***************************************************************************** * T A Y L O R O L O G Y * * A Continuing Exploration of the Life and Death of William Desmond Taylor * * * * Issue 39 -- March 1996 Editor: Bruce Long bruce@asu.edu * * TAYLOROLOGY may be freely distributed * ***************************************************************************** CONTENTS OF THIS ISSUE: Woolwine's Statement Regarding Mary Miles Minter Wallace Reid, Part II ***************************************************************************** What is TAYLOROLOGY? TAYLOROLOGY is a newsletter focusing on the life and death of William Desmond Taylor, a top Paramount film director in early Hollywood who was shot to death on February 1, 1922. His unsolved murder was one of Hollywood's major scandals. This newsletter will deal with: (a) The facts of Taylor's life; (b) The facts and rumors of Taylor's murder; (c) The impact of the Taylor murder on Hollywood and the nation; (d) Taylor's associates and the Hollywood silent film industry in which Taylor worked. Primary emphasis will be given toward reprinting, referencing and analyzing source material, and sifting it for accuracy. ***************************************************************************** ***************************************************************************** Woolwine's Statement Regarding Mary Miles Minter * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * April 8, 1922 MOVING PICTURE WORLD The Official Facts Misrepresentation ran riot among the newspaper correspondents of Los Angeles and did not stop at false and wholly preposterous stories about moving picture people. It extended even to the officers of the law who were putting forth every effort to solve the mystery surrounding the slaying of William Desmond Taylor. One of the chief victims of this disregard for facts was Thomas Lee Woolwine, district attorney of Los Angeles County. Mr. Woolwine was interviewed without being talked to, his name was signed to a statement he never made and the statement was sent broadcast to newspapers throughout the country. When he made his unqualified denial, the denial was given an inconspicuous publication and, so far as we have been able to discover, never reached the Eastern Seaboard or the central cities at all. [1] We took a trip to California to find out all of the facts, and we condemn this misrepresentation of Mr. Woolwine precisely as we condemn the misrepresentation of our own people of the moving pictures. In a letter to us Mr. Woolwine makes the following significant statement of the facts. It is vitally important, as it comes from the public officer in full charge of the investigation of the case: "In this connection I cannot refrain from observing that in all my experience as district attorney of Los Angeles County, I have never known anything to equal the orgy of falsification and exaggeration by certain sensational newspapers in connection with the murder of William Desmond Taylor. It became necessary in the investigation of the Taylor murder to call to the district attorney's office, for the purpose of taking their statements, many persons who knew the murdered man, in the hope of clearing up the mystery of his death. A large percentage of those who came to my office at the request of the officers suddenly found themselves written up in some of the newspapers in such a way as to convey by innuendo a very unfavorable impression of them and their relations to the murdered man. One notable example is that of Miss Mary Miles Minter. "In all of the investigations by the police authorities, which has been up to this time most thorough and searching, nothing has been laid before me that would furnish the slightest indication that she had anything in the world to do with this crime, or ever had any knowledge directly or indirectly of its perpetration, or that her acquaintance with Mr. Taylor was such as to subject her to the slightest criticism. "Again thanking you for your offer to correct any false impressions with relation to myself that may have gained ground by reason of the articles to which I have referred, I am, "Very cordially yours, "Thomas Lee Woolwine, "District Attorney" [Thanks to Annette D'Agostino for providing this clipping.] ***************************************************************************** ***************************************************************************** Wallace Reid, Part II Below are additional clippings pertaining to Wallace Reid's life and death, which supplement the biography of Reid reprinted in the issue 38 of TAYLOROLOGY. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * January 18, 1913 MOTOGRAPHY Wallace Reid, director of one of the "Flying A" companies, sustained severe injuries to his left leg when, on horseback, he was giving chase to a runaway on the boulevard one afternoon recently. His horse fell with the rider beneath it. Mr. Reid and Miss Lillian Christy, leading woman of the company, and been at the plaza and were about to return uptown. The two horses were untied when that of Miss Christy's dashed away. Mr. Reid was immediately astride his own and giving chase to the runaway. He was in a wild gallop about a block from the plaza when the animal lost its footing on the pavement and fell, carrying its rider with it. Mr. Reid's left leg was pinned beneath his mount and he suffered a severe sprain of the left ankle. The runaway stopped of its own accord upon overtaking other "Flying A" horses which it had started to follow. Mr. Reid's injuries did not interfere with the direction of his company, although he will not be able to wear a shoe on the injured foot for several days. [This injury continued to bother Reid for the remainder of his life, and is referred to in the series of articles written by his wife.] * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * March _, 1919 NEW YORK TELEGRAPH Nearly every member of the Wallace Reid company was injured in an accident last Monday [March 2, 1919] in northern California, when a train caboose, carrying the Reid company of players, jumped the tracks on a trestle bridge near Arctas and turned over. Wallace Reid sustained a three-inch scalp wound, which required six stitches to close. Grace Darmond and others in the company suffered similar cuts and bruises... [As the statements by his wife later indicated, Reid was given morphine to ease the pain from this injury.] * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * November 25, 1920 VARIETY Had Dope For Sale Los Angeles--Thomas H. Tyner, alias Claude Walton, alias Bennie Walton, was taken into custody here on a local lot with seven bundles of heroin on his person, according to the arresting officer. He was arraigned before U.S. Commissioner Long and held for $1,000 bail for a preliminary examination. It is said Tyner declared he was delivering the dope to one of the best known male picture stars on the coast and that it had been the second time he was engaged to deliver to the same star, whose wife, in the hope of having him break the habit, informed the authorities. