William Desmond Taylor (1872 - 1922)
William Taylor was born in County Carlow, Ireland as William Cunningham Deane-Tanner to parents Jane O’Brien and Major Kearns Deane-Tanner. Taylor attended Marlbought College in England from 1885 to 1887. He left Ireland in 1890 and ended up in Kansas where he was involved in acting. He eventually moved to New York where he met and married Ethel May Hamilton. Taylor worked for her father who was a broker and the owner of an English antiques store on Fifth Avenue. Taylor was a heavy drinker and was known to have affairs. He vanished in October 1908, abandoning his wife and their daughter, and his wife obtained a divorce.1)
Taylor changed his name to Desmond Taylor and turned up in the Klondike in 1908. He worked for Yukon Gold Corp. as a timekeeper, prospected and owned some claims, and was an actor in the Palace Grand Theatre. He would disappear for periods of time. Taylor was still a charming lady's man and regularly squired married women. He was employed off and on by the mining company until he left the Yukon for California in 1912. He started to work in the new motion picture industry and his first role in Hollywood was in The Counterfeiter. followed by The Iconoclast and Tales of Two Cities and other bit parts.2) He directed his first film, The Awakening, in 1914 as an actor-director. In the next few years he directed more than fifty films.3)
In 1916, during the First World War, Taylor enlisted in the Canadian Expeditionary Forces Canteen Service stationed at Dunkirk. He was promoted twice to the rank of Major and when he returned to Hollywood was feted by the Motion Picture Directors Association with a banquet at the Los Angeles Athletic Club.4)
Taylor went on to direct some of the most popular film stars of the day: Mary Pickford, Wallace Reid and Dustin Farnum. Mary Miles Minter starred in his 1919 version of Anne of Green Gables. Taylor was shot in the back and died in Los Angeles at his bungalow in a trendy, affluent neighbourhood. The murder was never solved.5)