Not Just Evil: Murder, Hollywood, and California's First Insanity Plea

by David Wilson

  Q. Is your reading of the New Testament in conformity with this Power you have over you?

  A. Yes, I must know what is in it to preach.

  Q. What is this Power you have over you?

  A. It is a Divine Power. It is Providence.

  Q. Then it is God?

  A. No, it is superior to God; it is different; it does not work the same way.

  Q. Does anyone other than yourself have the benefit of this power?

  A. No, sir. It is especially for me.

  Q. Why should you be different from others?

  A. Well, I know I am different.

  Q. How long have you felt different?

  Q. Do you think you are crazy?

  A. No I do not.

  Q. But you just said you were crazy.

  A. Crazy has lots of different meaning. I have had a lot of people call me crazy, but I do not believe they mean it.

  Soon after completing the reading of this interview, Dr. Skoog was asked to relate another conversation he had with Hickman, hoping the jury members could see Hickman’s defective thought process:

  Q. Is what you told me a sacred secret?

  A. Yes, sir. I seldom tell anybody.

  Q. Are you directed to keep it secret?

  A. I can tell you. I told my mother of it. I told my friend, Don Johnstone. I told Mr. Cantillon and Dr. Shelton because they must know to understand me. They are helping me. I told Mr. Moise who comes to visit me; he is writing a story about me. I never like to disclose my complete views on it; that is, in trying to explain it, I just haven’t words to give the exact idea of it. It talks to me and suggests things. I hear it, I have seen it. Beyond any double, it really exists. It has been known to me for a long time. I do not try to overcome this power. It is far greater than I am. I am humble, passive and obedient to it. It is something I should not try to understand.

  Q. Can you tell me more about how this Power makes itself known to you?

  A. I feel the Power over me. With the aid of the Power I know I will become great. I never stop to figure it out. If the Power directs me, I do it. I know it will lead to a great end. I think it plans everything for me. It is predestination. All human beings no matter how smart they are have only a shade of concept of the Universe. But the Power knows all. It is Supreme Greatness. I used the name Providence but that does not exactly describe it.

  Q. Do you know of anyone else with whom your Providence communicates?

  A. It has not been revealed to anyone else, not even Christ.

  Q. You say Providence talks to you; how does it sound?

  A. It is soft, but powerful. When it is speaking, I cannot move. Chills run down my spine.

  Q. You have seen pictures of God in his white flowing robes. I presume your Providence appears much like God.

  A. No, my Providence has fiery eyes; they seem to burn a hole in me.

  Mr. Cantillon then took his questioning in a different direction, asking Dr. Skoog to discuss Hickman’s religious beliefs.

  Q. Doctor, did the defendant, during your examination of him, give you a reason why he killed Marion Parker?

  A. Yes, he did. May I go on and explain?

  Q. Yes Doctor, go right ahead.

  A. I asked him why he killed the girl. He said he never intended to harm her when he took her from her school. He abducted her for the sole purpose of obtaining $1,500.00 so he could attend Park College.

  Thank you. This is the defendant speaking: I think she was actually born and lived for this thing. It is true she may not then have known about it, but she was prepared and brought into this world for this very thing.

  The defense rested their case unconvinced they had persuaded the jury. Walsh and Cantillon closed their case, went back to Cantillon’s office, and reviewed their evidence in the hope they could find something they had missed.

  • • •

  With the first Oscar night under his belt, Louis B. Mayer made a list of items to improve the selection process and the ceremony scheduled for the following year. He now understood that his power in Hollywood was just beginning to be felt outside the wall of the MGM studio. He turned this newfound success to yet another issue he was passionate about. Mr. Mayer, more than any other studio chief in Hollywood, worried about the issue of censorship in the film industry. He was particularly upset over the refusal of some theaters to show the ongoing news clips about the progress of the Hickman trial.

  The reasons behind his paranoia are not clear. Some of his biographers have suggested the issue had its beginning in an incident which took place in 1922 in the city of Pasadena, California. The local police chief and several of his officers had stopped MGM’s first preview of the movie, The Merry Widow. Just as the plot in the film got to a scene where the leading man was holding the actress in a less-than-glamorous pose, the theater lights were turned on and the projector turned off by the local police. Authorities confronted Mr. Mayer and Mr. Thalberg, who were both in the audience.

  It was reported that the city’s police chief contemplated arresting the two men as the producers of an immoral film. Mr. Mayer spoke to the audience, praising their chief of police and the citizens of Pasadena for their high moral standards. He told them he appreciated their position and was not fully informed about the content of the film. He promised the audience and the police department he would take the film back to Hollywood, where he would personally have the director make the needed changes to the storyline to meet or exceed the prevailing standards of their community. He swore to everyone that the remake of the film would produce a story decent enough for the whole family to watch. He even went so far as to promise he would return for their approval in a matter of weeks.

