William Desmond Taylor | The Soul of Youth / 1920

reformation: the soul of youth and the death of its director

by Douglas Messerli

 

Julia Crawford Ivers (screenplay, based on her book), William Desmond Taylor (director) The Soul of Youth / 1920

 

Given the series of sermons William Desmond Taylor’s film preaches about the ill-treatment of homeless and orphaned young boys in a society that was not very enlightened in how to care for them, it wouldn’t surprise me if most people missed evidence of any behavior in this film that related to LGBTQ relationships. Like Charles Dickens, Taylor and the screenwriter and writer of the original book by Julia Crawford Ivers upon which the The Soul of Youth was based argue through example for the goodness and innocence of young children, particularly neglected boys sent to an orphanage.

 

     The orphanage in this film, although outward more beneficent than Oliver Twist’s workhouse, is still filled with incompetent caretakers, one matron Miss Joye described in Taylor’s highly detailed and floridly written intertitles as “one of those sad persons who could not possibly manage anything, much less a boy.” She and the head mistress as well as the lone male helper and others are not even capable of perceiving what might be going on around them, blaming nearly everything that goes wrong on one young man, Ed Simpson (Lewis Sargent), in part because he is tasked with so many jobs that involve caring for the otherwise unsuperintended boys. As a child put in charge of keeping the kitchen the coal bin filled, of deep-frying donuts, bathing younger boys, and numerous other jobs he is constantly punished for the wild behavior of those he’s charged with overseeing. And labeled the worst behaving boy in the institution, he is denied food and often even sleep. Given so many responsibilities, moreover, it is no wonder the other kids attempt to take advantage of him, since he stands for the only male adult in their lives, while he himself is shown absolutely no love or even appreciation.

       Instead of attempting to argue and defending his behavior, he has learned to keep silent and accept the constant abuse of the women who run his institution. It is only when a stray dog wonders into the compound, whom he adopts and calls, after himself, “Simp,” that he learns what love means, an emotion that wells up from inside him without having been taught or demonstrated.

       The hypocrisy of the society that allows such institutions to exist is made evident by the decision of wealth Mrs. Hodge (Sylvia Aston), after her husband has tossed out her beloved pet cat, to adopt a beautiful blonde-haired tot from the orphanage. All the boys are paraded before her, except Ed, of course, who is forced to run errands at the very moment when he is bathing a small black child, Rufus, who as he keeps attempting to explain every time they demand something else from him, is waiting in a bathtub with the water still running. When he finally forces his way back to the tub to save the child, he is blamed for the incident of course. And Mrs. Hodge obviously cannot find any young boy they trotted out to her to fit her image of a proper son.

       But it is their discovery of his dog and the decision to send the mut away that finally determines the boy to escape from his house of bondage. He takes to the street, immediately arousing the wrath of a local cop for stealing bananas to satisfy his hunger. It is only his meeting up with the younger but far more savvy newspaper boy, Mike (Ernest Butterworth), who offers him a momentary hideout—playing a role similar to Oliver Twist’s Artful Dodger—that shows him how to survive such a public life.                 Mike not only offers him advice but brings him home to his little lean-shack that opens with large piece of canvas like a back street tent, just large enough for Mike, Ed, and Simp to eat and sleep within when they are not working the streets.

 

       At Mike’s suggestion Ed takes up the “shoe-shining” business, offering men temporarily waiting in autos for their dates or, in one case, a simple repair job, a quick “shine.” Together with the pennies Mike makes from selling papers, the two of them make up a household of true equality where both work to provide the little food they can purchase or steal, protect one another, and plot to outwit the ever foreboding cops.

        In the earliest scenes of this movie he have been provided with the facts of Ed’s infancy, shown how he was born to a poor, dying woman (Barbara Gurney) forced to sell her baby simply to survive. The buyer is the mistress of corrupt local politician Pete Moran (Claude Payton), who she is certain that if she can pass off a newborn as Pete’s baby that he will dismiss her once he tires of her feminine charms.

