Tinseltown: Murder, Morphine, and Madness at the Dawn of Hollywood
Tinseltown: Murder, Morphine, and Madness at the Dawn of Hollywood book cover

Tinseltown: Murder, Morphine, and Madness at the Dawn of Hollywood

Hardcover – October 14, 2014

by
Price
$35.00
Format
Hardcover
Pages
480
Publisher
Harper
Publication Date
ISBN-13
978-0062242167
Dimensions
1.7 x 6.2 x 9.1 inches
Weight
1.66 pounds

Description

“Mann tells his story expertly . . . When it’s all over, Mann has argued so ably for his killer-candidate that he finally may have put this controversy to rest.” — Washington Post “Mann’s call sheet of colorful characters is so richly painted, they not only make the Roaring ‘20s come to life, they’re so bizarre they seem like they could only exist in a movie.” — Entertainment Weekly “Mann’s got the goods . . . Tinseltown may well be the most completist murder mystery of all time.” — Choire Sicha, BookForum “Sex! Drama! Scandal! If you have the slightest curiosity about the dark purple scars of Hollywood history, this is the go-to book you cannot miss. . . Epic and fabulous—every page is haunting, every chapter a film noir. I was up all night.” — Rex Reed “William Mann fires on all cylinders in this fascinating real-life crime story that has stumped film fans since 1922. A page-turner with incredible research and prose double-boiled, Tinseltown is a whodunit tour de force, revealing the dark heart of Hollywood.” — Patrick McGilligan, author of Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light “Massive, exhaustively researched, endlessly fascinating . . . It’s a gripping ride with innumerable twists and turns and scenarios . . . If you love a good mystery and vintage Hollywood lore—which doesn’t read much differently than current Hollywood lore—I recommend Tinseltown without reservation.” — Liz Smith “A stellar and gripping true-crime narrative . . . An engrossing and comprehensive look at the birth of the motion picture industry and the highs and lows it faced in the early 1920s . . . Mann has crafted what is likely to be a true-crime classic.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review) “Mann spins this yarn with all the suspense and intrigue of a Dashiell Hammett novel. From beginning to end, the engrossing true tale will keep you guessing.” — Out Magazine “The book’s power derives not just from piecing together the clues and analyzing motives; Los Angeles is very present as well.” — Publishers Weekly “A gripping true-crime story that encompasses a colorful period in film history . . . Mann seamlessly weaves the details of the murder investigation, witnesses and newspaper accounts into the rich history of early film . . . Mann masterfully captures the zeitgeist of Hollywood in its early days.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “[A] gripping true-crime narrative. . . . Mann expertly juggles the various threads of the narrative to a satisfying conclusion that is sure to please both true-crime and film-history enthusiasts.” — Booklist “For folks interested in true crime and the heyday of Hollywood, this book is a match made in a rather sinister version of heaven.” — Living Read Girl “[Mann] brings the early days of the movie industry to sparkling life on the page, whether he’s evoking Los Angeles’ demimonde or explaining how the era’s scandals drove the film industry toward protectionism in the face of morality campaigns.” — NPR, The Best Books of 2014 “Tinseltown is an immensely enjoyable read as a recreation of a murder, and a fascinating time [and] place.” — McClatchy News Service “A gripping true-crime narrative. . . . Mann expertly juggles the various threads of the narrative to a satisfying conclusion that is sure to please both true-crime and film-history enthusiasts.” — Booklist “If you love a good mystery and vintage Hollywood lore-which doesn’t read much differently than current Hollywood lore-I recommend Tinseltown without reservation.” — Liz Smith A lucid solution to the crime that feels almost as airtight as the final chapter of an Agatha Christie mystery.” — Connecticut Post “The book is so evocatively written, right down to the weather, characters’ glances, and what they are feeling, . .. [and] seductively cinematic . . . should be made into a film itself.” — Daily Beast Tinseltown is entertaining enough to feel illicit, but its reporting makes it an essential addition to any respectable bookshelf of L.A. history.” — Los Angeles Times Book Review “Author William J. Mann paints a striking portrait of Los Angeles in the Roaring Twenties--a sparkling yet schizophrenic town filled with party girls, drug dealers, religious zealots, newly-minted legends and starlets already past their prime; a dangerous place where the powerful could still run afoul of the desperate.” — TCM.com “ Tinseltown does a fine job of parceling out its complex plot, and its author brings early Hollywood to life with the flair of a popular historian.” — Wall Street Journal “Mann spins this yarn with all the suspense and intrigue of a Dashiell Hammett novel. From beginning to end, the engrossing true tale will keep you guessing.” — Out Magazine Who killed Billy Taylor, one of Hollywood's most beloved men? For nearly a century, no one has known. Until now. In the early 1920s, millions of Americans flocked to movie palaces every year to see their favorite stars on the silver screen. Never before had a popular art so captured the public's imagination, nor had a medium ever possessed such power to influence. But Hollywood's glittering ascendancy was threatened by a string of lurid, headline-grabbing tragedies, including the murder of William Desmond Taylor, the handsome and popular president of the Motion Picture Directors Association—a legendary crime that has remained unsolved since 1922. Now, in this fiendishly involving narrative, bestselling Hollywood chronicler William Mann draws on a rich host of sources, many untapped for decades, to reopen the case of the upstanding yet enigmatic Taylor and the diverse cast that surrounded him—including three loyal ingenues, a grasping stage mother, a devoted valet, a gang of two-bit thugs, the industry's reluctant new morals czar, and the moguls Adolph Zukor and Marcus Loew, locked in a struggle for control of the exploding industry. Along the way, Mann brings to life Los Angeles in the Roaring Twenties: a sparkling yet schizophrenic town filled with party girls and drug dealers, newly minted legends and starlets already past their prime, a dangerous place where the powerful could still run afoul of the desperate. A true story re-created with the thrilling suspense of a novel, Tinseltown is the work of a master craftsman at the peak of his powers. William J. Mann is the New York Times bestselling author of The Contender: The Story of Marlon Brando ; Kate: The Woman Who Was Hepburn ; How to Be a Movie Star: Elizabeth Taylor in Hollywood ; Hello, Gorgeous: Becoming Barbra Streisand ; Wisecracker: The Life and Times of William Haines; and Tinseltown: Murder, Morphine and Madness at the Dawn of Hollywood, winner of the Edgar Allen Poe Award. He divides his time between Connecticut and Cape Cod. Read more