  Mr. Mayer kept his promise to the city of Pasadena, and the film went on to receive a huge amount of free press and in the process became one of MGM’s most profitable films of the year, proving the Hollywood maxim that even bad publicity is good publicity. The event, however, remained with Mr. Mayer, and the fear that American audiences might one day revolt on moral grounds against the whole movie industry was always present in his mind.

  The issue for Mayer was complex. On one hand he did not want to offend his audience. On the other hand he did not want to relinquish his personal control over the filmmaking process. He clearly did not want theater owners feeling they could dictate content.

  The first attempt at censorship against the motion-picture industry in the United States came from the citizens of New York City. The New York Board of Motion Picture Censorship was first formed in 1909 because a group of women felt the movie industry was not the group that should set the bar on what was acceptable and what wasn’t. The motion picture industry was still new, and so disorganized that the producers had no means to fight the forces trying to dictate the limits on their freedom of speech. The new board of censorship requested theater owners submit their films ahead of time for their seal of approval. Eventually every major studio agreed to have their finished product reviewed for suitable content before distribution in New York. If the board found something unsuitable, the studios went through the additional expense of making changes before releasing their films to theatre owners nationwide. Six years later, in 1915, the board’s influence inside the industry increased to the point they changed its name to the “National Board of Review.”

  As much as the major studios disliked their actions being dictated in this manner, they understood the board actually helped the movie industry ward off congressional interference. Three bills were introduced to create a Federal Censorship Commission, a proposed federal agency that would have had the power to deny copyright to any film the members felt inappropriate for family viewing. Louis B. Mayer used all his political clout to defeat all three congressional bills. At the same time, he understood that the emotional issues behind the call for censorship guidelines could raise major problems if the quality and content of movies failed to conform to the perceived standard of common decency.

  The newsreels covering th
e Hickman trial once again raised the issue of congressional intervention. Mr. Mayer, the businessman and the moralist, found himself caught in the middle of this nationwide struggle. Always the realist and diplomat, Mr. Mayer often took both sides of the issue when asked for an opinion. In response to the question, can having sexual content in a film help at the box office, he is quoted as saying: “You’d be surprised how tits figure in a hit movie.” But when talking to Hedy Lamarr about her personal life, he responded quite differently. “If you like to make love, then screw your leading man in the dressing room, that is your business, but in front of the camera, gentility. You hear? Gentility!”

  When Congress failed to pass nationwide laws governing a film’s decency, many groups changed their tactics and went to the judicial branch of the government for legal recourse. There they won a significant legal case named “Mutual Film Corporation v. Ohio Industrial Commission.” The judge in that case ruled that censorship was legal but left the issue of censorship to each individual state. Within a matter of two years, over 40 percent of American’s population saw some form of censorship at the state level.

  By 1922, the same year Mr. Mayer was confronted by the police chief of Pasadena, the movie industry found itself in a state of complete chaos. The expense of responding to each state’s requirements over censorship was becoming astronomical in both logistics and re-editing costs. Mr. Mayer, with little support from other studio chiefs, made several unilateral decisions to bring the problematic situation to an end before it stymied the whole film industry. His answer to the problem was not unlike the one he had used to create the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences. He called his new organization the “Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America.” His intention was to maintain control over the process of censorship by setting up an independent commissioner staffed with personnel he selected. The so-called independent commissioner just happened to be a very close friend of Louis B. Mayer’s, William H. Hays. The commissioner was a former postmaster general, hired at the unbelievable salary of $150,000 a year to wrestle control of censorship away from outside groups and state governments. Hays performed admirably, consolidating the process and giving the impression of independence.

  In 1927, just months before the Hickman trial, Hays introduced to the public the Association of Motion Pictures Producers and Distributors of America Code. It became more commonly known as just the “Hays Code.” It read as follows:

  Resolved, that those things which are included in the following list shall not appear in pictures produced by the members of this Association, irrespective of the way in which they are treated:

  Pointed profanity by either title or lips to include the words ‘God,’ ‘Lord,’ ‘Jesus,’ ‘Christ,’ (unless they are used reverently in connection with proper religious ceremonies), ‘hell,’ ‘damn,’ ‘Gawd,’ and every other profane and vulgar expression however it may be spelled.

  Any licentious or suggestive nudity-in factor in silhouette; and any lecherous or licentious or suggestive notice thereof by other characters in the picture.

  The illegal traffic in drugs.

  Any inference of sex perversion.

  White slavery.

  Miscegenation (sex relationship between the white and black race).

  Sex hygiene and venereal diseases.

  Scenes of actual childbirth-in fact or silhouette.

  Children’s sex organs.

  Ridicule of the clergy.

  Willful offense to any nation, race or creed.

  These were the issues the association felt most strongly about, but there were still others they felt needed to be addressed. To compensate for the other issues, the following list of issues was added.

  And be it further resolved, that special care be exercised in the manner in which the following subjects are treated, to the end that vulgarity and suggestiveness be eliminated and that good taste be emphasized:

  The use of the Flag.

  International relations (avoiding putting in pictures an unfavorable light of another country’s religion, history, institutions, prominent people, and citizenry).

  Arson.

  The use of firearms.

