The Mammoth Book of Celebrity Murders (37 page)

None of the allegations relating to either Taylor or Peavey were ever substantiated, although the papers acted as judge and jury for Peavey, convicting him in the absence of evidence. In those
long-forgotten days it must be remembered that segregation was a part of daily life, so it could have been that Peavey was merely urinating, unable to gain entry to a whites-only toilet. Peavey
died in 1937 just seven years after he had given an interview in which he claimed a famous actress and her mother killed Taylor, although he did not name either.

The lady in question was Mary Miles Minter, a young actress who was thought to be in love with Taylor. Born Juliet Reilly in 1902, her mother Charlotte was the original pushy mother. Her goal
was to make the young girl a star and from an early age she would dress her to make her look first older than her years, and then later younger than her real age. Charlotte’s plan worked and
she soon renamed the child using the birth certificate of a dead niece. After many stage roles Minter finally met Taylor in 1919 when he was aged 50 and she just 16. It is thought that Taylor may
have become intimate with the young girl, a crime in those days and one punishable with a severe prison term. Whatever the truth of the matter the press established that they had enjoyed more than
simple friendship and the resulting headlines caused a wave of public revulsion, resulting in Minter’s films being boycotted. Having never enjoyed the role of actress Minter was happy to fade
away and lived to the ripe old age of 82. The loss of her daughter’s career is what is thought to have provoked anger in Minter’s mother and it is thought that she may have pulled the
trigger in a fit of anger, although the police never pursued this angle.

Adele Rogers St John, in her book
The Honeycomb
, claims that it was Minter’s mother who committed the crime – Taylor had ruined her daughter’s career and she was
outraged at his exploitative behaviour. In explaining away the man seen at the time of Taylor’s death it is suggested that Minter’s mother simply cross-dressed to avoid detection.

Later in an interview in her old age Mary Miles Minter emotionally told a reporter, “My mother killed everything I ever loved”. The precise meaning of this statement has never been
fully explained, although the media have interpreted this as meaning Minter’s mother did in fact kill Taylor.

As with most Hollywood stars who have met a tragic end the media reported all of the various options in relation to the killing of Taylor and there have been a variety of other scenarios which
have got their supporters.

One of these involves the actress who had been with Taylor on the evening of his death, Mabel Normand. A good-looking girl with a mass of brown curly hair, Normand had enjoyed success at a
number of studios before finding her niche as a scantily clad swimmer in a number of Mack Sennett productions, gaining herself the rather grand title of “The Queen of Comedy” and
“The Female Chaplin”. In 1912 Normand became the lead actress in the now much acclaimed Keystone comedies and ended up in a relationship with Mack Sennett, but this came to an end when
Normand found Sennett under the covers with another actress. After much turbulence Normand finally quit Sennett for the Goldwyn Motion Picture Company where she found solace in narcotics and in the
arms of Taylor. It is within this tangled web that a number of other theories emerge – some believe that it was Normand herself who committed the murder, jealous of Taylor’s
relationships with other women. Others suggest that Mack Sennett, who had tried to win Normand back, both on a personal and professional level, murdered Taylor, again jealous of their relationship.
And the third version of events suggests that a drug dealer had extracted his revenge on Taylor when he refused to cover the bills run up by Normand. Whether there is any truth in these
propositions will never be known; what is known is that Normand had spent the earlier part of the evening with Taylor before he was killed not long after she claimed to have left Alvarado
Court.

For all of the theories proposed no one has ever been brought to book for the murder of William Desmond Taylor. This is one crime where the power of the media, in all its forms, could not shake
out an answer, and so the mystery and the murder remains unsolved.

Having spent many millions of dollars already, the MGM studio executives were more than a little disappointed when their latest film,
Ben Hur
, ground to a halt, amid
bitter disputes over the quality of the work and the skill with which the film was being assembled. After long talks the studio executives took the tough decision to scrap what had gone before and
to remake the film from scratch. In doing so they once again created a vacancy for the most coveted of Hollywood acting roles – the lead part in the film.

The role was awarded to Ramon Novarro, a 27-year-old Mexican actor who brought smouldering good looks to the silent cinema screens of the 1920s. It is still this role for which he is best
remembered – this and his brutal murder at the hands of two male prostitutes many years later.

Novarro was born on 6 February 1899, in Durango, Mexico and christened Ramon Samaniegos. His family was relatively prosperous, his father was a dentist and he enjoyed a cultured upbringing until
the 1910 Mexican revolution forced them to flee to the United States, where his father was unable to work as a dentist, and the family lived on the verge of poverty. The young Novarro enjoyed a
happy family life; a strict Roman Catholic, he was a regular church attendee and loved to sing in the choir. His voice was considered so good that his family saved the money to provide him with
professional voice coaching, an investment which would pay off handsomely in due course.

The impoverished young Novarro was forced to take menial jobs to help support his family and moved to New York City where he took a job as a singing waiter. He also worked as an usher in a local
cinema where he could watch the films, getting his first taste of the acting bug. One evening, while singing the latest menu offerings, Novarro was spotted by a talent scout and offered a
short-term contract; his break had occurred by chance and now he was now more determined than ever to become an actor.

By 1918, Novarro had broken into the silent movie industry, starring alongside Mary Pickford in
The Little American
. It was, however, during the making of the film
The Prisoner of
Zenda
with co-star Alice Terry, the wife of the director, Rex Ingram, that it was suggested he should change his birth name to something more pronouncable. After a little thought the two men
agreed on the name Novarro – easier to say, while still maintaining the flavour of some exotic mystery, it matched his dark, Latin good looks.

