Episode Transcript
Hollywood, Baby.
Nothing embodies glitz and glamor quite like the golden age of the silver screen.
On this episode of The Mortician’s Daughter, we’re going to look into some of those mysteries from Hollywood of yesteryear that remain a mystery today, as well as a couple that were debunked but still buzz with conspiracy theories.
But first, a word from our Sponsor….
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Okay, ready to dive in? Maybe we should start with the obvious example of Hollywood horror stories.
The Black Dahlia was a name given to Elizabeth Short, a 22-year-old aspiring actress who was brutally murdered in Los Angeles, California, in 1947. Her case remains one of the most famous unsolved murders in American history and has been the subject of many a media venture, from the James Ellroy novel to the Josh Hartnett movie and all the television references in shows like American Horror Story.
So, back to the story. Elizabeth Short's body was discovered on January 15, 1947, in a vacant lot in Leimert Park, a neighborhood of Los Angeles. Her murder was particularly gruesome. Her body had been severed at the waist and mutilated, with her face cut from the corners of her mouth to her ears in what is known as a Glasgow smile.
The name "The Black Dahlia" reportedly originated from the media's coverage of the case and might have been inspired by the 1946 film The Blue Dahlia starring Veronica Lake and Alan Ladd. Of course, the media pointed to the locals as the source of the nickname.
Some claimed it was Short’s preference for black clothing, especially sheer black attire, that inspired the name and others claim she was found with dahlias in her hair.
Trouble is, the public fascination with this particularly heinous crime has layered the actual evidence in conspiracy theories. And, despite extensive investigations and many suspects over the years, the murder has never been officially solved. Fertile ground for wild theories.
No one even really knows if she was an aspiring actress or just a waitress who rented a room on Hollywood Blvd. She never actually had any acting jobs, but that doesn't mean she wasn't trying to break into the industry.
The point is, we actually don’t know a whole heck of a lot, but the extreme violence acted upon poor Elizabeth Short captured the public’s interest and the theories about why this happened to her took off.
Now, to be fair, there were a number of suspicious circumstances surrounding Short's life and death that gave rise to these theories. For example, a week before she passed, Short returned to Los Angeles after a brief holiday in San Diego with her secret, married lover. Robert "Red" Manley, the married man she was seeing, dropped her off at the Biltmore Hotel in Downtown LA. He was one of the last people to see her alive, but it was a week before she was found dead.
The coroner placed her death at about 10 hours before she was found, but that means Beth Short, as Elizabeth was known, had a missing week. According to Homicide Detective Harry Hansen who was one of the 750 investigators working the case, “We have never been able to find anyone that saw the victim after Robert Manley dropped her at the Biltmore Hotel.”
But the public interest and media fervor derailed the investigation, according to the police, and prompted countless accusations as well as several confessions. The rumors about Beth also flourished until separating her fiction from the facts became too difficult. Maybe impossible. Some said she was pregnant (she wasn’t), some said she was a prostitute, others said she was a lesbian, or that she tried to blackmail one of her sexual partners. The list gets a little wild.
Like I said, no one really knows what went down but the Black Dahlia and her 1947 murder became part of Hollywood lore and still inspires true crime fans to concoct their own conclusions to this day.
Of course, Elizabeth Short's brief life and tragic death isn't the only murder in Hollywood's early days that was sensationalized by the media. Virginia Rappe was an actress who appeared in several films between 1916 and 1921 when she was sexually assaulted and killed at the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco.
The hotel suite in which she died was rented by Hollywood heavyweight Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle who was later accused of the crime by Bambina Maude Delmont, who claimed she accompanied Virginia to Arbuckle’s party, but police discovered Delmont had a record for extortion, prostitution and blackmail.
After Rappe's death, the Hollywood rumor mill got to work. Some people testified that the victim had venereal disease and others said she was pregnant. The autopsy dispelled both rumors. Fatty Arbuckle was charged and faced THREE manslaughter trials where he was repeatedly declared innocent of the crime, but the scandal destroyed his career anyway.