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * May 25, 1921 LOS ANGELES HERALD Trailing a suspect in a taxicab to the home of a prominent actor in Hollywood, three officers today took into custody a man giving the name of Joe Woods, 34, said by them to be a notorious narcotic distributor, and confiscated $1000 worth of morphine. Woods was booked at the city jail on a charge of violating the state poison law and was held on default of $500 bail pending arraignment before Police Judge George H. Richardson. Inspectors Fred Borden and Peoples of the state board of pharmacy and Detective Sergeants O'Brien and Yarrow of the police narcotic squad, nabbed Woods, according to records at detective headquarters. Reports received by the state and city officers indicated the suspect was active in the unlawful distribution of narcotics. They followed him in a police automobile to Hollywood, they say, and took him into custody in the pretentious home of the actor while, it is charged, he was attempting to sell his wares. According to the police, Woods, who is well known to them as a narcotic peddler, recently finished serving a term at the county jail after being found guilty of violating a federal law in the unlawful distribution of narcotics. The officers who arrested Woods declined to reveal the name of the actor. It was explained by them that the actor was neither an addict nor a distributor, and played no part in the arrest of the suspect. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * September 23, 1921 VARIETY ...It is known the wife of one of the most popular of the younger male stars has time and again had the peddlers of dope supplying her husband arrested, but she has been unable to get her husband to break his habit... * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * August 26, 1922 NEW YORK TIMES Mr. and Mrs. Wallace Reid to Adopt Child Los Angeles--Mr. and Mrs. Wallace Reid petitioned the Superior Court today for permission to adopt Betty Mummert, 3 years old, whose parents have consented to the adoption. Mrs. Reid is known to the screen as Dorothy Davenport. [As the following item indicates, it was rumored in Hollywood that this adopted daughter was in reality Wallace Reid's own daughter.] * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * August 18, 1923 MOVIE WEEKLY Real Dramas of Hollywood She heard of her dashing husband's affairs from time to time. She even indulgently answered his "mash notes" when he was too lazy to write the letters himself, which he frequently was. "Here are some more letters from mushy dames!" he would laugh, and throw the letters into her lap. But one night came something more serious. The wife was alone in the house, except for the children, who had gone to bed. The servants, Japanese, went home at night. Came a rap on the door, --a timid rap,--and the wife wondered why the visitor did not ring the bell. But she was no coward, and besides that timid rap did not come from any burly intruder, she was sure of that. She opened the door, and there stood a girl with a baby in her arms. It was so like a melodrama that the wife felt a horribly hysterical desire to laugh when the girl asked for her husband! "So it has come at last!" she said to herself, still with that awful clutching at her throat,--the hysterical desire to laugh and weep. She knew now that she had been expecting something of this sort to happen. The girl was crying, and looked so helpless,--so utterly as a victim of her husband would look, she thought! The wife asked the girl to come in. The girl, young and very pretty and modishly dressed after a cheap fashion, brightened and came in. She felt no pang of jealousy when she looked at the girl, oddly enough, she thought to herself even then,--but she felt a terrible, clutching feeling, half anger, half piercing pity, when she looked at the baby! It was all as the wife had expected from the first moment she looked at the girl. The baby was her husband's! She never thought to doubt the girl's story. It didn't occur to her until afterward that this was odd. But the girl was so evidently miserable, heart-broken, and her claim was made in such frank, genuine, if heart-broken, fashion, that the wife had to believe her. "I'm only an extra girl," the girl said hurriedly, after satisfying herself that her seducer was not at home, and that the wife had only pity in her heart for her. "I do love my baby so, but my mother died last week, and there is no one to care for him! Oh, my darling mamma! She did love my baby so! She was so good to me! Some mothers would have been cross, but she never was. She was just sorry! All the time, she was just sorry. And she loved my baby! "Now--I think you just must--you just must adopt my baby and--" The wife started back. She had expected a call for money, but not for this. "Yes," the girl said firmly. "There isn't any other way. I've thought it all out. My baby cannot go to a foundling asylum. I couldn't bear that--nor for anybody but his own father to have him!" The wife was sunk in thought. The baby was a dear baby. "I'll kill myself if you don't!" the girl threatened desperately. "Yes, we'll do it!" the wife suddenly decided. What mixed motives there were beneath that decision! It was all generosity on first impulse. Then followed the subtle thought that her husband could never look at the little one without remembering his fault! And he should care for it, and pay its bills. Her husband would not dare refuse, she knew that. For the girl would certainly make a scandal. The girl promised never to see her baby again. As for herself, she had long passed the stage where she could feel any active resentment against the girl. She was only one of many, she thought drearily. And the baby was a dear baby! So the little one found a home. And the child will never know the difference between its own mother and this foster one! * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * October 21, 1922 LOS ANGELES EXAMINER Wallace Reid Seriously Ill in Sanitarium Wallace Reid is seriously ill. Waging a valiant battle against a combination of maladies the debonair, dashing hero of screenland was reported last night as "doing as well as could be expected." From his bedside in a sanitarium Dorothy Davenport, actress, in private life Mrs. Wallace Reid, said in effect: "Wallace is a very sick man. It is true that his condition is serious but he is not dying, as was the rumor this afternoon." Attending physicians and Miss Davenport announced that the dangerous illness is a combination of a nervous breakdown and an eye disorder known in cinema circles as "kleig eye." "Kleig eye," it was explained, is similar to "snow blindness" and is brought on by long and continued exposure of the eyes to powerful batteries of calcium lights used in moving pictures. The stricken screen star, Miss Davenport said, has been in ill health for several months because of overwork and the eye malady. The combination proved too much for his physique Wednesday and he suffered a "complete breakdown." Reid has appeared in more pictures than any male star in the studios here, his friends assert, and his eyes, never strong, failed completely about two weeks ago. For several days he was blind, they say, but during the last week his eyes grew stronger, but his nervousness was accentuated. The climax came when he started to work on the Lasky "lot" a week ago on a picture known as "Nobody's Money." He was cast for the lead, but was unable to continue after the first day or so. Scenes in which he was not scheduled to appear were "shot" while the supporting company waited for his recovery. But yesterday it was announced that Jack Holt had been signed to play the lead in "Nobody's Money." Reid requested and obtained a four weeks' vacation from the Lasky Corporation which ended Wednesday. During that period he camped and hunted in the mountains in an attempt to stem the onrushing nervous breakdown. