Tinseltown: Murder, Morphine, and Madness at the Dawn of Hollywood (60 page)

In May of that year
:
Rocky Mountain News
, May 1, 1910.

Taylor would insist that he had quit
:
Los Angeles Tribune
, July 6, 1914.

proved otherwise
:
Moving Picture World
, April 18, 1914. It is true that at the same time that Taylor was let go with two weeks’ notice, two other players, as well as a scenarist and a number of backstage employees, were also fired. While that could argue for a simple trim of the budget, it is hard to understand why the company would lay off Taylor just as
Captain Alvarez
, a very important picture, was about to be released.

One of her acquaintances
: “Starke Patterson [
sic
] and Patricia Palmer out for the day at Venice Beach,”
New York Mirror
, n.d. [1920], Locke Collection. For more information on Patteson, see US Census, 1920, 1930, 1940.

revealed as two of the men
:
Boston Globe
, June 25, 1921.

“Try and keep me”
:
Wid’s Daily
, June 22, 1921.

“trustification” of the industry
:
Wid’s Daily
, June 3, 1921.

“were not very well liked”
: Adolph Zukor, interview by Stone.

“a liar and a crook”
:
Wid’s Daily
, June 22, 1921.

George B. Christian
: Details on the Christian controversy were reported in the
New York Times
, February 17, February 21, 1924;
Wall Street Journal
, February 18, 1924;
Variety
, February 21, 1924.

“protect the exhibitor”
:
Wid’s Daily
, June 29, 1921.

“accorded convention courtesies”
:
Appleton (WI) Post-Crescent
, June 28, 1921.

“It took a damned big man”
:
Wid’s Daily
, June 29, 1921.

“that little man”
:
Exhibitors Trade Review
, December 3, 1921.

“There was nothing”
: William Brady,
Showman: My Life Story
(New York: Dutton, 1937).

“the face and eyes”
: Robert Grau,
The Theatre of Science: A Volume of Progress and Achievement in the Motion Picture Industry
(New York: B. Blom, 1914).

“I went on to bed”
: FBI case file, August 11, 1923.

The McFarlan was a wreck
: Details of Sands’s theft and damage come from the
Los Angeles Record
, July 26, 1921;
Los Angeles Herald
, July 26, 1921;
Variety
, August 5, 1921.

threatening now to keep a diary
:
Los Angeles Times
, February 4, 1922.

“a lovelight in his eyes”
:
Los Angeles Herald
, August 14, 1923;
Los Angeles Times
, August 15, 1923.

Late one August night
:
Los Angeles Examiner
, February 12, 1922.

“A funny colored boy”
:
Los Angeles Examiner
, February 11, 1922.

“the assurance of one”
:
Los Angeles Examiner
, February 5, 1922.

The valet had come highly recommended
: Peavey told reporters that he had worked for Mrs. Cabanne and that her mother had made the pants;
Los Angeles Record
, February 13, 1922. Christy Cabanne’s wife in 1922 was his second spouse, Millicent Fisher. But she was living in New York, and in 1920, when Peavey, according to the US Census, came to Los Angeles, they were not yet married. As indicated in the census and in Peavey’s World War I registration record, he hailed from the Berkeley–Oakland–San Francisco area; Cabanne’s first wife, Vivien, was from Berkeley, where her mother worked as a seamstress.

Taylor paid his valet
: Taylor probate file, creditor’s claim, Henry Peavey, February 25, 1922.

He’d come out tonight
:
New York Tribune
, September 4, September 8, 1921;
New York Morning Telegraph
, September 11, 1921.

“Unless Marcus Loew”
:
New York Times
, September 4, 1921.

“in the interests of Metro Pictures”
: Marcus Loew to the Department of State, August 26, 1921, Arthur Loew US passport application.