  Theft, robbery, safe-cracking, and dynamiting of trains, mines, building, etc. (having in mind the effect which a too-detailed description of these may have upon the moron.)

  Brutality and possible gruesomeness.

  Techniques of committing murder by whatever method.

  Methods of smuggling.

  Third degree methods.

  Hangings or electrocutions as legal punishment for crimes.

  Sympathy for crimes.

  Attitude towards public characters or institutions.

  Sedition.

  Apparent cruelty to children and animals.

  Branding of people or animals.

  The sale of women, or of a woman selling her virtue.

  Rape or attempted rape.

  First-night scenes.

  Man and woman in bed together.

  Deliberate seduction of girls.

  The institution of marriage.

  Surgical operations.

  The use of drugs.

  Titles or scenes having to do with law enforcement or law-enforcing officers.

  Excessive or lustful kissing, particularly when one character or the other is a heavy.

  The response by writers, directors, and producers to these new rules was anything but favorable. They struggled to interpret exactly what the association meant by its “Don’t and Be Careful” list. The failure of such a general approach to the artistic process became all too clear when it was realized there were no penalties imposed for violations to the code.

  The whole issue of censorship and improving Hollywood’s image came to the forefront only after a series of scandals that rocked the motion-picture industry at the turn of the century. The three major scandals, which stood out among the many, were the Fatty Arbuckle trial for rape and manslaughter, the William Desmond Taylor murder mystery, and the drug-related death of Wallace Reid.

  In the twenties Fatty Arbuckle was one of the highest-paid actors in Hollywood. He was tried for the rape and murder of Virginia Rappe. The prosecution’s theory was that the victim had been crushed by Arbuckle while being raped. The jury found him not guilty, but he was clearly convicted in the court of public opinion and afterward disappeared from both Hollywood and filmmaking.

  William Desmond Taylor was a popular director and actor during the silent film era. On February 2, 1922, he was found dead in his Los Angeles home. A doctor who examined the body claimed he had died of a stomach hemorrhage. When the police arrived they discovered a bullet wound in his back. No suspect was ever charged in the crime. The identity of the person responsible for the murder was a common source of speculation in the media for over year. Many years later reporter King Vidor said: “I interviewed a Los Angeles police detective, now retired, who had been assigned to the case immediately after the murder. He told me, ‘We were doing all right and then, before the week was out, we got the word to lay off.’”

  During the era of silent films, Wallace Reid was a popular leading man often described as “the screen’s most perfect lover.” He claimed to have become addicted to morphine as a result of painkillers needed because of injuries he received during a train wreck. He checked himself into a sanitarium in an effort to kick the addiction and died there. Following his death his wife Dorothy Davenport went on tour to publicize what at the time were the relatively unknown dangers of drug addiction. Her positive intentions backfired and fueled public suspicion that actors were overly indulgent.

  In response to these scandals Louis B. Mayer hired a staff of lawyers whose job it was to protect the image of anyone involved in the film industry. Mayer and most of the other studio heads supported the reelection of Asa Keyes largely because he was willing to work with studio attorneys in a way that mitigated the possible damage of a potential scandal. In exchange for his support studio executives were k
nown to make generous contributions to his campaign. Some reporters suspected the support went beyond political fundraising. Such rumors were never confirmed. But the support for Asa Keyes was at the heart of concern over the censorship of the Hickman newsreels. The trial was at the heart of Keyes’s reelection strategy. To ignore the trial could be interpreted as giving support to those who were considering opposing Keyes in the upcoming election.

  In Oklahoma and Kansas, theater owners were boycotting the newsreels reporting on the Hickman murder trial. They thought the subject was too gruesome for the general public. In the city of Ada, Oklahoma, the issue of censorship made the news when the mayor and the PTA requested the newsreel be removed from one of their local theaters. One of the theater owners refused to even consider the idea, and several public officials became outraged. The dispute went immediately to the courts, where the ban of the newsreel became a hot political issue. Mr. Mayer knew instinctively that the repercussions of the court ruling could go beyond this one case. The theater owner who wanted to show the newsreel lost his first legal battle in the local courts. He immediately appealed the decision to the appeals court, and lost again when it was ruled the ban was constitutional.

  The decision was in fact keeping with the times. Unlike the standards in place for movies, there was no system to determine what was or was not acceptable behavior in newsreels. So local groups and politicians were arbitrarily banning or editing newsreels based on local standards of morality. One of the first cases went to court in 1908, a case in which the mayor of New York closed every movie house in the city when it was reported a few theaters were showing obscene material. A year later, a court ruling in Atlantic City closed theaters and physically removed the film Dolorita in the Passion Dance from Edison’s Kinetoscopes when women complained to the mayor that scandalous behavior was emanating from the projection boxes.

  What happened in Ada, Oklahoma was unanticipated by anyone in the film industry. The idea that real life could be so hideous that even newsreels would have to be censored in order to stop their contaminating influence on impressionable youth had been unthinkable. The decision in Oklahoma created a state of panic in Hollywood.