Features & Highlights

  • New York Times
  • Bestseller
  • Edgar Award winner for Best Fact Crime
  • The Day of the Locust
  • meets
  • The Devil in the White City
  • and
  • Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
  • in this juicy, untold Hollywood story: an addictive true tale of ambition, scandal, intrigue, murder, and the creation of the modern film industry.
  • By 1920, the movies had suddenly become America’s new favorite pastime, and one of the nation’s largest industries. Never before had a medium possessed such power to influence. Yet Hollywood’s glittering ascendency was threatened by a string of headline-grabbing tragedies—including the murder of William Desmond Taylor, the popular president of the Motion Picture Directors Association, a legendary crime that has remained unsolved until now.
  • In a fiendishly involving narrative, bestselling Hollywood chronicler William J. Mann draws on a rich host of sources, including recently released FBI files, to unpack the story of the enigmatic Taylor and the diverse cast that surrounded him—including three beautiful, ambitious actresses; a grasping stage mother; a devoted valet; and a gang of two-bit thugs, any of whom might have fired the fatal bullet. And overseeing this entire landscape of intrigue was Adolph Zukor, the brilliant and ruthless founder of Paramount, locked in a struggle for control of the industry and desperate to conceal the truth about the crime. Along the way, Mann brings to life Los Angeles in the Roaring Twenties: a sparkling yet schizophrenic town filled with party girls, drug dealers, religious zealots, newly-minted legends and starlets already past their prime—a dangerous place where the powerful could still run afoul of the desperate.
  • A true story recreated with the suspense of a novel,
  • Tinseltown
  • is the work of a storyteller at the peak of his powers—and the solution to a crime that has stumped detectives and historians for nearly a century.

Customer Reviews

Rating Breakdown

★★★★★
30%
(551)
★★★★
25%
(459)
★★★
15%
(275)
★★
7%
(128)
★
23%
(422)

Most Helpful Reviews

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Separate The Chaff From The Grain