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * December 16, 1922 LOS ANGELES TIMES Wallace Reid, international screen idol and hero of scores of film plays, has voluntarily given up the use of narcotics and is now playing out the most heroic role of his life in a Hollywood sanitarium where his determined attempt to win out over drugs and whisky have brought him to so low an ebb of physical resistance that his life is in danger. Two months ago Reid determined to break himself of the use of stimulants. Yesterday members of his family talked freely to The Times with the purpose of quieting the many false rumors which have grown and spread from coast to coast during the last two years--rumors which have run the gamut of sensationalism from tales of hopeless addiction to morphine and heroin to widely spread and unfounded reports that the Lasky star had reached a stage of partial blindness and equally untrue tales that his condition had become such that psychopathic treatment had been found necessary. The truth of the situation is that Mr. Reid is perilously weak and suffering from collapse and a high temperature: he is in a sanitarium in Hollywood under the care of two doctors and constantly under the surveillance of two male nurses, but his determination to stage a "come- back" both personally and on the screen is unshaken, and his will power and cheerfulness are unimpaired. Wild liquor parties at the Reid home, called "more like a road- house" by Mrs. Davenport, featured Mr. Reid's slow decline to where he was forced to rely upon stimulants to carry him through his acting on the Famous Players-Lasky lot in Hollywood. The parties, according to Mrs. Davenport, were made up in a large part of "friends," not even invited by her son-in-law. It is these persons who are chiefly to blame, she said. Almost three years ago members of the Reid household first noticed the change in the star's actions, they declared yesterday. The change dated from a severe injury sustained by Mr. Reid while he was filming a picture near San Francisco. A large rock falling from an overhanging bank struck Reid on the back of the head and knocked him out. Eleven stitches were taken by physicians in the actor's scalp. From the date of the accident to Reid's general break-down last September, his family yesterday traced his decline. Party after party in which liquor flowed like water marked the path. From whisky the trail branched to narcotics and ended just two months ago when Mr. Reid decided to fight it out and win his way back... From the bedside of her husband, Mrs. Dorothy Davenport Reid went to the home of a friend and there made a brief statement. "My husband is a sick, sick boy," Mrs. Reid declared. "I don't know if he will recover, but he has broken his habit and won his fight. He made this fight of his own free will and has won it by the strength of his own mind and will. I know that he will come back... "I have never been able to learn how much morphine was supplied a day by the peddlers to poor Wally, but he bought the drug here and also in the East. He had to have it. Then some time ago he fought his first battle with the habit and we all thought that he had won, but he was unable to shake clear and was unable to do so until about two months ago, when he left the studio, went into the hills and won his fight. "One week after he returned to us he broke down. Now he is fighting for his life."... From Mrs. Davenport, the wife's mother, the story of the plucky struggle was learned...Mrs. Davenport declared, "For months before Wally went to the sanitarium he was unable to sleep at night. For hours he remained awake in bed and always Dorothy, heavy eyed, sat by him and soothed him like a mother. He seemed to depend upon her and she did not fail him. He would awaken her in the early morning hours and she would stroke his hair and croon him to sleep. "Dorothy fought and lost, and then kept on fighting and won. The big struggle is over. Now we must nurse Wallace back to health." The future for the film star, according to friends and others employed in the Famous Players-Lasky studio is uncertain. It is said that he is expected to be back at work the second week in January. Nothing has been officially given out concerning Mr. Reid except that he has been ill from "overwork and a bad case of Klieg eyes."... * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * December 17, 1922 LOS ANGELES TIMES ...[Will] Hays attempted during the course of the afternoon to get into communication with Jesse Laksy, who finally telephoned him at his Ambassador suite and declared that he would refuse to issue any statement regarding Mr. Reid. Mr. Lasky reminded Mr. Hays that last June he had detailed a physician and a nurse to attend Mr. Reid and watch him constantly, everywhere he went from the cellar to the bathroom. This was at the time of Mr. Reid's first breakdown... * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * December 19, 1922 NEW YORK TIMES Los Angeles--...In an interview in the Los Angeles Examiner, Mrs. Reid told just how near death her husband had been. "He thought he would die the other night," she said. "He was so brave about it, poor boy. For three nights he had expected to die. He isn't afraid to die, but he wants so much to live for Billy and Betty and me," referring to their son and adopted daughter. Mrs. Reid, in describing his condition just before the present breakdown, said that he wept and said: "How did I happen to let myself go? Why couldn't I have stopped long ago? I thought I was so strong; I thought I knew myself so well; I can't understand it." In an interview given to The Examiner at a Hollywood sanitarium, one of Reid's physicians said: "Mr. Reid has been near death for the last five or six days. His temperature has repeatedly reached 103 and his pulse 130. His heart action is irregular and weak. He has fainted on an average of three times daily and has lost seventy pounds. Laboratory finds at the present time indicate he is suffering either from a condition of complete exhaustion or from influenza. A re-infection of influenza is possible at any time and could cause his death. This is not anticipated by attending physicians, but must be and is being considered. "His present illness has no connection with overindulgences in alcohol or narcotics, although such indulgences have undoubtedly undermined his strength and system in months gone by." * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * December 24, 1922 Harry Carr LOS ANGELES TIMES ...Some months ago there was formed an organization called the "Federated Arts," which was made up of directors, camera men, scenario writers, electricians, etc. The stated purpose was to boycott any picture stars who were not conducting themselves in a manner to bring credit to the industry. Everybody understood that it was directed at Wally Reid and two or three other stars. A delegation went to Lasky and asked him to remove Wally Reid from the films--at least, until he cured himself of the dope habit. According to the story told by the survivors, Mr. Lasky promised to investigate, but did nothing. The truth is that Reid presented himself at "the front office" with heated denials, threats and demands for an investigation. He offered to allow physicians to examine him, etc. So the affair