Tinseltown: Murder, Morphine, and Madness at the Dawn of Hollywood

by William J. Mann

  For three days Connelley stewed. He made no move to dismiss the charges. But finally, unable to countermand a US attorney, he agreed to Herron’s recommendation.

  On November 5 Commissioner Long dismissed the case against Margaret Gibson.

  In the courtroom, the actress burst into tears of joy upon learning the news. Dominguez thundered, “This poor girl has lost her job, her mother is seriously ill in bed, and now we are politely informed that it was all a mistake.”

  Gaveling the case closed, Commissioner Long said he regretted that the unfortunate business had proceeded as far as it had.

  “Good public policy” was the reason Mark Herron gave to drop Gibby’s prosecution.

  But was it public policy or public relations he was concerned about?

  On the day after Herron delivered his decision to drop the charges, Jesse Lasky boarded a train for New York. He told reporters he would be meeting with Adolph Zukor “on a whole variety of subjects.”

  Some suspected that Lasky had been Gibby’s benefactor, posting her bail and hiring Dominguez to defend her. After all, until a few weeks earlier, she’d been a Lasky employee. If the producer had indeed provided for her, then he was being extremely generous to someone who was, after all, merely a former supporting player. But Lasky’s generosity to Gibby had been demonstrated before.

  Still, even Jesse Lasky didn’t have the clout to sway the opinion of a US attorney, to get a federal case dismissed against a defendant who was clearly guilty.

  But someone else did.

  Will Hays.

  Mark Herron wasn’t the only one in the federal courthouse beholden to Hays. So, too, was Chief US Attorney Joseph Burke, who’d been commissioned by President Harding in 1921. Both Burke and Herron had been active members of what opponents had criticized as “the federal brigade”—Republican federal appointees who had worked closely with the party machine to reelect senator Hiram Johnson in 1922. And that party machine, of course, had been led by national chairman Will Hays.

  So if Hays had determined that Margaret Gibson should be exonerated, for the good of the industry, he had two party loyalists in place who could have made that happen.

  But why would Lasky—or Zukor himself, if his summons of Hays just days before had anything to do with it—have asked the film czar to intervene in the case of a minor actress who was no longer even one of their employees?

  Certainly a new scandal involving a blackmailer and former prostitute appearing in an upcoming Paramount release would not have been good for the movie industry. But such drastic action on Hays’s part—pressuring federal attorneys to dismiss a case—could only have been considered in a true emergency. What was it about Margaret Gibson that compelled the heads of Famous Players–Lasky to move heaven and earth to keep her safe—and, presumably, silent?

  The only explanation for Gibby walking out of the courtroom a free woman on November 8, 1923, was that someone had pulled strings for her.

  Hays had compromised his integrity before for the good of the industry. With a heavy heart, he had apparently done so again—but only under the direst of circumstances, and most likely, only under direct pressure from Zukor.

  How it must have rankled him.

  More than ever, Hays longed to be free of Creepy’s control.

  CHAPTER 68

  MANHUNT

  On the eleventh floor of the Hall of Records in downtown Los Angeles, Eddie King sat uncomfortably in one of the regular weekly meetings held by District Attorney Asa Keyes. This was an opportunity for the deputies to update the department on cases they were investigating. When Detective King’s turn came, he flipped through his files, reporting on his work on the unsolved murder of wealthy industrialist Fred Oesterreich, which had occupied his time of late.

  It was early February 1924. Even as King spoke, he regretted having nothing new to report on the Taylor case. It had been two full years since the director was found dead on his living room floor. King’s wife said that Taylor’s murder obsessed the detective “night and day.” And for all of King’s hopes that Keyes would be more aggressive than Woolwine in pursuing the case, the new DA had declared that there was nothing new to investigate.

  To King, of course, that was absurd. He had presented to Keyes all the evidence he’d accumulated against Charlotte Shelby: the gun, her weak alibi, the testimony of acquaintances, the suspicious behavior of her daughter and her attorneys. But still the new DA, like his predecessor, had not moved forward on the investigation.

