Title: Tinseltown: Murder, Morphine, and Madness at the Dawn of Hollywood by William J Mann
Details: Copyright 2014, HarperCollins Books
Synopsis (By Way of Front Flap): "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 ascendency 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 J. Mann draws on a 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 recreated with the thrilling suspense of a novel, Tinseltown is the work of a master craftsman at the peak of his powers."
Why I Wanted to Read It: I've been fascinated by early Hollywood since at least my teens, if not earlier. The idea that there was once a town that held so much influence, not only over its residents, but over the public consciousness was an utterly intriguing and bizarre concept. A town governed essentially by a single-minded purpose (or ideal) was fascinating to me and still is, particularly the lengths that those in power went to to maintain the vision and illusion.
This seemed like it would be a fascinating book.
How I Liked It: The premise of this book already has several built-in audiences! Whether this is the first you've heard of this story or you're a Hollywood murder buff (yes, such things exist and there's a certain tourist industry built around them), whether you love old Hollywood, the 1920s in general, or are just interested in the study of true crime, wouldn't this be the book for you?
So why on earth did this drag and plod and was such a slog it felt like a Sisyphean effort to finish? I've got some ideas and we'll get into them.
The book doesn't just chart the murdered and the possible suspects. It also circles the deceased's inner circle (who are not suspects) and their lives, the larger culture wars taking hold of Hollywood and their primary participants, in this case dueling studio heads and useful-idiot-misrepresented-by-history Will H Hays, of Hays Code fame, among many, many others.
The wide span of characters and storylines would be daunting in and of itself, but the author's approach to them (as though they are inhabiting their own biography, rather than part of a larger picture) all but guarantees the disjointed, disconnected mess we with which we ultimately finish.
And it's a shame. The deceased's life is part of the story of his murder, as is tertiary stories like Hollywood frantically trying to control its public image at the time (and thus, coverups were all but guaranteed) and knowing some of the jockeying for power behind that would surely tie into the main story of William Desmond Taylor's murder. But instead it feels like a tug of war for which is the main storyline and we no sooner have some grasp of a character before we're completely shifted to a brand new, seemingly unconnected setting.
The idea of a solved murder decades after the fact is a vastly appealing one. But the case just isn't as open and shut as the author (and publisher) promotes it as being. For one, secondhand, decades-later -revealed dying confessions aren't quite as bulletproof (so to speak) as you might think. Especially when the dying confession doesn't impart anything that only the killer could have known and is open to interpretation (without giving too much away and spoiling the book, you could say you killed someone because feel you led them to the wrong people, or drove them to drink and have an accident, or use drugs, all without ever having actually murdered them yourself).
Which isn't to say the book is devoid of promise aside from its premise. It's a massive, sprawling story about several stories (both bigger and smaller) and the central thread (supposedly the murder) is frequently lost. But a better editor (or several editors) could've helped that, and there are plenty of downright fascinating little tidbits of stories peppered throughout. I'll single out just a few vignettes.
· The deceased's valet, as close to an openly gay man as you could get in the 1920s, was a Black man who dared to talk back to whites, let alone whites in authority, including newspaper hucksters that kidnapped him and brought him to his deceased employer's grave while one of them dressed up in a ghost costume portraying his dead boss to scare a confession or information out of him they could use for story. No, seriously. He called their bluff disgustedly and they rather embarrassedly ended the charade. The NAACP actually brought charges against them for his kidnapping.
· One of the aforementioned ingenue starlets, struggling with an abusive and crazed stage mother, during one heated argument she threatened to "end it all", ran off and locked herself in her mother's room, and fired two shots from her mother's pistol (plot point!). A panic naturally ensued and once her mother's staff was able to break down the door, they found her playing dead on the floor, and realized she was faking.
"I thought I would give you all a jolt," was all she said, and they found the two bullets lodged in the room, one in the closet, the other the ceiling.
· In what could only be a Hollywood ending, the children of the two dueling and rival studio heads, Adolph Zukor's daughter Mildred and Marcus Loew's son Arthur, married in a lavish wedding, much to Zukor's bewilderment/horror.
This isn't the last book that will ever be written about William Desmond Taylor and it will probably help inform the next books to be written. It probably already has. The book is already not without value and does further the conversation.
It's just sad that the conversation isn't clearer and better, because you just know it'd be fascinating.
Final Grade: C-
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