Trifling Women: November 2007

Murders

Fatty Arbuckle

______________________________________________________________

The Murder of William Desmond Taylor
(see also Mary Miles Minter)

In February 1922, 45-year old director William Desmond Taylor was found dead in his home with a gunshot wound to his back. The police never solved the crime, though the killer was most probably Mary Milers Minter's mother, Charlotte Shelby. Around this time, the media learned that scandals=more sold copies, and were more interested in what had been found in Taylor's house than in finding the killer. Nude pictures of famous movie stars (both male and female), love letters from "Yours always, Mary", and a closet full of indecent underwear.

Drugs also got into the picture when it turned out the last person to see him alive was comedienne Mabel Normand, a known cocaine addict, who was found rummaging through Taylor's house the morning after the murder.

The case took a mysterious turn when it emerged "William Desmond Taylor" wasn't "William Desmond Taylor" at all, but in fact a William Deane Tanner, an Englishman who'd disappeared in New York 15 years earlier, leaving a wife and children behind.

Both Normand's and Mary's careers took a downturn after the murder, and Normand died of tuberculosis only eight years later.

________________________

William Desmond Taylor and Mary Miles Minter in happier times.

____________________________________________________________________

Drugs

Olive Thomas

(1894-1920)
Former Ziegfeld Folly and Mary Pickford's sister-in-law was probably Hollywood's first drugs casualty. Although there are rumours of heroin addiction, most interviews and articles from back in the day describes a cheerful, live-for-the-moment kind of girl. But who knows. Olive took an overdose of mercury bichloride in a Paris hotel room in 1920, and died a few days later.
____________________________________________________________________

Wallace Reid

(1891-1923)

One of the most popular male stars in his time, a charming, athletic, and clean-living all-American family man, in 1919 Wallace Raid hurt his back during filming, and was given morphine to keep the production going. For his next movie, the studio doctors also gave him cocaine, and soon,

Wallace Reid was a full-blown junkie. He checked in and out of clinics for his addictions, but during the filming of "Thirty Days" in 1922, he was so high he could barely stand up. Once again, he entered a sanitarium, (according to movie magazines, he was "suffering from exhaustion and needed a rest"). But the drugs had taken its toll, he soon fell into a coma and died in January 1923.

_______________________________________________________________

Barbara La Marr
(1896-1926)

(see also Barbara La Marr)

This beautiful, totally vampish lady became my favouri te movie star when I was seven, after having read about her in some 1923 magazines my granddad found at an auction. I cut all the pictures out and framed them, and I was gutted when I found another magazine from a few years later, and read she had suddenly died, from "too rigorous dieting".
I didn't know at the time that what that really meant, in 20's Hollywood terms, was that she didn't eat at all: she was too busy doing drugs. I still love her, see the link to read more.

____________________________________ __________________________

Marie Prevost

Juanita Hansen

____________________________________________________________________

Other ways of going

Thelma Todd

(1905-1935)

A popular comedienne of the late 20s to early 30s, Thelma Todd was found dead by carbon monoxide poisoning in her car. The death was ruled accidental, but the theories of what really happened are many. Was she murdered by an angry ex-husband? Or by gangster Lucky Luciano, for refusing to get her cafe involved in illegal gambling? Or did she just got in her car to get warm, and fell asleep?

___________________________________________________________________

Martha Mansfield
(1899-1923)
Another former Ziegfeld dancer, Martha Mansfield starred in movies for Famous Palyers-Lasky before she went to Hollywood.
She died during the filming of "The Warrens of Virginia ", when a cast member threw a match on the floor as she was about to leave the set, and her costume caught fire.
She was 24.

____________________________________________________________________

Frances Farmer
(1913-1970)