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eBook Category: True Crime
eBook Description: During the early years of film making Hollywood managed to remain a wide open town, where anything might happen, and did. Films reflected this more liberal living standard. And many people in middle America felt its New Babylon image to be a bad influence on their families. It would take several scandals to force change. Censorship was just one step from becoming a harsh reality. The William Desmond Taylor murder mystery was a shocking and convoluted tale of intrigue that involved a couple of very famous female stars in a love triangle that would soon tease the public imagination. But that's only where it started to shock. His past prove almost as startling as his murder. Nothing was as it seemed to be on the surface. It is an intriguing mystery, a murder within a locked room. The trail which followed became one of the major early scandals to rock the town. This scandal, coupled with others, such as the Fatty Arbuckle rape case, became events that the media milked to death. Each ended up without any solutions, but both helped to fire public outrage against what they understood to be the degenerate underbelly of the film industry. Here, again, the author rips aside the shimmering curtain and exposes the seedy innards of what made Hollywood run. And still, even today, dulls the glitter of tinsel town.

eBook Publisher: Fictionwise.com, Published: 1969
Fictionwise Release Date: July 2005

7 Reader Ratings: Great Good OK Poor

Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [848 KB], eReader (PDB) [50 KB], Palm Doc (PDB) [30 KB], Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [27 KB], Microsoft Reader (LIT) [167 KB] - PocketPC 1.0+ Compatible, Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [98 KB], hiebook (KML) [184 KB], Sony Reader (LRF) [143 KB], iSilo (PDB) [25 KB], Mobipocket (PRC) [31 KB], Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [112 KB], OEBFF Format (IMP) [43 KB]
Words: 8631
Reading time: 24-34 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Adobe Acrobat (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud DISABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED

The William Desmond Taylor murder mystery was in many ways a convoluted event which in the end had a major effect on the history of the town's early development. It in effect became one of the turning points that set public outrage down a roller coaster ride to censorship.

In those early years of Hollywood, at the beginning of the 1900's, silent films communicated an image of life in the United States. Every film depicted its own concept of the American dream--or exposed the nasty under-belly few wished to world to see.

The city sucked young talent right through the gates of all the major studios and out the back door never to be heard from again. A few lucky one became major film makers in the coming decades. They all clamored for fame and fortunes in this newly developing industry: artists, actors, writers, cameramen, musicians, producers, and directors. And they would combine their special talents to influence not only the American scene but the whole world.

That was a problem.

The depiction of our cultural morals became the concern of the leaders of all major studios.

The fact that these screen images were nothing but illusions, fantasy make-believe, didn't matter. Reality had little to do with film making. Illusion and special effects ruled the day from the very beginnings as much as it does now with such magic as the Star Wars epics so brazenly demonstrate to modern movie goes.