William Desmond Taylor

The story of William Desmond Taylor is a fascinating one of the 1920s. I read of his murder at first in a book recommended to me by my mother, Cast... more

by Barbara Barber

Original - Not For Sale

Price

Not Specified

Dimensions

16.000 x 20.000 x 1.500 inches

Title

William Desmond Taylor

Artist

Barbara Barber

Medium

Painting - Oil On Canvas

Description

The story of William Desmond Taylor is a fascinating one of the 1920s. I read of his murder at first in a book recommended to me by my mother, Cast of Killers by Sidney D. Kirkpatrick. So absorbing the mystery of his death I went on to read other books about him and finally saw a photograph of him in his car. I wanted to paint that photograph done in black and white as it was. I decided to paint it with a matt and titled with his name as an honor to a very creative director of old Hollywood's silent films.

"William Desmond Taylor (born William Cunningham Deane-Tanner, 26 April 1872 – 1 February 1922) was an Anglo-Irish-American film director and actor. A popular figure in the growing Hollywood motion picture colony of the 1910s and early 1920s, Taylor directed fifty-nine silent films between 1914 and 1922 and acted in twenty-seven between 1913 and 1915.

Taylor's murder on 1 February 1922, along with other Hollywood scandals such as the Roscoe Arbuckle trial, led to a frenzy of sensationalist and often fabricated newspaper reports. The murder remains an official cold case. It will be 100 years ago on February 1 this murder happened.

At 7:30 am on the morning of Thursday, 2 February 1922, Taylor's body was found inside his bungalow at the Alvarado Court Apartments, 404-B South Alvarado Street, in Westlake, Los Angeles, a trendy and affluent neighborhood. A crowd gathered inside, and someone identifying himself as a doctor stepped forward, made a cursory examination of the body, and declared Taylor had died of a stomach hemorrhage. The doctor was never seen again; when doubts later arose, the body was rolled over by forensic investigators revealing that the 49-year-old film director had been shot at least once in the back with what appeared to have been a small-caliber pistol, which was not found at the scene". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Desmond_Taylor

Uploaded

March 2nd, 2021