Such authors as Sidney D. Kirkpatrick (via the research of King Vidor), Robert Giroux, Charles Higham, and other writers through crime compendia and, at least, one graphic novel have all professed to "solving" this unsolved murder. One of the few settled truths of this celebrated case is that it is as cold a case as one could ever imagine. Contrary to "investigative" journalism braggadocio, no yellowing document implicating any one as the killer has been discovered in a dusty file cabinet situated in a forgotten, walled-off room. Moreover, no person will be found who had any connection to the case, because they're all cold in their graves. You could, of course, visit a few, such as William Deane-Tanner, aka William Desmond Taylor, at Hollywood Forever Cemetery, a wonderful place, but they are in no condition to speak with you. Nearly everything connected to this case has to be labelled with modifiers, such as "supposedly," "allegedly," and "reportedly," but seldom "actually." The police investigation was desultory and bordering on incompetent. Studio personnel were allowed to walk freely through Mr. Taylor's bungalow, a crime scene, and supposedly tampered with anything that could prove embarrassing to the company. But, again, one can't really distinguish between fact and myth (in its colloquial usage) in this case. One "fact" tossed facilely about is that Mr. Taylor was a homosexual, who employed his cook/butler/houseboy, Peavey, to scout Westlake (now MacArthur) Park for young boys for his sexual pleasures. There is absolutely no proof Mr. Taylor was a homosexual anymore than Mabel Normand was a cocaine "addict." Of course, when you open the door of full-blown drug addiction, you can conveniently stampede through an exotic and motley group of blackguards. It makes for a great tale, but it may not have any connection to reality. One fact, other than Mr. Taylor's death, that one can glean from that uncommonly cold night in Los Angeles, is that the city was in the midst of a plague of burglaries. Mr. Taylor simply may have surprised a burglar upon his return to his bungalow after escorting Mabel Normand to her car. One long-time LAPD detective at the time thought Mr. Taylor interrupted a prowler, known as the "Dinner Time Thief." This criminal supposedly was never heard of again after the Taylor murder. Of course, this account debases this exotic mystery down to a mere stranger-on-stranger killing, and that would result in two occurrences: no one would be writing about this common crime and only silent cinema historians would even remember William Desmond Taylor. The best authority on this case is Bruce Long, the author of William Desmond Taylor: A Dossier. Both his book and his celebrated website, Taylorology, dissect the case and list the numerous errors contained in the books written about the murder.
81 people found this helpful
✓ Verified Purchase

Separate The Chaff From The Grain

Such authors as Sidney D. Kirkpatrick (via the research of King Vidor), Robert Giroux, Charles Higham, and other writers through crime compendia and, at least, one graphic novel have all professed to "solving" this unsolved murder. One of the few settled truths of this celebrated case is that it is as cold a case as one could ever imagine. Contrary to "investigative" journalism braggadocio, no yellowing document implicating any one as the killer has been discovered in a dusty file cabinet situated in a forgotten, walled-off room. Moreover, no person will be found who had any connection to the case, because they're all cold in their graves. You could, of course, visit a few, such as William Deane-Tanner, aka William Desmond Taylor, at Hollywood Forever Cemetery, a wonderful place, but they are in no condition to speak with you. Nearly everything connected to this case has to be labelled with modifiers, such as "supposedly," "allegedly," and "reportedly," but seldom "actually." The police investigation was desultory and bordering on incompetent. Studio personnel were allowed to walk freely through Mr. Taylor's bungalow, a crime scene, and supposedly tampered with anything that could prove embarrassing to the company. But, again, one can't really distinguish between fact and myth (in its colloquial usage) in this case. One "fact" tossed facilely about is that Mr. Taylor was a homosexual, who employed his cook/butler/houseboy, Peavey, to scout Westlake (now MacArthur) Park for young boys for his sexual pleasures. There is absolutely no proof Mr. Taylor was a homosexual anymore than Mabel Normand was a cocaine "addict." Of course, when you open the door of full-blown drug addiction, you can conveniently stampede through an exotic and motley group of blackguards. It makes for a great tale, but it may not have any connection to reality. One fact, other than Mr. Taylor's death, that one can glean from that uncommonly cold night in Los Angeles, is that the city was in the midst of a plague of burglaries. Mr. Taylor simply may have surprised a burglar upon his return to his bungalow after escorting Mabel Normand to her car. One long-time LAPD detective at the time thought Mr. Taylor interrupted a prowler, known as the "Dinner Time Thief." This criminal supposedly was never heard of again after the Taylor murder. Of course, this account debases this exotic mystery down to a mere stranger-on-stranger killing, and that would result in two occurrences: no one would be writing about this common crime and only silent cinema historians would even remember William Desmond Taylor. The best authority on this case is Bruce Long, the author of William Desmond Taylor: A Dossier. Both his book and his celebrated website, Taylorology, dissect the case and list the numerous errors contained in the books written about the murder.
81 people found this helpful
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my uncle quite liked her and found her a delightful character

The Taylor case has long been of special interest to me because I have a family connection to it. My uncle, who helped raised me, had squired Mary Miles Minter around for awhile in the mid -1930s even though he was 12 years her junior. He once asked her who she thought had killed Taylor. She replied, in a flippant and sarcastic manner, "Oh, why Mother did it, of course!" Although many people considered her mother, Charlotte Shelby, to be odious, my uncle quite liked her and found her a delightful character. "She was by far the most sensible of the three," he commented, referring to Charlotte and her two daughters Mary and Margaret. Margaret, he said, was quite insane by that time.