        But Pete, seeing through her schemes, first orders the baby be taken away and then ditches his mistress, she vowing to get revenge.

        Again, much as in Dickens’ tales, Taylor’s film finds solace in coincidence. Now running for city mayor Pete faces stiff competition from the upright and socially concerned young Mr. Hamilton (Clyde Fillmore), a man with two daughters, a young girl Vera (Lila Lee) and an older daughter Ruth (Elizabeth James) who just happens to be in love with Dick Armstrong, son a wealthy patron of Pete Moran.

        Ed and Mike have already run into some minor trouble regarding the Hamilton family, when seeing the chubby little Hamilton dog munching on a bowl of dog food, Ed steals away its bowl to feed his own pooch. But hearing Vera cry upon the discovery of the missing bowl, he returns it only to be highly reprimanded by Mrs. Hamilton (Grace Morse) who, despite her husband’s open-mindedness, is herself, as Taylor’s informative intertitles tell us, “one of those women whose viewpoint is no wider than her own front door.”

       Despite discovering a small coin purse with six dollars inside—which represents a veritable fortune to Ed and Mike—the two boys soon again find themselves near starving, Mike determining with Ed’s help to steal from the Hamilton kitchen wherein, while standing upon their porch and looking inside, Ed had glimpsed a whole cabinet of jams and jellies. But in the midst of the robbery, Mrs. Hamilton, alone in bed at the time, hears the robbers and calls the police which sends the boys on a run with the cops close behind. When they discover themselves trapped, Ed turns himself in to permit Mike to escape. And he is soon brought to justice before a local court.

       Unlike Dickens’ works, however, in which surely such a judge would make matters only worse, the film’s hero is Judge Ben Lindsey, who plays himself who in real life founded the US Juvenile Court in 1901 committed to the belief that children commit mistakes, not crimes. According to Jesse Hawthorne Ficks, writing on this film for the San Francisco Silent Film Festival:

      

“Lindsey explained in interviews that he had been ‘just a judge, judging cases according to the law,’ until a moment in early 1901, when, upon delivering an adult’s sentence to a young boy in his courtroom, he heard a heart-rending shriek from the boy’s mother. It was then that he decided to change the criminal court for child offenders. He clarified how children needed careful rehabilitation as opposed to the institutional cruelties of 19th Century reformatories.

     Lindsey’s first foray into the movies was a three-reeler entitled Saved by the Juvenile Court (1913). Dozens of letters were sent to the film’s distributors the Columbine Film Company from child-betterment organizations inspired by the Judge’s social activism. This prompted Lindsey to announce an interest in directing feature films on the child labor dilemma. The Soul of Youth, however, proved to be the pinnacle of his movie career, and it was William Desmond Taylor who knew how to best reveal the compassion that resided in the Judge’s gentle eyes because Taylor himself had been brought before the Judge ten years prior. In 1910, Taylor was beaten by police and arrested after being mistaken for a homeless delinquent. Judge Ben Lindsey acquitted the soon-to-be director the next day. The judge appeared in one more film, Judge Ben Lindsey in Juvenile Court, which featured his voice via the Photokinema sound-on-disc system.”

 

     In this film we see Lindsey mildly freeing several children from jail time while garnering promises from them for better behavior. But without a father and mother to whom he might return the boy for better guidance the judge is about to send Ed to a youth rehabilitation center—a place we might imagine even worse than the orphanage from which he had escaped. But Hamilton’s daughter Vera takes a liking to the boy and demands her father help him by offering him a foster home. The plaintiff, Mrs. Hamilton, cannot believe that her husband might dare to take in such an incorrigible youth, but when he makes the offer she has little choice but to begrudgingly agree to it.

      So Ed ends up with a supportive father figure in the very home he and Mike had attempted to burgle. Mike, however, seems to get lost in everybody’s good intentions; and what about Simp, his beloved dog?