came to nothing. After that, an informal scheme was proposed by some of Wally's friends to forcibly kidnap him and take him to some hospital for treatment. This also fell through. The remnants of the Federated Arts have burned with the rebuff ever since... * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Wallace Reid's Struggle Against Drug Addiction December 18-21, 1922 William Parker LOS ANGELES HERALD Part 1 Mrs. Wallace Reid, wife of the famous film star, told today for the first time her struggle to save her husband from the grip of the downward pull. Mrs. Reid, too, in an exclusive interview granted The Evening Herald and the Cosmopolitan News Service revealed her husband's plan to make public his battle against the modern dragons, dope and booze--that he might save others. She took the interviewer back behind the scenes of her life and related how Reid's personality won her love; how she had put aside her own screen career to make his home life happy; how, when she saw him going down toward the depths she stood by him as a wife and mother in his battle for self preservation. "I am opening the book of Wallace Reid's life so that the public will read and know the truth," said Mrs. Reid. "My husband is battling as a man has never battled before. He has traversed the 'land of darkness and the shadow of death.' The horrors of the hell he has gone through would long ago have broken the heart of an ordinary man. But I know as surely as I know there is a God he will win out. "How do I know?" "This is my answer. I did not care for Wallace Reid when I first knew him. He proposed marriage to me. I replied curtly, 'I am not going to marry you or anyone.' "He went to my mother--he always called her affectionately, 'Mother.' He said to her, 'Mother, I'll make her care for me if it kills me. I've never been licked yet--and I'm not licked now.' "He said the same thing just recently, this time under not romantic but dramatic circumstances. He fully realized, poignantly, desperately that he had come to the turn in the road in his life. He reiterated his determination in the sanitarium where he now lies critically ill. "Some whisky was given him in medicine. Wan, weary and so weak he would faint from exertion when his pillow was turned under his head, he roused himself to protest. In almost a passion of range he demanded to know what was in the medicine. Someone replied, 'Scotch whisky." "'What are you trying to do?' he exclaimed. 'Do you want me to get started again?' "Then, nerving himself for a final effort, he clenched his teeth and said grimly, 'I'll beat it. I've never been licked yet--and I'm not licked now.' "No matter what the public hears, no matter what it reads I want it to keep before it the Wally Reid I know, a man of heroic determination, a man who one day suddenly recognized his foe, met it face to face, clenched his teeth and declared, 'We will fight it out now--till one of us is dead.' "In telling you the story I am relating what he had hoped to do. He knew of the rumors which had spread like wildfire to all parts of the country. It was his plan, as soon as he gained strength, to invite a representative of every Los Angeles newspaper to come to him and hear the true story, the truth of his slavery. "He recognized impersonally--as I do--that by reason of his prominence such a story from him would serve to bring forcibly before the people the dangers of the drug evil. "He felt that through such a story he would be able to prompt his thousands of screen 'fans' to use their vote and moral and financial influence in behalf of any campaign being waged against the traffic in drugs and liquor. "The premature publication of his condition forestalled his plan. Now it has fallen to me to tell the truth. And I want to tell it. I want to tell it more as a mother than as a wife. I want to tell it with all the compassion and tender affection for the one who has always been in my heart and thoughts, 'My boy.' "Let me go back first to a brighter day than this. Gray clouds have been hanging over the Hollywood hills the past week and they have seemed to me symbolic of the same gray clouds which have been hanging over our lives. But there was a brighter day, a day when love was young in the springtime of our lives. And there must be a bright day ahead for us in our life tomorrow. "The rise of Wally Reid from histrionic obscurity to the foremost place in film fame was associated with screen names which will come back to you when I mention them. "It was back in 1911 I first met Wally Reid. I was then working for the Universal Film Co. While the pictures were restricted to one reel, 'Dorothy Davenport' was a star. I am, as many of the fans know, a niece of the famous Fanny Davenport. "Wally Reid had come to the coast with the late Otis 'Daddy' Turner-- 'The Governor' he was called. Wally as assistant director, scenario writer and general utility man. "My director, Milton Fahrney, was ready to make a one-reel picture entitled 'His Son,' a western subject. We were without a leading man. Turner was not ready to start, and Wally, being on the company payroll at $40 a week, was assigned to us as leading man. At that time I was being paid $35 a week. "When Wally came to us and said he was to play the leading male role, my impression of him was that he was all hands and feet--and very much embarrassed. "My impression when the picture was completed was he was a very poor actor. When I came home I complained to mother because I had to play with, as I called him, 'this boy,' when I had been used to playing with such actors as Harold Lockwood, Henry Walthall, James Kirkwood and Arthur Johnson. "After 'His Son,' Wally went back to Turner and did several pictures with Marguerita Fischer, Ella Hall and others. "The members of our company dressed at what was then known as the 'Universal ranch,' now called the Lasky ranch. Wally did many Indian parts. He had previously played at the Vitagraph in 'Deer Slayer,' with Florence Turner, and 'The Indian Romeo,' in casts which included 'Larry' Trimble, Harry Morey and other people who are totally famous or forgotten. Those were the days when Norma Talmadge was an extra girl at the Vitagraph studio. "Wally got his start in pictures when he was employed by the Selig company as 'stunt' man. Tom Mix was then in charge of the horses for Selig. "As I was saying, the members of our company made up at the Universal ranch. Wally used to ride past my dressing room in his Indian regalia. Mother used to rave over his handsome appearance. It was my almost daily practice to slam the door when he would appear because I knew that he knew that he was good looking, and I was not going to let him think that I had succumbed to his good looks. "It sounds somewhat childish for me to relate it, but I was only 16 years of age then--and very proud that I was a film star. "Gradually, I don't know just how or why, we began going together. One night a week we went to a theater. Wally called this his 'Dorothy night.' It might appear that he had a girl for every night, but this was not true. "As we became better acquainted Wally and Eugene Pallette prevailed upon mother to take them as boarders. Phyllis Gordon, who was playing leads with the Selig company, also asked to come with us because her health was not the best and she wanted to sleep on our sleeping porch. "I had always wanted a pony. It had been the ambition of my life. When I came West mother bought