More folks seem to have heard about the Fatty Arbuckle Scandal than the Virginia Rappe murder, even though they refer to the same series of events. Also not surprised. Both are tragedies, sure, but a woman lost her life and a man lost his job and sullied his reputation.
Like I said, not surprised.
Not all murder victims are women, however. I mean, most victims are women, but not all. William Desmond Taylor was an actor and director who rose to fame in the proto-Hollywood of the 1910s only to have his life cut short on February 1, 1922.
Now this one is a little weird in different ways. Let’s start with Taylor himself who was born William Cunningham Deane-Tanner in Ireland and moved to New York City where he met and married the stage actress Ethel May Hamilton in 1901. They had a daughter a couple of years later.
Then, in 1908, William disappeared. Friends and family said he was prone to "mental lapses" where he might have an episode of amnesia. They assumed that's what happened to William this time around too, even though he was known as a heavy drinker prone to depression and a frequent adulterer.
His wife received a divorce in his absence in 1912 - the same year that good ol' William showed up in San Francisco and changed his name to William Desmond Taylor. Some of his friends from New York purportedly gave him money so the wayward family man could set himself up in Los Angeles. He got work as an actor initially and then started directing films.
Remember that family he abandoned? Well, in 1918 his former wife Ethel saw William in a film and told Ethel Daisy, their daughter, "That's your father." Ethel Daisy wrote to her long lost dad at the movie studio which led to a visit in 1921 where Taylor saw his ex-wife and daughter again. He then named Ethel Daisy his legal heir.
William Desmond Taylor was found on the morning of February 2, 1922 inside his bungalow in the posh Westlake area of Los Angeles. Now the weird starts.
First, there was a doctor on the scene where Taylor was found dead. This unnamed, unidentified "doctor" declared Taylor dead from a stomach hemorrhage. The doctor then vanished and forensic investigators later rolled the body over where they found a bullet hole in his back from a small caliber pistol.
He had money and valuables on his person when he was killed so robbery was scratched off the list of possible motives initially, but a large sum of money was later found to be missing from Taylor’s bank account.
Now this is where the Hollywood Rumor Machine starts rolling. Mabel Normand was romantically involved with Taylor at the time of his death. The popular actress had a cocaine dependency she was trying to shake, but it seems as if Taylor was at his wit's end with her repeated relapses. He purportedly met with law enforcement to offer up dirt on Mabel’s suppliers and may have run afoul of those contacts. Some, including Mabel Normand, believed these drug dealers might have hired someone to kill Taylor before he could testify.
Mary Miles Minter was another well known Hollywood name mixed up in the scandal. Minter was a former child star turned teen idol. Taylor offered guidance to the young woman, only a few years older than his own daughter, but it turns out Minter carried quite the torch for her mentor. Love letters written from Minter to Taylor were found in his bungalow, but the teen actress claimed her love was not returned. Much like Mabel Normand, Minter's career suffered when her wholesome appeal was tarnished by some salty love letters.
And that brings us to Charlotte Shelby, mother to Mary Miles Minter, who really helped give shape to the phrase stage mother. Shelby was known for her greedy, manipulative nature and she clashed with her daughter on various occasions. Minter and her mother wound up in lawsuits and fights over finances, but they supposedly reconciled. Charlotte Shelby gave statements to the police that were evasive and filled with lies which aroused their suspicion. Then it was discovered that Ms. Shelby also owned a rare small caliber pistol, like the one used in the commission of the crime, a pistol she reportedly threw into a bayou in Louisiana.
Another actress, Margaret Gibson, met Taylor when he first came to Hollywood. She had a few run-ins with law enforcement, but she was not connected to the murder at the time. However, before Gibson died in 1964, she supposedly confessed to the murder.
In addition to the pretend doctor or the starlets and their mothers, some other strange facts began to emerge about Bill Taylor. Like the fact that his brother Denis disappeared the same year he vanished from New York’s polite society, abandoning his wife and daughter.
