William Desmond Taylor

Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. William Desmond Taylor (April 26, 1872 - February 1, 1922) was an Irish-born American actor, successful film director of silent movies and a popular figure in the growing Hollywood film colony of the 1910s and early 1920s. His murder on February 1, 1922, along with other Hollywood scandals such as the Roscoe Arbuckle trial, led to a frenzy of sensationalistic and often fabricated newspaper reports. In the 1950 film Sunset Boulevard, the name Norma Desmond is a reference to both Taylor's middle name and one of his actress friends, Mabel Normand. Taylor's murder remains officially unsolved. He was born William Cunningham Deane-Tanner into the Anglo-Irish gentry on April 26, 1872, in Carlow, Ireland. He was one of four children of a retired British Army officer, Kearns Deane-Tanner, and his wife, Jane. His siblings were Denis, Nell, and Daisy. He sailed for America in 1890, when he was 18 years old.