A Cast of Killers

In 1967, King Vidor, the esteemed director of such classic films as Duel In The Sun and War and Peace, took on the toughest assignment ever: to solve the mystery behind the scandalous 1922 murder of flamboyant director William Desmond Taylor. Despite an intensive investigation, no killer was ever found, although the cast of suspects was impressive indeed. Was it the beautiful drug-addicted actress Mabel Normand? An up-and-coming young starlet, Mary Miles Minter? The starlets mother, Charlotte Shelby? Could it have been the homosexual houseboy? Or a sectary bearing an uncanny resemblance to Taylors elusive brother? What Vidor discovered was so explosive, he never revealed the identity of the killer. Now, this mesmerizing account reconstructs the full shocking truth of the murder that was too scandalous even for Hollywood. On February 1, 1922, the distinguished silent-film director William Desmond Taylor was shot to death in his Los Angeles bungalow by an unknown assailant. Reports of strange activities at the scene of the crime circulated soon after. When the police arrived, was the head of Paramount Studios burning a bundle of papers in the fireplace, and was a well-known actress searching the house for letters she claimed were hers? Despite a full-scale investigation, the case was never solved; for sixty years is has remained a lingering Hollywood scandal. In 1967, more than forty years after Taylor's death, the great King Vidor, whose directing credits include Northwest Passage, The Fountainhead, Duel in the Sun, and War and Peace, determined to solve the mystery, which had haunted him throughout his career, in order to make a film about it. Through his intimate knowledge of both the studios and the stars, he succeeded, where dozens of professional detectives had failed, in discovering the identity of the murderer. But because his findings were so explosive, he decided he could never go public and locked his evidence away. After Vidor's death in 1982, Sidney D. Kirkpatrick, Vidor's authorized biographer, gained access to the evidence and reconstructed the amazing story of Taylor's murder and Vidor's investigation. With a cast of suspects that includes the actress Mabel Normand, a reputed drug addict; the beautiful ingénue, Mary Miles Minter; Mary's domineering mother, Charlotte Shelby; Taylor's homosexual houseman; and Taylor's secretary, who bore an uncanny resemblance to Taylor's mysteriously elusive brother, this true crime story has all the elements of a classic murder mystery. Covered up for more than half a century, the full story can now be told in all its riveting, shocking detail. This account of the 1922 murder of film director William Desmond Taylor reveals the complete untold story--secretly solved by director King Vidor prior to his death in 1982--of one of the most famous crime mysteries in America "The sensational true story of Hollywood's most scandalous murder--covered up for sixty years and solved at last by the great film director King Vidor"--Jacket subtitle