three horses instead of a pony. Wally and 'Gene built a corral for the horses and the three of us rode daily to work--rode all day, working in pictures, and rode home again. "Gradually I must have fallen in love with Wally, although it was a long time before I would admit it even to myself. He was so sweet, so thoughtful one could not help liking him. "He proposed to me early in 1912 but at that time I did not want to marry anybody. I told him I cared for him but I did not love him. He had accepted a place offered him with the American Film company at Santa Barbara and wanted me to go along as his bride. He saw mother before he left. He said to her, 'I'll make her care for me. I've never been licked yet--and I'm not licked now.' "Wally directed the second company at Santa Barbara, having such players as Vivian Rich, George Fields, Ed Coxen and others. Betty Schade, now a well known screen actress, got her start in pictures under the direction of Wally. She had come to Santa Barbara with a traveling theatrical company and had never done any picture work. In Santa Barbara Wally lived with Alan Dwan and Alan's mother. Alan was directing the first company for the 'Flying A.' "Wally came to Los Angeles occasionally to see me. He wanted me to play leads and Santa Barbara, but I did not want to break up housekeeping and besides I was not particularly anxious to be with him. "We had a quarrel one day. It must have been trivial, for I don't recall what caused it. Afterward we did not correspond for a long time, fully six months. "In 1913 he came back to Los Angeles with Alan Dwan and went to the Universal company. Wally played leads, Pauline Bush the feminine leading roles and Marshall "Mickey" Neilan was the director with the company. "Now here is an odd thing. Wally had returned with the determination to make me propose to him. It was a little drama in real life. Wally would come to our house for a social call. The telephone would ring. 'Is Wally Reid there?' a voice would ask. Wally would go to the 'phone and say importantly, 'All right, I'll be right over.' I learned later he was having people call him up just to make me jealous. "Once he said to me, 'You are going to marry me this fall!' "'Oh,' I replied, 'I suppose I have nothing to say about it?' "'No, you haven't,' he said. 'Your mother and I have decided it.' "A picture in which I was working called for location at Pine Crest, a scenic spot in California. Wally went to the railroad station with our company. He picked up a magazine on the cover of which was a picture of a girl wearing a bridal veil. "'That's the way you are going to look this fall,' he declared. "I said nothing. A fatal sign with any woman. "At Pine Crest I began to develop symptoms of being in love, so mother has since told me. I would not dance when the others danced, and I spent much time alone, thinking, thinking. "Following my return to Los Angeles, Wally said one evening, 'You are going to marry me Saturday.' "This time I did not say I would not marry him. I was not through protesting, however. "'If it is to be at all it must be on the thirteenth,' I said. "Thirteen, I have always believed, is my lucky day, because of a series of three and thirteens in my life. I was born March 13, the third month of the year and the third day of the week. "So I became the wife of Wally Reid, Oct. 13, 1913. "We were married at 6:30 o'clock in the evening at the Church of the Holy Cross by the Rev. Baker P. Lee. The only persons present besides ourselves were Ed Brady, Phil Dunham, Ruth Roland, Isidore Bernstein, general manager for the Universal company, and my mother. "After the ceremony we went to the home of Mr. Bernstein in Morgan place. Warren Kerrigan and Charles Worthington and Warren's mother dropped in. "Mr. Bernstein proposed a toast to the newly married couple. "It was drunk with lemonade, for that, and water, was the only liquid Mr. Bernstein ever had in his home. "What a terribly place is Sinful Hollywood! "But there was a more tragic chapter yet to come." Part 2 Wallace Reid, the famous motion picture actor, contracted the morphine habit in New York city. Mrs. Dorothy Davenport Reid, wife of the actor, revealed this as a fact today in an extended and exclusive interview granted The Evening Herald and the Cosmopolitan News Service. Hitherto it had been the public belief, and a conviction which had spread nation-wide, that the handsome actor had become a narcotic addict in Hollywood. Each telling of the story had added to its exaggeration until there existed in the public mind an impression that Hollywood was nightly the scene of drug revelries and booze debauches, with Wally Reid a central figure. It was to correct these inflated statements that Mrs. Reid consented to make known to the public the details of her husband's struggle to overcome the drug habit. "It was not in Hollywood he learned the use of morphine to quiet his nerves. The first morphine in which he indulged to any extent was given him in New York," said Mrs. Reid today. "Wally had gone East to make a picture, 'Peter Ibbetson.' While in New York he became ill. An expensive cast of players had been employed to work in the film and he began to worry when it appeared that his illness was delaying production and adding to the expense. "Wally has had one virtue which his real friends know has been his besetting sin--his good nature and his willingness to work. Had Wally remained in bed until he recovered from his illness, I felt he would not today be a narcotic addict. "'Peter Ibbetson' has been classed by critics as perhaps one of the best acted pictures ever made in America. Fans everywhere have written and told Wally how excellent was his work. Here was an actor--a servant of his art--going through the most difficult role of his career in a physical condition which would have sent an ordinary man to the hospital. "It was his grim determination and the good nature which prompted him on. To nerve him for his daily and arduous task a New York physician gave him morphine. "There was laid the foundation for what the world now knows. "'Peter Ibbetson' was made a year ago last summer. When Wally returned from the East he was not the same Wally Reid I had known when he left Hollywood. He seemed to possess a dual nature. To me he had been always the affectionate suitor. Now there was a change. For no apparently accountable reason he would become irritable, morose, strange. "At first I was deeply puzzled. Before long rumors began to reach me. A wife, as every one knows, is ofttimes the last to hear the truth about her husband. I determined this should not be the case in the Wallace Reid family. "I went to Wally, 'Tell me,' I said to him. 