Read Tinseltown: Murder, Morphine, and Madness at the Dawn of Hollywood for Free Online Page A

modernists, brought into stark relief by the end of the war. A new generation of moviegoers, finding, in Fitzgerald’s famous phrase, “all gods dead [and] all faiths in man shaken,” were flocking to pictures that reveled in a new sexual freedom, such as DeMille’s Old Wives for New and Male and Female .“Film subject matter was changing to fit the times,” Adolph Zukor acknowledged, and he believed their job as filmmakers was to “stay abreast” of the times.
    For every Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm , there were many other films that celebrated a new kind of woman—free, unapologetically sexual—and new kinds of relationships that men and women could enjoy. Other films exposed the seamier side of modern life, with prostitutes, pimps, alcoholics, and gangsters all striding across the celluloid for everyone, including children, to see. Even if good (usually) triumphed in the end, the very depiction of such things was enough to give the church ladies palpitations.
    And so out had come the censor’s shears. In Pennsylvania, state-appointed moral guardians had even snipped out scenes of“a woman making baby clothes, on the ground that children believe that babies are brought by the stork.” What was next? asked the New York Times . “Will it be a crime to show a picture of a man giving his wife a Christmas present on the ground that it tends to destroy faith in Santa Claus?”
    Zukor and the other film chiefs loudly bemoaned this loss of artistic freedom. But the real pain they felt, of course, came from decreased profits. That was why Taylor had been dispatched to the Brunton Studios memorial to say some kind words about the industry and try to slow the march toward censorship in other states.
    In his deep, resonant voice, Taylor intoned the names of the dead:“Sweet little Clarine Seymour, radiant with youth.” He paused for effect. “Gallant, fearless Ormer Locklear.” Another pause. “True-hearted Bobby Harron.” And finally, with a tremble of emotion, “Generous, great-hearted Ollie Thomas.”
    The melancholy strains of Chopin’s famous Funeral March filled the Longacre stage. The Reverend Neal Dodd, pastor of St. Mary of the Angels Episcopal Church, known as the motion picture people’s church, gave a reading from scripture. The Metropolitan Quartet followed with the popular piece “The Rosary,” by Ethelbert Nevin. No matter that most of the studio chiefs were Jewish, or that, except for Harron, none of those being memorialized had been especially religious. This little show at the Brunton Studios had a wider audience than just those present. The good Christian ladies in Newark, and Birmingham, and Des Moines—the ones who could either mobilize for censorship or stop such a campaign in its tracks—were the ones the movie bosses really wanted to impress.
    At last it was time for Taylor’s eulogy. Standing tall and erect like the military commander he had been—during the war he’d attained the rank of captain in the British Army—Taylor orated in a rich, resounding voice that rang through the studio. He spoke in glowing terms of those who had been lost. No scandal was mentioned. Instead, Taylor spoke of honor, and devotion to duty, and friendship, and family. Many in attendance were moved to tears.
    “William Taylor’s beautiful tribute to the memories of the recently departed stars tried even the stoutest hearts,” the reporter from the Los Angeles Examiner observed, “and will never be forgotten by the motion picture folk who made the unique pilgrimage of sorrow to the studio.”
    “His sympathy,” declared another attendee, “was a thing of beauty. In it, with the utmost delicacy, he touched the tragic notes in the violent passings of youths who had all life and accomplishments before them, while from his stock of supreme tenderness he pointed his moral, revealing with the philosophy of a thoughtful and clear-visioned soul, the light in all things.”
    Standing there before the high and