User Profile

On February 1, 1922, I was shot to death in my Los Angeles bungalow by someone whom history has labeled as simply "an unknown assailant". Apart from the Black Dahlia murder case some twenty years later, my murder is something of a legend in the city of angels. This journal will reveal an underworld of deviancy, debauchery, drug abuse, sex, scandal and violence.

The Victim
I was born one William Cunningham Deane Tanner in Carlow, Ireland, in 1872 (though I would often shave some years from that date and no one was ever the wiser). In 1890, I moved to New York City to become an actor much to the gall of my father. Nonetheless, I was successful on the New York stage. I told people many stories about my past- that I was raised as part of a wealthy family in Ireland, that I attended Oxford, and that I was an officer in the British Army. In 1901, I left the stage to marry a wealthy New York socialite. Marriage was not for me - I missed the glamour and glitz of the stage. In 1908, feeling stifled in my respectable life as a husband and businessman, I left for the West Coast to start a new life. After four years of odd jobs, I turned up in Hollywood with a new name: William Desmond Taylor. Soon, I started taking bit parts in motion pictures which eventually led to larger roles in several successful films. By 1914, I starred in Captain Alvarez, which became my biggest hit. I soon parlayed my fame into a job as a director for Paramount Studios- where I made a name for myself by translating literary classics such as Huckleberry Finn and Anne of Green Gables into films. My good luck seemed to have no limit and, in 1917, I was elected head of the Motion Picture Director's Association.

Yet, I had a secret life - like most of the wayfairing strangers who found themselves in Babylon. Perhaps this life caused my death?

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Maintained by billyliar

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