'Is it true you are using drugs?' "He replied, 'Don't believe a word you hear. I am not.' "Yet I was not convinced. I knew something was wrong and I was resolved to get at the bottom of it. It must be kept in mind by the public that the use of any narcotic is responsible for strange actions by the victim. Your closest friend may be in the grip of the insidious habit and all unknown to you. Thus I do not think Wally really meant to lie to me. I think it was more of an effort on his part to deny to himself the possibility of his ever allowing the drug to gain a definite foothold. "I did not allow the matter to rest with his denial. As time wore on I asked him again. Still he denied the truth. "All of his life Wally has been intensely restless. I don't believe he has ever had what would be termed a good night's rest. In reading he is constantly crossing one leg over the other and shifting about in his chair. "This restless condition became accentuated. The realization must have dawned on him that he had fallen into the pit. He began to drink. He had never been a steady drinker, his drinking being confined to social occasions. "Now, however, he seemed suddenly to have an appetite for whisky. What was really going on in his consciousness, no doubt, was the awakening to his danger from the drug. Eventually he confessed to me he was using morphine. "Toward the last, just before he left, the studio to recuperate, it would take only a few drinks to affect him. "His breakdown came after he had reported back to the studio ready for work. A condition developed which baffled and is still puzzling doctors. It first manifested itself as an intestinal disturbance. When this became aggravated he consulted a physician. He was ordered to a hospital. Other physicians were called in. "Every possible test which the doctors knew was given him. Needles half a dozen inches long were driven into his spine. The pain he endured was terrible. The Wasserman test was administered. Not a single test showed a positive result. "In the midst of all this, influenza set in. His average weight: 200 pounds, Wally's weight now is about 122 pounds." Part 3 Mrs. Wallace Reid brands as gross exaggeration the reports which emanated in Eastern Cities that her famous cinema actor-husband has had any direct connection with a drug ring. It was the nation-wide dissemination of this rumor which led to the admission by Mrs. Reid that her husband had contracted the drug habit. There appeared in correspondence seized in a drug raid in New York city the initials "W. R." "There are to my knowledge," said Mrs. Reid in a continuation of the exclusive interview granted The Evening Herald and the Cosmopolitan New Service, "two other Wallace Reids of prominence in the East. One is, I understand, a New York stock broker. the other lives in Chicago. Mail for the Chicago Wallace Reid has reached my husband, and his mail has been mixed at times with the Chicago Wallace Reid. "Understand, of course, that I do not mean to intimate that either of these Wallace Reids might have been the 'W. R.' referred to in the correspondence found in New York. "I am stating this merely to indicate how, when a man is on the defensive, he is made the target for unjustified attack where there might be a hundred other 'W. R.'s in the country. "My husband, as I have stated to you, contracted the morphine habit in New York city. It was given to him by a physician so he could continue work in the film production of 'Peter Ibbetson.' "When Wally returned to Hollywood I noted a change in his whole manner of life. While previously he had been of a jovial, affectionate nature, now he began to give way to spells of apparent despondency. A sense of irritability developed, a phase of character which was foreign to the real Wally Reid. It must have been that these were the times when he felt the craving for the drug and was trying to ignore its insistent demands. "While he was very secretive about the habit--declining for a long time even to admit it to me--I learned that his supply of morphine was coming from New York by mail. "On one occasion a supply was brought to him in Hollywood by a person who came from New York. I will not say whether it was a man or woman, or one in the theatrical profession. I don't feel that I should do anything to involve others in what is already a deplorable and unfortunate situation. "I am being criticized severely by some of our acquaintances for having talked so much, but I feel that if the public knows the truth it will not condemn Wally any more than I have condemned him. "His is not an individual case symptomatic of a community. The battle Wally is making is the battle that thousands--I might say a million--of men and women are making. My heart goes out to them in sympathy. I know the horrors of the hell they must be suffering because I saw this dread enemy attack my husband. "If then through telling the truth I can do my part to arouse public sentiment against this nefarious traffic I am willing to suffer criticism. I look upon this whole affair as impersonal rather than personal. Friends, of course, insist on personalizing the misfortunes which sometimes enter our lives, overlooking in their kindness and sympathy the moral lesson involved. "I want to go back several years in the history of picture making and explain an incident. It proves how easily one can turn to narcotics in moments of pain--and the tragic aftermath. "Wally was playing the leading role in 'The Valley of the Giants,' an adaptation of the novel by Peter B. Kyne. The company was working in the logging district of northern California. Grace Darmond was cast as the ingenue. "A scene in the script called for Wally and Miss Darmond to ride down an incline in a logging car. While this scene was being taken an accident occurred. "An iron block swung toward Wally and Miss Darmond. It appeared inevitable that Miss Darmond would be injured. Seeing this, Wally threw himself directly in front of her. The iron block struck him on the head. "Wally was painfully injured. To ease his pain morphine was prescribed by physicians. He was unable to sleep at night. On these occasions other sleep-producing potions of an apparently harmless nature were given to him. "I know he did not at that time become addicted to the use of morphine, for I was with him hours and days at a time afterward and I would have known had he himself used a hypodermic needle to inject the drug. "The pain he suffered in his head gave him almost continuous trouble. We had X-ray photographs made of his skull, hoping that if there was a fracture it could be located and set. The X-ray pictures indicated nothing wrong. "All of this time he was working at the studio, unmindful of his suffering. Gradually his physical condition began to be affected by the injury. He planned to take a vacation and rest. His has been, as I have said, a too close application to work. "When a vacation was granted him between pictures he went to a dentist to have work done, postponing till a later date the relaxation he promised himself. "The dental work accentuated his physical suffering. Work was started on the picture production of [......] fitted into Wally's mouth on the raw swollen gums. He worked this way a week while the company was in San Diego making scenes. "When the dentist saw the condition of his mouth he could not understand how Wally had been able to do any work. The pain, the dentist said, was even greater than that which comes with an aggravated case of appendicitis. "It was only a few months ago when my mother learned Wally was using a drug. She wanted to have him kidnapped and put in a sanitarium to be cured. "Wally was almost heart-broken when mother suggested this to him. "'My God, mother, don't do that. I've never been licked yet--and I'm not licked now. I'll fight this thing out myself.' "The first reports of Wally being a drug addict followed the arrest of a young man who had been a friend of our chauffeur. The details of that case, and how it apparently involved Wally have never been published. I want to tell the incident so that the whole truth will be known." Part 4 "My first 'close up' view of the activity of drug peddlers