There were also concerns about Taylor's valets. Yes, more than one valet. Taylor did not run background checks, but I don't really think they were that common back in the early 1900s.
If it had been an option maybe Edward Sands's convictions for embezzlement, forgery, and army desertion might have popped up. Maybe not. Edward Sands apparently used a number of aliases. He worked for Taylor as a valet and cook until in 1921. While Taylor was off galavanting over the summer, Sands used his boss's name to forge checks. He also wrecked his car and burgled his bungalow. That’s a good phrase: burgled his bungalow.
Anyway, after Taylor died, Sands vanished and was not heard from again. I would imagine that the crimes he already committed against his former employer would have been enough to send him packing, but this really sealed the deal.
Henry Peavey was Sands's replacement. He was the one who found Taylor's body. I guess this Peavey was a bit of an odd duck too. A few days before the murder, he was arrested for social vagrancy both "lewd and dissolute" but the police released him after questioning him about the murder. Peavey would die in 1931 from dementia caused by syphilis.
Henry Peavey's involvement did bring about a kinda funny story that I probably shouldn't laugh at. Florabel Muir was a journalist who covered Hollywood and mobsters. Lots of overlap, I suppose. Anyway, Muir was convinced Peavey was the killer so she set up a surefire way to draw out a confession.
She asked for Peavey to help her find Taylor's grave at Hollywood Park Cemetery. An acquaintance was hiding with a white sheet so he could jump out and scare Henry Peavey by shouting, "I am the ghost of William Desmond Taylor. You murdered me! Confess, Peavey!"
That makes perfect sense, right? Scare the man by pretending to be the ghost of the murder victim? Sounds great. Sure. Except Taylor had a crisp British accent and Muir’s friend was a hoodlum from Chicago who sounded exactly like a hoodlum from Chicago. Peavey only laughed at the ghostly appearance. Not exactly the fear-induced confession Muir was hoping for.
There just wasn't enough evidence or enough truth behind the theories to solve the crime. The murder did, however, lead to public outcry against the licentiousness of Hollywood. Eventually studio execs would start demanding morality clauses in the contracts of their rising stars.
Alright, I think we have time for one more. For our next Hollywood scandal arising from an untimely death, I present Thelma Tood - American actress, comedian, and business woman known as both "The Ice Cream Blonde” and "Hot Toddy" according to Wikipedia.
She died on December 16, 1935, at the age of 29, and was found in her car, which was parked in the garage of her lover Roland West, near her café in Pacific Palisades, California. Yes, she had a cafe named after her. The cause of death was officially ruled as carbon monoxide poisoning.
Thelma Tood appeared in roughly 120 feature films and shorts during her 9 years in Hollywood, including two Marx Brothers' films. She was married to Pat Diseechio, a Hollywood agent and producer who was also affiliated with Lucky Luciano. The marriage ended in divorce with Tood accusing DiSeechio of abuse.
Thelma’s body was found in her Lincoln convertible in the garage of Jewel Carmen, wife to Roland West. West and Todd were apparently carrying on an affair. There were no signs of foul play and her friends said the actress was in good spirits the night before she died.
Her death from carbon monoxide was deemed an accident. Roland West claimed he locked her out of the house which might have been the reason Thelma was hanging out in her car in the garage. She might have turned the car on to chase off a chill in the night. So, just in case you don't know this already, never start a car in a closed garage and you definitely shouldn't stay in a closed garage with a running car or you might also meet your end.
Although Todd’s death was deemed “accidental with possible suicide tendencies,” Jewel Carmen did not escape the Hollywood gossip. She and Roland West divorced and she left public life behind.
Sadly, that’s all I have time for today, but that’s not the end of Hollywood scandals I would like to discuss. Well, I guess we’ll just have to circle back to tinsel town sometime in the not too distant future.
In the meantime, I wish you enchanting evenings and long winter nights. Get cozy with a ghost story, or a ghost, and we’ll be back soon with more macabre meanderings.