  King was extremely frustrated. Why was Keyes so timid about acting against this woman? Could the rumors that Shelby was paying off Keyes be true? Was yet a second DA in the pocket of Mary Miles Minter’s abominable mother?

  But in his report that day in February, King didn’t raise any of his doubts or suspicions. He simply hoped that the moment Shelby made a wrong move—which was inevitable, King believed—he’d be able to make an arrest.

  Finishing his review of his work, King sat back to listen as the rest of the detectives gave their reports.

  Charles Reimer was head of the bunco squad. Some interesting things had been happening under his watch.

  Reimer informed his colleagues that he’d been approached by Owen Meehan of the FBI for assistance in finding two fugitives, Blackie Madsen and John Ryan, whose names might have rung bells for King if he remembered the report, some six months earlier, about the John L. Bushnell blackmail case. For a brief moment, the Feds had wondered about a possible connection to the Taylor murder, but King had apparently disregarded that lead.

  Now it seemed the FBI had its sights on Madsen, and the bureau was asking Keyes to place a former con artist on his payroll to help smoke the offender out of his hole. Keyes agreed, and the stool pigeon was put to work under Reimer’s direct supervision. Reimer promised to report back to his colleagues any progress on the case.

  Madsen wasn’t in Los Angeles, however. He’d fled weeks earlier, and was hiding out in Juarez, Mexico. But, as FBI agents in Texas discovered, he also kept a post office box across the border in El Paso for unknown reasons. Inquiring at the post office, the agents learned that a package had recently arrived for Madsen from 2514 West Sixth Street, Los Angeles, the home of a Mrs. Harriett Sheridan. Who was Harriett Sheridan, the Feds wanted to know, and what was her connection to Madsen?

  The phone on Charles Reimer’s desk rang. The FBI was calling with another request for help. A female agent was needed to visit Mrs. Sheridan’s house and make some inquiries. Since the bureau had only three female agents, and none were in Los Angeles, the Feds hoped Asa Keyes would assign one of his women to the case. The DA agreed.

  Eddie King would have learned of these developments during the department’s weekly meetings, but apparently the case had no interest for him. Why should it? Why should King care about the search for some two-bit goon?

  On demure, jacaranda-shaded West Sixth Street, the female agent from the DA’s office climbed the steps of Mrs. Harriett Sheridan’s house, a clipboard under her arm. She knocked on the door. From a discreet distance, FBI agent L. C. Wheeler kept an eye on the proceedings.

  A small, stout woman with a prominent nose opened the door.

  The DA’s investigator went into her act. She was taking a school census, and she needed the name of everyone who lived in the neighborhood and the ages of their children. Mrs. Sheridan replied that she had no children of school age. Be that as it may, the female detective insisted she still needed the name of everyone, just to be complete. Finally Mrs. Sheridan relented, and gave her son’s name as Ross. But, as the detective would note in her report, “she was very cautious in touching upon anything relating to his present whereabouts.”

  Still, they’d learned something. Comparing Mrs. Sheridan with a photograph of Blackie Madsen, the detectives concluded she was, without a doubt, Madsen’s mother. “The resemblance is certainly very strong,” Wheeler wrote in his report.

  An order was placed at the Westlake post office to make tracings
of all mail received by Mrs. Sheridan. The tracings would be compared to samples of Madsen’s writing in the FBI files. As soon as a positive identification could be made, the agents planned to arrest Madsen the next time he appeared in El Paso. Why he risked crossing the border to send and receive mail from his mother, the agents weren’t sure, but they were certainly glad he did.

  As it turned out, they didn’t need to go all the way to El Paso to get him.

  Blackie Madsen had always had a soft spot for his mother. She suffered from chronic nephritis, enduring frequent pain and swelling in her extremities. She was all alone now, too. Worried about her, Madsen snuck back into Los Angeles at the end of February.

  He was spotted by the stool pigeon on the district attorney’s payroll. Immediately a manhunt fanned out across Los Angeles to bring Madsen in.