was about two years ago, when there occurred an incident which was the means of starting unjustifiable rumors about my husband," said Mrs. Wallace Reid, wife of the famous picture star, in continuing her exclusive recital to the Cosmopolitan News Service of the events which culminated in her public statement that her actor-husband was a narcotic addict. "For some time I had seen a young man coming to our home or Morgan place, but paid no attention as he appeared to be a chum of our chauffeur. "Since the unfortunate incident occurred I have heard it said that officers reported they had trailed this young man to our home, and that he was supplying Wally with drugs. This was when Wally was not--to my knowledge--using anything more than harmless sleep-producing remedies in order to rest at night. "One day our chauffeur came to Wally and said this young friend of his had a number of Parisian magazines which he thought Wally might want to buy. Wally is, as his friends know, a collector of books. "We told the chauffeur to have the young man bring the magazines so we could look them over. "He came the next day. Wally and I spread the magazines out on the table. Then, as Wally picked up one copy, a number of tinfoil packages fell to the floor. "When the young man became evasive Wally demanded what the packages contained. "'Morphine' was the reply. "'It doesn't interest me,' declared Wally, and he swept the packages away from him. "'The young man told us he found the packages of the drug hidden behind the moulding of a new apartment into which he had just moved. "'But why did you bring it here?' asked Wally. "'I didn't know the packages were in the magazines,' he replied. 'I'm desperate for money; I am not working and my wife is going to have a baby.' "Here was where, once more, Wally's sympathy got him into an embarrassing predicament. "'If you will come to the studio in the morning I will see if I can get a job for you,' said Wally. "My surprise came the next day. "When the young man appeared at the studio he was placed under arrest by federal officers. The report gained circulation that this young man was arrested while trying to smuggle to Wally morphine concealed in rare books. Further, it was rumored that the arrest had been brought about at my instigation. "The young man was placed in jail. Wally talked with me about it and wanted, out of sympathy, to put up the bail money necessary, to free him from jail so he could return to his wife. Friends, however, persuaded him not to as it might place him an a guilty light. "The young man is now employed in a Los Angeles printing house. He was, I understand, a drug addict but was cured or is taking a cure." * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * December 31, 1922 through January 5, 1923 Dorothy Davenport Reid SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER Wife Pens Dramatic Story of Wallace Reid's Drug Ruin Part One Dope Curse Traced to Car Injury in 1919 This is to be the intimate, personal story of a brave man's tremendous, tragic, triumphant fight against the greatest curse of humanity--dope! It is to be, I hope, at once a vindication and a warning. It is to be the story of Wally Reid, whom everyone loves and none more than I, his wife. I say it is a personal story simply because it is, just that. It is not a story of the laughable "horrible Hollywood" which some persons believe exists out here in the green hills of California. It is not a story of the "debased" motion picture industry which some so-called reformers are doubtless well paid, wrongfully to portray. The story of Wally Reid is the story of a great personal tragedy--the story of a personal, isolated case. And I may say with the utmost truth that I know of no parallel in Hollywood, nor in all the picture industry. I defy any person to say and prove that pictures, or that Hollywood, caused Wally Reid to fall victim to the curse of drugs. It simply is not true. Any such assertion is silly. I enter into the narration of Wally's story, then, with three objectives in view: First, I would like the world, through the great Hearst newspapers, to know the true, complete, unblemished, hitherto unpublished story of Wally's monumental battle against the narcotic demon. I will try to picture Wally as he was before the tentacles of the dragon gripped him; as he was, as he is, and as I believe he will be--a man all through. Knowing all, I hope you who read will judge whether he should be pitied or censured, ruthlessly crushed or manfully helped, knocked down or aided in his struggle to come back. I have no fear of the verdict. Second, I hope that some of you will profit by the lesson. I shall not attempt to write morals into this story; that would be foolish and probably futile. But should Wally's story keep one boy from the clutches of drugs, the path of ruin, my work will have been worth the while. Third, I wish you would believe me when I say from my heart that Wally's case can by no stretch of the imagination or biased judgment be construed as typical of Hollywood, of the motion picture colony or of the motion picture industry. There has been so much printed about the sins of horrible Hollywood and it is really so funny to us who know the truth. Wally is big enough, man enough, to shoulder his own burden and to rise from his own falls. I ask only a minimum of belief, a maximum of reason. Also may I ask understanding for my reasons in telling the truth about Wally's condition to the public via the press? It has come to me from various sources that I, his wife, "should have been the last one to admit conditions." That is one way to look at it, but remember that, as I write this, my boy is lying at death's door and I couldn't see him go with the horrible clouds of rumor, innuendo and gossip hanging over his name, for they were so far from the truth and made of him a person deserving of scorn and suspicion instead of, as I know he deserves, only praise and sympathy. I have only one regret. That is that I and not Wally must reveal these secrets. If Wally were able, I know in my heart that he would be the first to tell the truth that people might know, and knowing, judge. I write of this nervously, within sound of the private telephone that leads to the sanitarium where Wally is still fighting for his life. Each shrill peal on that telephone may be a summons to his death-bed. My babies play in the next room--Billy, my own, and Betty, the youngster we took into our home some months ago. Their voices come through the door like a muted symphony of happiness--yet I wait, tense, for that dreaded summons on the phone. No man, however learned, is able to say that Wally will live. We may only hope and trust and pray. There is a skeleton in every family closet. Ours began to take form in the spring of 1919, when a freight train caboose jumped the track and hurtled down a fifteen-foot embankment in the north of California. Let's go back for a moment and peep into that car. There they are, in the middle of the smelly old caboose, sitting side by side on the long leather-padded seat to the right. Wally is in the center, strumming his guitar and singing lustily. On one side is Speed Hanson with his inescapable banjo. On the other is Grace Darmond, in a fluffy dress. They are going into the country of the big trees for location for "The Valley of the Giants," and the old caboose groans and jerks and sways along over the narrow-gauge mountain railway. The