lobby, listening to an audience’s reaction, and gauge how much money a picture would make. He could also sniff out a flop. Surely he knew that Madame Nazimova’s pretentious film was doomed to be a financial disaster. As he offered his polite congratulations to Loew, a smug little smile must have played over Zukor’s face, leaving his rival to worry.