As to Mann's book, it is a lively, compelling and entertaining read. His hypothesis--that Taylor was shot by a blackmailer known as Blackie Madsen, who had been incited by his partners Don Osborn and actress Margaret "Gibby" Gibson, who knew that Taylor was gay--has a certain plausibility on the face of it. (Whether Taylor was, in fact, gay seems far from axiomatic, as Mann takes it to be, as an earlier reviewer commented.)

HOWEVER...

People who know nothing about firearms, such as is obviously the case of author Mann, should either not write about gun murders or have their work vetted by somebody who does. In the first place, he is very sloppy about the difference between a cartridge and a bullet. For the benefit of the uninitiated, a cartridge is the total package, consisting of a (usually) brass case, a primer (a sort of detonator), a charge of powder and the bullet proper, the latter being the part that flies out of the barrel and does the damage. Different cartridges can take bullets of the same caliber (diameter). The author seems oblivious to the fact that all .38 revolvers do not use the same cartridges, or bullets, for that matter. I will add that Mann states that Taylor was killed with a "soft-nosed" bullet. There were no "soft nosed" or "soft point" revolver bullets in 1922. They were all solid, unjacketed lead.

Now, let's look at the revolvers of a couple of the prime suspects. We know that Charlotte Shelby had a Smith & Wesson New Departure Safety Hammerless, which takes the .38 S&W cartridge. This uses an inside-lubricated plain-base bullet. Blackie Madsen habitually carried the revolver he had had in the Spanish American War. Presumably, this would have been a Colt New
Army and Navy model in .38 Long Colt. In this he could have fired either the .38 Short Colt, which uses an outside-lubicated, heel-base bullet or the .38 Long Colt, which uses a hollow-base inside lubricated bullet.

Moreover, most Colt handguns have always used a distinctive left-hand rifling twist. Smith & Wesson and most other guns use a right-hand rifling twist. Thus it is usually immediately apparent when a bullet has been fired from Colt revolver.

Given this information, then, why did Detective Ed King, by all accounts a very competent investigator, focus on Charlotte Shelby if Taylor had been killed by a Colt revolver? He also would have been able to differentiate between a bullet from a .38 Short or Long Colt cartridge and one from a .38 S&W, a vastly more popular cartridge. (A .38 S&W could not have been fired from Madsen's revolver, by the way.)

All this tends to impeach Mann's hypothesis. I suppose it's possible that Madsen did not use his customary revolver for the murder (although it seems unlikely that a blackmailer would be premeditating murder)...or that Madsen's .38 was not a Colt service revolver he had illegally taken home with him from the war but a gun he had privately purchased and had taken to war with him.

I will add that if, as seems probable, Taylor was murdered with a .38 S&W, this by no means incriminates Charlotte Shelby. There were probably at least a couple million revolvers in this caliber circulating in the USA at this time, many of them cheap revolvers popular with criminal elements.

Finally, the statement on page 304 that the bullet taken from Taylor's body was "an older type of ammunition" and the accompanying statement from the L.A. Examiner that "there cannot be found one pistol in thousands in Los Angeles loaded with the ancient brand of ammunition which was taken from Taylor's body" struck me as arrant nonsense. Two internationally famous experts on vintage firearms that I consulted had the same reaction. I can only conclude that this must have been some disinformation on the part of the LAPD in an effort to panic and flush out the killer.

Just a little food for thought. Still it was an entertaining book with a lot of good info on Old Hollywood.
45 people found this helpful
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I frankly was disappointed in this book

I frankly was disappointed in this book. For the most part, I found it to be dull. The attempt to develop parallel stories and then tie them together just did not come off to me. I did not feel that the main characters had been sufficiently fleshed out to seem real and interesting even though they were exciting and vital people in real life.The author makes a weak case for his solution to the Taylor murder in a few short pages at the end and it comes across as a sort of p.s. at the end of a long tedious letter. This is the weakest of the Taylor books I have read.
38 people found this helpful
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Over rated and poorly written!

