William Desmond TaylorWilliam Desmond Taylor

I know; I haven’t posted in ages and I usually post about comics or music, but this month is the 101st anniversary of the murder of film director William Desmond Taylor and I was reminded of a wonderful book centered on that compelling mystery.

This book set off a whole culture of amateur investigators and researchers, still going strong today, and how it came to be a book is also fascinating.

In the 1960s, a well-respected retired film director, King Vidor, got in touch with Colleen Moore, a brilliant actress from his days (1920s-1940s) and said, “I want to know who killed William Desmond Taylor.” Taylor had been a top actor and director, actually living a double life, who had been mysteriously murdered in 1922.

Vidor and MooreVidor and Moore

Vidor never completed his investigation and a writer researching Vidor’s career found all this research stashed in Vidor’s Hollywood home’s garage. Anyway, this book started the whole Who Killed WDT deal, which goes on to this day, especially since the Internet got started.

Colleen MooreColleen Moore

So, to whet your curiosity, here’s a great article about Ms Moore, and it’s where I got the photos in this post:

https://classicchicagomagazine.com/colleen-moore-solves-a-mystery/

And here’s a link to A Cast of Killers on Amazon.com. There are other great books about this fascinating case, and an astonishingly informative website devoted to the case (https://silentera.com/taylorology/index.html):

https://www.amazon.com/Cast-Killers-Twentieth-Anniversary/dp/1419677462/ref=sr_1_1?crid=A6BLDXYVF2RO&keywords=a+cast+of+killers+by+sidney+d.+kirkpatrick&qid=1675873760&sprefix=a+cast+of+killer%2Caps%2C209&sr=8-1