Famous Players – the Mysterious Death of William Desmond Taylor (paperback edition)


By Rick Geary (NBM/Comics Lit)
ISBN: 978-1-56163-559-7

Master cartoonist criminologist Rick Geary returns with another compelling escapade from his latest series of graphic novel crime reconstructions, soon available (May 20th) in an economical paperback edition.

Combining a superlative talent for laconic prose, incisive observation and detailed pictorial extrapolation with his fascination for the darker aspects of human history, Geary’s forensic eye scours the last hundred years or so for his ‘Treasury of XXth Century Murder’ series, here re-examining a landmark homicide that changed early Hollywood and led in large part to the punishing self-censorship of the Hays Commission Production Code.

In 1911 the first moving picture studio set up in the sunny orange groves of rural Hollywood. Within a decade the place was a burgeoning boom town of production companies and back lots, and movie stars were earning vast sums of money. As usual with Boom Towns the new community had swiftly accumulated a ubiquitous underbelly, becoming a hotbed of vice, excess and debauchery.

William Desmond Taylor was a man with a clouded past and a huge reputation as a movie director and ladies man. On the morning of Thursday, February 2nd, 1922 he was found dead in his palatial home by his valet, opening one of the most celebrated (and still unsolved) murder cases in Los Angeles’ extremely chequered history. Uncovering a background of drugs, sex, booze, celebrity and even false identity, this true crime became a template for every tale of “Hollywood Babylon” and, even more than the notorious Fatty Arbuckle sex scandal, drove the movers and shakers of Tinsel-Town to clean up their act – or at least to keep it out of the public gaze.

Geary is meticulous and logical as he dissects the crime, examines the suspects – major and minor – and dutifully pursues all the players to their recorded ends. Especially intriguing are snippets of historical minutiae and beautifully rendered maps and plans which bring all the varied locations to life (the author should seriously consider turning this book into a Cluedo special edition) and gives us all a fair crack at solving this glamorous Cold Case.

Geary presents the facts and the theories with chilling graphic precision, captivating clarity and devastating dry wit, and this saga is every bit as compelling as his Victorian forays: a perfect example of how graphic narrative can be so much more than simple fantasy entertainment. He is a unique talent in the comic industry not simply because of his manner of drawing but because of his subject matter and methodology in telling his tales.

This merrily morbid series of murder masterpieces should be mandatory reading for every mystery addict and crime collector.

© 2009 Rick Geary. All Rights Reserved.