 

     Meanwhile, with regard to Hamilton’s mayoral run, he has received a letter from Peter Moran’s old mistress that she has the proof that he defrauded a company years before, with her name listed on the document. Hamilton is sure to win if he can only buy the document from her. But who can he send as a go-between? Hamilton’s elder daughter Ruth argues for her would-be financé to be the link since no one would possibly imagine that the son of Moran’s major patron would be involved in undermining him.

      Hamilton reluctantly agrees. But having himself heard of his former mistress’ plans, the savvy Pete suspects that young Armstrong will be carrying the letters. As the young man returns home, Moran and his goons meet him at the station, cutting away the pocket in which he has hidden the documents. When Dick goes to deliver it to Hamilton, he discovers it missing, the elder furious with his failure.

     Ruth cries, realizing that she now will never be able to marry the man she loves, and once more being unable to bear a woman’s tears, Ed plots to resolve the situation.

    Having been in the Hamilton home only a couple of days, he rejoins his street buddy Mike to attempt to break into Moran’s home and steal back the documents. But this time he feels it necessary to call the judge and warn him that, although he promised never to steal again, he must do it to protect those he loves.

 

    With an open heart, Ed with Mike’s help, climbs up and breaks into Moran’s apartment, successfully stealing the papers. But at the very moment of his escape the villain, who might have been his father, returns to the room, and, as Ed jumps to the ground shoots and wounds the boy. With Mike’s help, the boy literally holding his friend up as he struggles to the Armstrong house, Ed collapses on the Armstrong doorway, Mike running to report to Dick that they’ve got the papers, but Ed needs his help.

    Carrying Ed inside and depositing him on the couch, Dick listens to Ed’s advice to take the documents immediately to Mr. Hamilton and save his relationship with Ruth.

       In the meantime, Mike, who has been gently stroking his wounded friend’s forehead, puts his arms around his neck and pulls him in close as he demands that in return for what Ed has done for him, he has to help his friend by calling the doctor.

     The thoughtless young Armstrong finally does so, and runs off to the Hamilton house with the news. The doctor has evidently saved the boy’s life, and now even Mrs. Hamilton is so proud of Ed’s actions that she declares that she will become his mother, particularly when Mrs. Hodges suddenly appears on her doorstep, proclaiming she will be willing to adopt the young hero despite the fact he looks nothing like the boy she wanted.

      Hamilton, who forces Moran to go on the run by threatening to reveal his fraudulent past, has now won as Mayor for which the city will certainly be better off. Vera, who likes the look of Simp, demands they adopt the other dog as well, and Ed has finally found not only a father but a mother. But the film, alas, seems to have forgotten about Mike, who presumably returns to selling papers and living in his makeshift tent.

       In 1920 there was absolutely no way that a film could suggest that these two boys might have shared anything but the adolescent love of friends. But as a former boy scout, you can’t convince me that two pubescent boys, well-schooled in the lessons of the street, sharing a lean-to for weeks or even months did not explore one another’s bodies. If nothing else, these boys certainly functioned as a loving couple. And, if Ed learned how to love through caring for a dog, Mike, the movie proffers, has learned how to love by looking after his best friend, a love openly displayed in his final scenes with him.

       In his book Behind the Screen: How Gay and Lesbians Shaped Hollywood 1910-1969, William J. Mann, in fact, recounts how bi-sexual director William Desmond Taylor enlisted his young male lover George James Hopkins’ help “in livening up a mawkish tale of a do-gooder judge who reforms boys.” Mann continues into territory that even I had not perceived in the script:

 

“The script implied the boys had whored themselves, so Hopkins convinced Taylor to depict a scene in a whorehouse. In the days before the Hays Code existed to prohibit such a thing, Taylor agreed. For good measure, they also threw in a scene where the sixteen-year-old star…is sold into sexual slavery.

     Just to make sure they got their details correct, Hopkins wrote that he and Taylor visited an actual male brothel in Los Angeles. Later, after Taylor’s death, there would be reports in The New York Times of the director’s visits to an all-male ‘love cult’ in Chinatown, where ‘the men would be in silk kimonos, smoke the essence of the poppy flower and so commence their ritual, old as Sodom…. The members of the cult were held together by a bond, unthinkable, unbelievable, and that each had sworn an oath of undying affection for the others.’”

