Our website is made possible by displaying online advertisements to our visitors.
Please consider supporting us by disabling your ad blocker.

Responsive image


William Desmond Taylor

William Desmond Taylor
Taylor in 1917
Born
William Cunningham Deane-Tanner

(1872-04-26)26 April 1872
Died1 February 1922(1922-02-01) (aged 49)
Cause of deathHomicide by gunshot
Resting placeHollywood Forever Cemetery
NationalityIrish (1872–1890)
American (1890–1922)
Occupation(s)Director, actor
Years active1913–1922
Spouse
Ethel May Harrison
(m. 1901; div. 1912)
PartnerNeva Gerber (1914–1919)
Children1
RelativesDenis Gage Deane-Tanner (brother)

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.[1]

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.[2] The murder remains an official cold case.[3]

  1. ^ "The Unsolved Murder of William Desmond Taylor". usc.edu. 2 July 2000. Archived from the original on 29 June 2010. Retrieved 21 July 2014.
  2. ^ Taylorology (newsheet)[permanent dead link], September 2003; retrieved 6 January 2008.
  3. ^ Taylorology (newsheet) Issue 4, April 1993; retrieved 12 May 2013.

Previous Page Next Page