Loew’s new State Theatre
:
New York Times
, August 30, August 31, September 4, 1921.

the Tufts trial had gotten under way
:
Boston Globe
, July 11, July 12, July 13, August 10, August 11, August 12, August 14, 1921;
Hutchinson (KS) News
, July 12, 1921;
Atlanta Constitution
, July 12, 1921; various newspaper articles, Nathan Tufts trial file, Boston Public Library.

“As a result of conspiracies”
:
Wall Street Journal
, August 31, 1921, September 2, 1921;
New York Times
, September 1, 1921.

“gobbling up” the industry
: Zukor,
Public Is Never Wrong
.

“The general view was that”
:
Variety
, September 9, 1921.

F
ATTY
A
RBUCKLE
E
XPLAINS
D
EATH
:
New York Evening World
, September 10, 1921.

Mabel Normand rang her old friend Mintrattie
:
New York Journal
, September 14, 1921.

Mabel had nicknames
: Minta Durfee, interview by Don Schneider and Stephen Normand, July 21, 1974, located at the Mabel Normand Source Book, www.mn-hp.com.

There were also rumors
: For details and background on the Arbuckle arrest and trial, see David Yallop,
The Day the Laughter Stopped
(London: Transworld, 1991) and Stuart Oderman,
Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle
(Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2005).

“A product of the gutters”
:
Kokomo (IN) Daily Tribune
, September 15, 1921.

“Picture the scene for yourself”
: As in the
Kokomo Daily Tribune
, September 15, 1921.

“in view of public feeling”
:
Variety
, September 16, 1921.

“a fire bell to awaken the public”
:
Anniston (AL) Star
, September 24, 1921.

“There is a dope ring”
:
Variety
, September 23, 1921.

“she photographed without”
: Sennett,
King of Comedy
.

she’d been sick in bed
: Mabel Normand to William D. Taylor, telegram, June 26, 1921. The telegram was published in the
Los Angeles Examiner
, February 21, 1922, presumably discovered by reporters snooping through the murder scene or leaked by the studio for some reason.

On the night of September 15
:
New York Morning Telegraph
, September 18, 1921.

Bursting into tears
:
Variety
, September 23, 1921.

“At this time, when business”
:
Variety
, September 23, 1921.

So far he’d said nothing
:
Los Angeles Times
, September 13, 1921.

“To have shown them”
: Zukor,
Public Is Never Wrong
.

At the age of fifteen
: Zukor,
Publis Is Never Wrong.

“I may say barely enough”
: Wire reports, as in
Salt Lake Tribune
, September 29, 1921.

“that famous party”
:
Kokomo (IN) Daily Tribune
, September 15, 1921.

“When something happens”
: Roscoe Arbuckle to Joseph Schenck, October 1, 1921, Zukor Collection.

“A man is kept busy”
: Zukor,
Public Is Never Wrong
.

Across the Border
had not been screened
: Although announced in the trades as available in January 1922,
Across the Border
did not turn up on any screen until April, according to a digitized search of thousands of newspapers, and then only periodically thereafter. The film was still showing in second-class theaters into 1923.

Bryson and Rose had spent the night
: George Weh provided testimony to the FBI in a report dated October 25, 1923. Although he claimed that the Cadillac Hotel incident occurred in the winter of 1922, “about the first part,” meaning sometime between January and March, I believe he was off by a few months, as by that time Rose and Osborn were living together, and they were not at the time of this incident.

“dirty filthy evidence”
: Mrs. Mabelle Osborn to Don Osborn, July 31, 1923, transcribed in FBI case files, August 2, 1923.

They were leaving for San Diego
: According to Bryson’s death record, April 22, 1922, Peoria, Arizona, he was married at the time of his death. Did he marry after the episode with Osborn and Putnam, or was he going to commit bigamy with Rose? The record also indicates he was suffering from tuberculosis at the time of the incident.

“magnitude and importance”
: Will H. Hays to Adolph Zukor, December 12, 1921, Zukor Collection.