Novarro’s arrival on the silver screen couldn’t have been better timed as Hollywood was enjoying a “Latin lover” phase, a role for which he was best placed. He was soon
compared with other noted Latin types of the day and at one point was even thought to be the “new Valentino”, the original silent screen lover and the epitome of the dashing Latin hero
who swept women off their feet. Novarro and Valentino’s careers overlapped slightly and they became firm friends – and more – though it would be Novarro who would make the jump to
talking movies in due course.

After a string of successful movies starring alongside some of the best actors and actresses of the day, including Greta Garbo, with whom he starred in the 1932 film
Mata Hari
, Novarro
had become MGM’s most important leading man, challenging Rudolph Valentino to being the number one Latin-lover actor in the world. Along with these great plaudits also came amazing wealth
– at his highest point Novarro had a contract with MGM which paid him $10,000 per week, a massive amount in the 1920s and 1930s, though a great testament to his huge audience-pulling power.
In 1923, Louella Parsons, the most powerful gossip columnist in Hollwood, wrote a piece on Novarro for the
New York Morning Telegraph
, in which she said:

Parsons went on to comment on Novarro’s refreshing lack of ego and his personal commitment to those who had helped him. Having asked if he had been offered other roles
from other studios, he replied that he had, but would not be so ungrateful as to accept them. Parsons continued her piece in mock surprise:

Novarro’s endearing character had won the heart of the one person who could have damaged him, Louella Parsons, whose gossip columns were full of stories blowing the lids
off the lives of those men and women who called Hollywood home. Novarro though was a true gentleman and his emotions and feelings were real.

He was also an intelligent man who recognized the transient nature of the acting business and unlike other actors who squandered their wealth, he invested wisely, buying a portfolio of
properties which would secure his income long after his acting days had ended. At the height of his career and with wealth beyond his wildest imagination, Novarro was, however, a troubled man. His
on-screen performances as the dashing hero who always got the woman could not have been in more contrast to his real life, for Novarro was homosexual, and had even enjoyed a romantic involvement
with Valentino, the other great Latin lover who was able to fake it on screen.

As well as the contrast with his on-screen performances, Novarro was also a devout Roman Catholic, making his sexuality a problem all round. Although it was common knowledge among most Hollywood
celebrities, the rest of the world were unaware of Novarro’s true desires. The heads of the studios were only concerned with one thing – profit – and so long as Novarro could
continue to draw the audiences, what he got up to in his own time was his own business; most successful actors had one or more scandals to keep out of the public eye and he wasn’t any
different.

Novarro was of course a life-long bachelor and although he mixed socially with many female friends and colleagues, he was never romatically linked to anyone of them. There appeared to be little
of interest for the likes of Louella Parsons – Novarro had carefully cultivated his image as a deeply devoted family man and someone who took his religious responsibilities very seriously. It
was perhaps one of his greatest performances, his character remaining stain free right up to his tortuous death, after which every tawdry detail of his personal life was dragged through the courts
and the newspapers. Until then, Novarro was considered a class act, a cut above the rest of the Hollywood pack, who would flaunt their excesses unashamedly. Novarro preferred to keep his private
life just that – private.

Even at the height of his stardom, when the newspapers and Hollywood rag-mags were awash with his image, he still managed to portray himself as just an actor, devoid of anything other than a
normal social life. The reality was, however, quite different, for Novarro had maintained a number of homosexual relationships – as well as his sexual interactions with Valentino, he also
enjoyed a long-standing relationship with the publicist and entertainment journalist, Herbert Howe. It is not known exactly when Novarro began to actively pay for the company of young men, but the
act of hustling for men did become a feature of his life, one which ultimately lead him directly into the arms of his killers. In pre-1960s America, before the dawn of the sexual revolution,
Novarro’s sexuality would have been kept under wraps. Blatant relationship-building was a risk and not one to be taken lightly, whereas the company of rent boys, or male prostitutes, provided
a safer way to feed his sexual needs, away from the glare of publicity.

His career continued to soar and he eventually made the transition to talking motion pictures, a move which propelled him to Hollywood superstardom. Although best known for his role in
Ben
Hur
, the most expensive silent movie ever made, Novarro went on to perform in some highly memorable talkies. As well as his performance with screen goddess, Greta Garbo, he also starred in
The Cat and the Fiddle
with Jeanette MacDonald, and in 1935 he starred alongside the English actress, Evelyn Lane, in
The Night is Young
. His films were a great success and he
continued to perform well at the box office, though throughout the middle and later part of the 1930s a sea change was sweeping through Hollywood. It had been recognized that movie-going audiences
had started to prefer a less exotic type of leading man and the roles for which Novarro was best known began to dry up. With films now demanding the more “testosterone-fuelled heroes”
who had become the vogue, MGM decided not to renew Novarro’s contract when it expired in 1935. Even before the advent of the American hero type of leading man, Novarro’s career had
began to wane – after starring in a number of MGM musicals and having been miscast in a number of films he too had started to realize that his film days were drawing to a close. When MGM
didn’t renew his contract he wasn’t surprised; he had already started to consider his options and had a few plans of his own.

With the best of his film-acting days behind him, Novarro turned to his first love – the stage. He tried his hand in a Broadway production, though by now the name which had guaranteed
takings at cinemas all over America was struggling to pull in the crowds for his stage production. The play received terrible reviews and the show closed after a depressingly short run. With the
exception of a few cameo roles, Novarro’s acting career seemed to be over. A “has-been” before the start of the 1940s, he now turned his attention to his investments, expanding
his business horizons instead.