 

      Even I can not imagine what scene Mann might be referring to; perhaps it was cut. But it is clear that the director and his lover Hopkins certainly recognized the sexual implications of what their young boys were up to.

       The movie may pretend to be about reforming the laws regarding young boys, but the boys clearly learned by reforming themselves, in the sense of that word’s meaning “to form something all over again,” in this case a queer relationship between two individuals who have no other models but the one they themselves created.

     Unfortunately, given the demands of social propriety the film could not resist replacing their personally credited definition of relationships with the far more normative ones of a father, mother, and in the forthcoming marriage between Ruth and Dick, heteronormativity. But surely the loving Ed will not forget Mike. And one can imagine a later adventure where Mike is brought also into the Hamilton household. But of course, that’s not possible on the popular screen which demands its own sort of fairy tales.

      It’s even more fascinating when one recalls that just prior to this film, 16-year-old Lewis Sargent had played Huckleberry Finn in Taylor’s film version, a movie in which the young boy in Twain’s original at least, forged another queer male relationship with Jim.

   Only two years later Taylor’s own life would become a scandalous mystery. On February 2, 1922, the director was found dead in his Los Angeles bungalow at the Alvarado Court Apartments in Westlake. The body, lying flat on its back, with hands beside it, appeared to be calm with no expression of terror, and the police quickly came to the conclusion that he had died of a stomach hemorrhage. But as they went to move the body, they found to their surprise, a small pool of blood on the floor under it, a bullet hole in the lower part of his back.

     The last person to see him, actress Mabel Normand, was questioned as to why she had visited the house the evening before, explaining she’d come to collect her personal letters written to him.

        Some neighbors claimed to have seen a dark figure leave the house, but nothing further turned up as evidence—except for a large selection of pornographic photos depicting Taylor engaged in sex with several notable actresses, and a closet containing a collection of lingerie, each of the items dated and initialed. Of particular interest was a silk nighty embroidered with the letters M. M. M.

       The newspapers and nearly everyone in Hollywood had their own theories of who the murderer might have been. Some suggested it might have been the recently fired valet and cook, Edward Sands. He had prior convictions for several attempts of desertion from the U. S. military and for embezzlement and forgery. He also had had several aliases, and spoke with an outlandish cockney accent. He had previously forged Taylor’s name on checks the year before while Taylor was vacationing in Europe. Sands had also wrecked the director’s car and burgled Taylor’s bungalow, leaving footprints on the director’s bed. Following the murder, he was never heard from again.

      Henry Peavey, Taylor’s current valet, was the one who found Taylor’s body. He, so newspapers trumpeted wore flashy golf costumes, although he did not play the game. And only three days before the murder he had been arrested for “social vagrancy,” charged for being “lewd and dissolute,” which today might be read as attempting to pick up a gay man in public. Peavey died in 1931 in a San Francisco asylum where he had been hospitalized for syphilis-related dementia.

       Comedic actor Mabel Normand, who according to Robert Giroux—who along with others such a director King Vidor became so fascinated with the case that he did sleuthing of his own, the famous publisher writing a 1990 book on the murder—was deeply loved by Taylor. A locket bearing her photograph was found on Taylor’s body. Apparently Normand had first approached him to help cure her of her dependency upon cocaine. Her repeated relapses had terribly upset the director, and according to Giroux, Taylor met with federal prosecutors shortly before his death offering to testify against Normand's cocaine suppliers. Giroux expresses a belief that these suppliers learned of the meeting and hired a contract killer to assassinate the director. According to Giroux, Normand suspected the reasons for her lover's murder, but did not know the identity of the triggerman

     On the night of the murder, Normand claimed to have left Taylor's bungalow at 7:45 pm in a happy mood, carrying a book he had lent her. She and Taylor blew kisses to each other as her limousine drove her away. Normand was the last person known to have seen Taylor alive, and the Los Angeles Police Department subjected her to a grueling interrogation, eventually ruling her out as a suspect. Normand's career had already been faltering, and her reputation was tarnished by revelations of her addiction, which was seen as a moral failing. According to George Hopkins, who sat next to her at Taylor's funeral, Normand wept inconsolably throughout the ceremony.