  They got him at his mother’s house. At 4:30 in the afternoon on March 1, 1924, Madsen was spotted walking up Sixth Street, wearing a heavy pair of dark tortoiseshell glasses. When he entered the house, Charles Reimer called in a police backup, and the house was quickly surrounded. With FBI agent Owen Meehan covering the front, Reimer snuck around back, kicking in the door and surprising Madsen in the kitchen. As Mrs. Sheridan screamed, Meehan burst through the front door. Grabbing Madsen by the arm, he took a look at his wrist.

  A blue star tattoo.

  He had his man.

  Madsen was forced to turn over his gun, that old .38 that dated back to the Spanish War.

  A week or so later, Reimer reported to the department about his successful partnership with the FBI. Through hard work and cooperation, they’d gotten their man. District Attorney Keyes expressed his approval and said he hoped they’d have many more fruitful associations with the Feds in the future.

  Eddie King didn’t have as much to say in his report as Reimer. The Oesterreich case dragged on, he said, and as usual there was nothing new to report about Taylor. But he quietly resolved to keep working on the case.

  In federal custody, Blackie Madsen rode the rails back to Ohio for arraignment. At first he kept quiet, refusing to admit to anything. After all, he had a long record. The Feds had arrested him for blackmailing Bushnell, but who knew what else they might have on him? So for several days, Madsen didn’t utter a word.

  Three days after his arrest, however, he’d figured out the situation. He told agents that he was now “ready to talk.” Waiving his hearing in Los Angeles, Madsen agreed to be removed to Ohio to stand trial in federal court there. He knew if the Feds allowed him to waive his hearing and head straight for Ohio, the Bushnell shakedowns were all he would be charged with.

  For that, he was looking at two years probably, tops. Madsen could deal with that.

  “Believe he will plead guilty if handled carefully,” Agent Wheeler cabled agents in Cincinnati as the prisoner traveled east in the custody of federal marshals.

  If Madsen needed any further prodding to cop a guilty plea, he got it on March 31 when Rose Putnam was released from jail. A month had been chopped off her sentence for good behavior. Surely Madsen must have wondered if Rose had been let out early so she could testify against him in a trial. After all, she knew an awful lot. Six days later, Madsen pleaded guilty as charged. Facing the judge along with him were Ryan and MacLean, who’d been apprehended separately, the last of Rose’s letters finally being returned to Bushnell.

  These “menaces of society,” the prosecutor argued, should be tossed in jail and the judge should “throw away the key.” Judge Hickenlooper agreed that a severe sentence was in order. For the first shakedown, Madsen was given two years; for the failed second attempt, he got a year and a day, to be served consecutively.

  On the afternoon of April 5, 1924, Blackie Madsen, his hands and wrists shackled, set off on the train for Atlanta, where he would join Don Osborn behind bars. He’d be away longer than he’d expected. But all things considered, three years and one day wasn’t so bad.

  PART THREE

  CLOSING THE CASE

  CHAPTER 69

  THREE DAMES NO LONGER SO DESPERATE

  The Roaring Twenties might not have reached full thunder by 1924, but the din was definitely getting louder. The economy was expanding. For the third year in a row, the gross national product had risen. Earnings were trending upward, and full employment had been reestablished. The national mood was optimistic, even a bit brash.

  Yet while many others in Tinseltown were jumping up onto tabletops and shimmying to the Charleston, the three desperate dames of 1920 were feeling a little less frolicsome, even if they weren’t nearly as desperate as they had been. A better word to describe Mabel might have been determined. Mary, delusional. Gibby, defeated.

  Mabel’s determination was evident as she sat in the witness box of a Los Angeles trial in June 1924, dueling with the smarmy defense attorney S. S. Hahn, Joe Pepa’s brother-in-law. She was testifying in the assault trial of her chauffeur, an unhinged character named Horace Greer, who had shot and wounded a friend of hers, wealthy playboy Courtland Dines, on New Year’s Day while Mabel and Edna Purviance were present. The resulting scandal had given the newspapers their biggest boost since Wally Reid died a year earlier.