This book lacked anything to make what seems to be a compelling story interesting. The elements of the story are there but they are told in such a laborious fashion and with no truly great characters developed by William Mann that the rise to the main event is slow and torturous. We never feel that we know the characters and some of the major plot elements, like the birth of "tabloid" press are teased but never entered into. The debauchery of the time is again hinted at and we are dragged toward what should be a wonderful climax only to see terse and redundant stories being told. Mann can't seem to decide if this is to be a coming of age or transitional type of history or more a film history. Either way it fails on both ends.

This was a very highly rated book and I have to say it fails. Don't waste your time or money on this one.
19 people found this helpful
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Not worthy of your time.

This book did not live up to the hype or it's reviews. It didn't really shed any new light on the WDT murder. Spent far too much time and mind-numbing detail on Adolph Zuckor, Will Hays and the chuch ladies. Mary Miles Mintor and her mother are simply NOT that interesting - page after dreadful page. The only truly recognizable star included in this cast of B characters is Mabel Normand. Even the mysterious William Desmond Taylor's story is never fully developed and his murder is arguably the focus of this book. Halfway through this tome I began skimming and then skipping entire chapters just to get it over with. I won't spoil the author's WDT murder theory but I will say that early-on he spent a lot of precious time developing detail that would support his questionable and unremarkable conclusion. The book ends with a dull thud. Nothing definitive or even vaguely interesting here. Take a pass.
19 people found this helpful
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What a disappointment. I've been intrigued by murder of William Desmond ...

What a disappointment.

I've been intrigued by murder of William Desmond Taylor ever since I read about it (a thousand years ago) in "Hollywood Babylon". I practically raced to the bookstore the week "Cast of Killers" came out in 1986 & while I found the POV a little weird (Kirkpatrick puts you into the mind of director King Vidor), eventually it sucked me right in. I still consider "Cast of Killers" the best book ever written about the murder. At the end, I felt like I knew all the participants, even if I still didn't know who the killer was. (But I had my suspicions.)

"Tinseltown" barely covers the Desmond Taylor murder. Instead Mann focuses on Adolph Zukor (yawn), William Hays (the politician hired to clean up Hollywood--another yawn), with a dash of Mabel Normand, a pinch of Fatty Arbuckle & Olive Thomas, & waaaaay too much about Margaret "Gibby" Gibson, a sometime actress with a forgettable career whose sole claim to fame seems to be her "confession" (on her deathbed) to the murder--with no real motive & no real evidence. I'd never even heard of her until recently & I consider myself at least somewhat familiar with most silent film actors/actresses.

I struggled to finish this book because A) it was boring, B) it meandered too much--from the murder to Mabel Normand, to early Hollywood information & Wm. Hays, to Fatty Arbuckle to boring stuff about Gibby & her grifter days. I mean--who cares? and B) it provided NO NEW INFORMATION about the crime.

So--my recommendation? If you're intrigued by Wm. Desmond Taylor & the murder, buy "Cast of Killers" or explore Taylorology, a fun website dedicated to all things William Desmond Taylor & Hollywood during the early days of silent film.
12 people found this helpful
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Meh..

I'm thinking the cover of this book makes you think there is more to it. You really have to be "into" OLD Hollywood history for this one. It would help so much if there were pictures of some of these people. You learn a lot about how movie studios and the big men behind them started..especially Zukor. You see the morals of the time, the manipulation of some government officials you've maybe heard of, and, at the heart of this..who killed the famous director Wm. Desmond Taylor. A lot of data, surmising..just didn't do it for me
12 people found this helpful
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Reads like a thriller/mystery!

This book was outstanding! It reads like a thriller-mystery, and Mann does a great job of developing all of the players involved and interweaving all of the story lines. I was on the edge of my seat until the very end. If you're into true crime, Hollywood history or the 1920's, this book is for you. I was originally drawn to it as my daughter is currently chasing the Hollywood dream, and as a kid, my parents had the Time/Life books that highlighted each decade of the 20th century. For whatever reason the Fatty Arbuckle story had stuck with me since first reading about in those books. Tinseltown tells his story as part of the whole canvas that is painted in it. Very readable and enjoyed every page!
10 people found this helpful
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You'all be glad you read it

I had no idea that there had been a murder mystery like this that had remained unsolved for so very long. This book combines my fascination with Hollywood and murder mysteries in general. This book is very well written and this is not Mr. Mann's try at this sort of book. And he does them well to be sure.
Possibly do a little rrsearch before buying this incredible story that keeps you up reading.
I'm sure you will find this one worth your reading time indeed.
10 people found this helpful

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