     Faith Cole MacLean, the wife of actor Douglas MacLean and neighbor of Taylor's, claimed to have seen Taylor's killer. The couple was startled by a loud noise at 8 pm. MacLean opened her front door and saw someone emerging from the door of Taylor's home who she said was dressed "like my idea of a motion picture burglar." She recalled the person paused for a moment before turning and walking back through the door, as if having forgotten something, then re-emerged seconds later and flashed a smile at her before running off and disappearing between the buildings. MacLean thought that the loud noise she had heard was a car back-fire, not a gunshot. She also told police interviewers this person looked "funny" like a movie actor in white-faced makeup, speculating that it may have been a woman disguised as a man due to the person's height and build.

      The M. M. M. of the embroidered night coat, Mary Miles Minter was a former child star and teen screen idol whose career had been guided by Taylor. Minter, who had grown up without a father, was only three years older than the daughter Taylor had abandoned in New York. Love letters from Minter were found in Taylor's bungalow. Based upon these, the reporters alleged that a sexual relationship between the 49-year-old Taylor and 19-year-old Minter had started when she was 17. Both Giroux and Vidor, however, disputed this, citing Minter's own statements that her love for Taylor was unrequited. Taylor had often declined to see Minter and had described himself as too old for her.

     Facsimiles of Minter's passionate letters to Taylor were printed in newspapers, forever shattering her screen image as a modest and wholesome young girl. She was vilified in the press. Minter made four more films for Paramount Pictures, and when the studio failed to renew her contract, she received offers from many other producers. Never comfortable as an actress, Minter declined them all.

      Mary Miles Minter's mother, Charlotte Shelby, like many a stage mother was described as manipulative and consumed by greed over her daughter's career. Minter and her mother were bitterly divided by financial disputes and lawsuits for a time, but they later reconciled. Shelby's initial statements to police about the murder are still characterized as evasive and "obviously filled with lies" about both her daughter's relationship with Taylor and "other matters." Perhaps the most compelling bit of circumstantial evidence was that Shelby allegedly owned a rare .38 caliber pistol and some unusual bullets which were very similar to the kind which had killed Taylor. After this information became public, she reportedly threw the pistol into a Louisiana bayou.

      Shelby knew the Los Angeles district attorney socially and spent years outside the United States in an effort to avoid both official inquiries by his successor and the press coverage related to the murder. In 1938, her other daughter, actress Margaret Shelby, suffering from both clinical depression and alcoholism, openly accused her mother of the murder. Shelby was widely suspected of the crime and was a favorite suspect of many writers. For example, Adela Rogers St. Johns speculated that Shelby was torn by feelings of maternal protection for her daughter and her own attraction to Taylor.

       Film actress Margaret Gibson had worked with Taylor when he first came to Hollywood. In 1917, she was indicted, tried, and acquitted on charges equivalent to prostitution, along with allegations of opium dealing, after which she changed her professional name to Patricia Palmer. In 1923, Gibson was arrested and jailed on extortion charges, later dropped. At age 27, she was in Los Angeles at the time of Taylor's murder. No record of her name was ever mentioned in connection with the investigation. Soon after the murder, Gibson began working in a number of films produced by Famous Players-Lasky, Taylor's studio at the time of his death. Shortly before she died in 1964, she confessed to murdering Taylor. [Sources: Robert Giroux, A Deed Of Death: The Story of the Unsolved Murder of Hollywood Director William Desmond Taylor, Jesse Hawthorne Ficks, writing on The Soul of Youth for San Francisco Silent Film Festival, and Wikipedia, along with various news recountings of the murder.]

      Along with the Fatty Arbuckle scandal, Taylor’s death was perhaps the central Hollywood event that brought everyone to believe that the motion picture studios had become a true Sodom.

 

Los Angeles, April 25, 2022

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (April 2022).