A Cast of Killers by Sidney Kirkpatrick Read Free Book Online

stool next to King’s and announced that William Desmond Taylor had been murdered the night before. A hush fell over the room.
     
     
    In the days and weeks that followed, Taylor’s story was retold many times, for it seemed, together with the Arbuckle scandal, to mark the imminent end of Hollywood. The Vidor company returned to Los Angeles, not knowing when they might have to pack up and leave, returning to the carnivals and theaters they had come from. Colleen Moore, a good Catholic girl, knew that her dating a married man would not sit well with a public bent on censorship and enforced morality. So they bid each other farewell on a Manhattan street corner, vowing never to see each other again.
    For forty years Vidor and Moore kept that vow. And yet, for forty years, each continued sending the other messages in their lovers’ code, always hidden in an innocent motion picture scene. Moore would tell her leading man that “love never dies,” and Vidor would decorate his sets with violets, which he had always given Moore during their short time together.
    Then in 1964, Vidor was in Paris, walking along the Champs-Elysees and contemplating his stalled career, when he recognized a woman in front of him. He tapped her on the shoulder and said, “Madame Zaza, what is it I am holding in my hand?”
    Without turning around, Colleen Moore replied, “A dime, Professor La Tour.”
    They walked back to Vidor’s hotel, and the years that had elapsed disappeared. They talked of the early days in Hollywood, and the opportunities they had in the new, youth-oriented film industry of the 1960s. Vidor had some scripts, and ideas for others he felt would make good, personal motion pictures. And Moore had the abilities to oversee the business side of filmmaking. Vid-Mor Productions was born.
    And now, three years later, Vidor was on his way to New York to see Moore and to work on the script that would for the first time present those early, explosive days of Hollywood as they actually were. He’d arranged meetings with a dozen old friends, and others who might have knowledge of William Desmond Taylor that would answer some of the questions surrounding his life and death. Moore had done her work as well, contacting friends she had in the Midwest who had known Taylor and helping make appointments. It should be a fruitful trip—and not all of it would be business.

6
     
     
    Taylor certainly wasn’t an Oxford man,” Robert Giroux, the New York book publisher and Hollywood historian, told Vidor. “That’s what he may have told his friends, but the official record doesn’t bear him out. “
    As Giroux spoke, he spread his private collection of original Taylor documents out on the table in front of Vidor like a museum exhibit. The sight was nothing out of the ordinary at the Players Club, where they met on January 27, 1967. Publishers like Giroux often conducted business upstairs in the formal dining room. Downstairs, by the pool table and bar where Vidor and Giroux sat, those deals were sealed with a cigar and brandy.
    “It’s the disappearing acts that bother me,” Vidor confided as he nursed a glass of French wine. “A lot of people arrived in Hollywood pretending to be people they weren’t. Taylor just did it exceptionally well. What I’d like to know is what he was running from.”
    Giroux had no easy answer, nor did Vidor expect one. If he had, Giroux would have published the monumental amount of research he had accumulated on the life of Taylor. The fact was, he had only half the story, just enough to keep Vidor on the edge of his chair.
    Irish genealogical records Giroux had collected showed the Tanner family living in Carlow, Weatherford County, not Mallow, Cork County, as the official studio biography publicized—the same biography that failed to mention his first marriage, or the fact that he had ever worked as an antiques dealer. This was a small but important distinction, Giroux pointed out, for Carlow was a great