“We realize that in order”
: Adolph Zukor, et al., to Will H. Hays, December 2, 1921, reproduced in Terry Ramsaye,
A Million and One Nights: A History of the Motion Picture
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1926).

“the pleasant talks”
: Will H. Hays to Adolph Zukor, December 12, 1921, Zukor Collection.

“You could put him”
:
Film Daily
, January 9, 1922.

“added up to public relations”
: Will H. Hays,
The Memoirs of Will H. Hays
(Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1955). For more on Hays’s time at the post office, see also Stephen Vaughn, “The Devil’s Advocate: Will H. Hays and the Campaign to Make the Movies Respectable,”
Indiana Magazine of History
101 (June 2005).

“as it must appeal to any man”
: Will H. Hays to Adolph Zukor, December 12, 1921, Zukor Collection.

“Word comes from Los Angeles”
: “The Morals of Hollywood,” originally published in the
Dearborn (MI) Independent
, December 10, 1921.

“I have always believed”
:
Memoirs of Will H. Hays
.

“Box office receipts”
:
New York Times
, July 23, 1922.

four or five times greater
:
Wall Street Journal
, January 12, 1922.

“I knew that if I accepted”
:
Memoirs of Will H. Hays
.

“We have decided nothing”
:
New York Evening World
, December 8, 1921.

“would fill the
Encyclopedia Britannica
”
: Draft of speech, May 1922, Will H. Hays papers, which I used at the Boston Public Library (referred to hereafter as WHH).

“And precisely because”
:
Memoirs of Will H. Hays
.

“not the slightest idea”
:
Los Angeles Times
, February 3, 1922.

One morning, as Peavey
:
New York Telegraph
, January 8, 1922.

“In a freak of despondency”
: Minter, statement to the district attorney. In this statement, too, Mary talked about her relationship with Neilan and said that, in early December, she had not spoken to Taylor for any length in three months.

“it was over”
: Minter, statement to the district attorney.

just as the thought was crossing her mind
: Mary described this accidental meeting with Taylor in the
Los Angeles Times
, August 15, 1923. The article stated that it was “a few nights afterward” that she went to his house, but in her statement to the district attorney’s office, she was clear that she made the visit the same night, December 23.

Taylor had come downtown
: Taylor’s probate file reveals he purchased the hip case at Feagan’s on December 23 for $25.00.

“This is something”
:
Los Angeles Times
, August 15, 1923.

“It is rather late”
: Minter, statement to the district attorney. For the most part, I have based my description of this episode on this statement, as it was given just a little over a month after the event. The account in the
Los Angeles Times
from 1923 was provided by Mary a year and a half later, and contains much of the melodramatic purple prose she was known for. Her 1922 statement, by contrast, seems very honest and straightforward.

Mary’s midnight visit had deeply disturbed him
: I have made this presumption because of the way Taylor described Mary’s visit to Marshall Neilan a few weeks later, as found in Mary’s statement to the district attorney. Taylor seemed to be expressing his honest feelings, brought out by having too much to drink. He told Neilan that, essentially, Mary had hit on him—that she had tried to seduce him the night she came to his apartment. According to Neilan, Taylor said that Mary had “undressed” in his apartment. But this is thirdhand information, from Taylor through Neilan through Mary. Still, Taylor had clearly been, in contemporary terminology, “freaked out” by Mary’s visit, and was telling his friends how uncomfortable he had felt. I do not believe there was a second visit to Taylor’s apartment in which Mary removed her clothes. If Mary had gone to Taylor’s apartment after December 23, I think she would have mentioned it. Her February 7, 1922, statement is just too honest and straightforward for me to believe otherwise.

“So sorry to inconvenience”
: This letter was reported in many newspapers, as in the
Long Beach Telegram
, February 2, 1922, and a facsimile was published in the
Los Angeles Examiner
, February 23, 1922.

“I want to be William”
:
Memoirs of Will H. Hays
.