  CHAUFFEUR SHOOTS MAN IN PRESENCE OF FILM STARS, trumpeted the headlines, and once again Mabel’s name was in big black ink. The parallels with the Taylor case abounded: Greer, like Edward Sands, had a criminal past, and he’d been using an assumed name. As before, two beautiful actresses were involved. And if the police were right, a love triangle was once again at the center of it all. “An unvoiced, passionate love for his movie queen employer and jealousy of her host is believed by the police to have caused Horace A. Greer, the driver, to shoot Dines,” wrote Edward Doherty, reprising his role as Mabel’s chief persecutor.

  Another newspaper scolded: “Dear Mabel may be very sweet, but her actions are not such as to make the public believe it. The quicker she is removed from filmdom, the better.”

  This time, no one waited for Will Hays to act. Across the country, theaters quickly instituted bans on Mabel’s pictures. NORMAND CASE UPROAR was Variety’s headline as the list of embargoes grew. In Memphis, Mabel’s films were banned for all time; the prohibition was quickly copied in Manchester, New Hampshire, and Columbus, Ohio. Within days, theaters were falling like dominoes. Topeka. Sacramento. Hartford, Connecticut.

  Yet in the face of it all, Mabel no longer retreated. She held her ground, insisting she should not be held accountable for the actions of a mentally unstable employee. In court, she refused to be bullied by Hahn. At one point, as Hahn deliberately twisted her words, “the Normand temper slipped its moorings,” one reporter noted, and Mabel lashed out.

  “You haven’t any right to cross-examine me like that,” she snapped. “What do you want to be so mean to me for?”

  When the prosecution objected that Hahn was badgering the witness, the judge smiled. “This witness seems perfectly able to take care of herself,” he said.

  And she was. When Hahn asked Mabel if she’d told Greer to shoot Dines, she exploded. “For heaven’s sake—no! Why should I tell anybody to plug anybody, anyhow?”

  Greer was acquitted, Dines recovered, but Mabel, for all her courage, was through in Hollywood. Attempting a goodwill tour on Sennett’s advice, she was invited to speak to a committee of the Federation of Women’s Clubs in Chicago. En route, she received word that higher-ups had rescinded the invitation. Arriving at the station as an unwanted guest, Mabel was besieged on the platform by reporters brandishing a statement from Mrs. George Palmer, the club’s president. “The majority of Illinois club women wish to see neither the actress in person, nor on the screen,” Mrs. Palmer declared.

  Mabel stood on the train platform, choking back the humiliation. “Will you do something for me?” she asked the reporters. “I want you to thank the few lovely women in Chicago who have stood by me.”

  A class act, Mabel Normand turned her back on them all, and never again played the Hollywood game.

 
When, a few months later, an opportunistic woman by the apt name of Mrs. Church sued Mabel for alienation of affection in her divorce case, Mabel struck back hard. “There is a limit to all human endurance and I have reached mine,” she said, and slapped a libel suit against the woman. Too often, Mabel told reporters, she and others—she was thinking of Roscoe—had let charges against them go unanswered. No longer. “I’ve made up my mind to quit being good natured about all this dirt being dished out about me. They’ve just got to quit kickin’ my name around.”

  Though the court dismissed Mabel’s suit on a technicality, her action did force Mrs. Church to withdraw her own suit and resubmit a new one against her husband, this time without any mention of Mabel. The move generated headlines of a very different sort. MABEL IS CLEARED. MABEL IS EXONERATED.

  Five years, she’d been waiting to read those words.

  She might have been finished as a movie star, but Mabel adjusted. She took classes, learned French. She bought a house with a garden. She moved back to New York for good—back to the real world, away from all the tinsel. She went on the stage.

  It took courage to try something new, to start over without a playbook. It took guts to walk out in front of an audience instead of a camera, and to speak lines out loud instead of pantomiming them. In the past, if Mabel had blown a scene, she could have counted on her director to call, “Cut.” Now she was walking a tightrope in front of a theater full of people, and she’d been given only the briefest theatrical training. Within weeks of her arrival, Mabel was thrust out onto the stage, starring in producer A. H. Woods’s farce The Little Mouse.