signal flags rattle in their tin container. The overalled leg of a switchman dangles from the lookout tower just inside the open, hanging door. That is the atmosphere, the real life set. All of a sudden the caboose swayed perilously. The switchman leaned from the tower. The car bumped over the ties of a little trestle and then, with a sickening lurch, careened and toppled into space. It was only a short fall, as I have said, but the piercing screams of Miss Darmond reached to the tops of the solemn old pine trees along the right-of-way. Wally crawled out of the door, dragging Miss Darmond, whose fluffy dress was drenched with blood. When he reached the open, he collapsed, but his wonderful stamina came to his aid. With the back of his skull scraped from the blow of a falling railroad frog and his left arm sliced to the bone by glass, he still was strong enough to lurch among the other members of the party, attending to their wounds. Twelve hours later they reached a town and a doctor and then, for the first time, Wally's wounds were dressed. Against the advice of the physicians he went to work next day and the picture was made on schedule. But from that hour Wallace Reid was never the same. I do not know why; it is an intangible thing I will try to explain as we go along. When he came back to Hollywood, in six or seven weeks, he apparently had fully recovered. His eyes were bright and his health above normal. He had gained weight. It was months before I realized that the change in his disposition dated from that wreck in the lonely mountain wilderness. How, in the light of later events and developments, I now can see, plainly; can understand how it began and appreciate how he fell prey to the soothing, deadly sweet promises of drugs. There was at that time no screen star more widely loved and admired than Wally. There was no screen home more happy than ours. There was in all Hollywood no more perfect husband than Wally. He was--and he is--a clean, honorable gentleman. You have seen him on the screen--the tall, straight form and the frank, boyish open face of him. The camera does not lie. Wally, in his best role as a lover, did not exaggerate the traits he displayed in his home with his family. So I was slow to realize the terrible change that came over him as the weeks merged into months and a year crept perilously near. It was an insidious change, without definite beginning. At first it was nervousness. He could not sit still. He fidgeted. He could not read without rocking so violently that I momentarily expected his chair to tip over. He lost his healthy, normal appetite. The happy ring went out of his voice and a pitiful querulous wail replaced it. He was for all the world like a spoiled child. Nothing suited him. I could not understand it. Insomnia came next--and then the family doctor. I remember only too clearly the night I watched the doctor give Wally his first "shot" to quiet his nerves and its astonishing effect. The old doctor had been summoned from his bed and for half an hour had tried to reason Wally into sleepiness. The argument failed. I lay in bed and watched with a fascinated horror as the doctor opened his little black bag and took out a smaller case. The reading light at the head of Wally's bed glinted from the steel and glass tubes which lay in the little case in orderly rows. Silently, with a slight frown, the doctor prepared the "shot." Part Two Small 'Parties' Finally Lead to Roman Bacchanal Yesterday I told you of Wally's introduction to narcotic drugs and of the insomnia which made their use apparently necessary. Please understand that in this connection I have not the slightest criticism for the physician. He did what he believed to be right, and Wally's use of drugs at that time had nothing to do with his subsequent addiction. His insomnia was a pitiable thing, all the more distressing to the poor boy because I could sleep so soundly. My very sleeping seemed to irritate him. Some of our few quarrels had that ridiculous cause. He seemed to feel he was abused because I could sleep and he could not. I knew then and I know now that his irritation was merely from the nervous condition induced by his insomnia. Night after night he sat in bed after I had gone to sleep, reading, reading and smoking incessantly. Sometimes he dozed in the hours before dawn, but often the rising sun crept into the bedroom windows and found him wide awake, the reading lamp still burning at the head of his bed, a book still in his nervous hands. Occasionally he would awaken me in the small hours of the night as he stamped about the room getting into his clothes. "Where are you going at this time of night?" I would ask and he would mutter, "Any place; any old place; out to get some air." A little later the lights of his car would flash across the windows and I would hear the roar of the motor as he raced down the drive into the night. Sometimes he drove furiously for hours. On other occasions he would get into his shooting clothes long before daylight, telephone some friend out of bed, take his gun and drive to the ranch to shoot rabbits at dawn. He would return fresh, apparently rested, just in time to bathe, change clothes and rush off to the studio for work. For he was working all of this time, reporting for duty between 9 and 10 o'clock. During his sleepless nights he complained of lumps which formed at the base of his skull, on the spot of the wound from the railroad wreck. His right leg also troubled him and sometimes would be numb all night. It had been injured years earlier while he was making a picture. As I look back I can trace this insomnia directly to these accidents. Unpleasant thoughts and fears crowded his mind. Sometimes he shrank from some horrible danger he never confided to me. But times without number he has awakened me and sitting on the edge of my bed, has clasped my hand nervously and whispered: "Don't leave me alone, mamma. I feel so strange. I don't want to be left alone." He was just a child and I soothed him as I would my baby. Sometimes he pattered downstairs and I would hear him in the dining-room mixing drinks. He found that very often drinking enabled him to sleep and he chose whisky as the lessor evil. But Wally wasn't drinking to excess. Prohibition was still new and everyone, I suppose, was drinking to some extent. Wally usually had one or two cocktails before dinner and that was all. Once in a while he would go to a "party" at the home of mutual friends. Even during the holidays he drank little. That was partly, I suppose, because we had entertained the same set of friends at Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's for a number of seasons--people who were living in apartments or hotels and did not maintain homes. There were about a half dozen. No, Wally did not drink heavily until the following July, when I took Billy and went away for a vacation, but before we get to that-- In the spring of 1920 we decided to build, and for three months we studied plans, rejecting some and adding to others. In June ground was broken for our new home. We were highly elated. It was to be on a hill in Hollywood, overlooking all the great sweep of a city--a marvelous site and a splendid home. Late in June it became very warm and the first of July I took the youngsters and went to the mountains for a month, leaving Wally at work. Previously he had renewed a boyhood friendship with a San Francisco man, who had dropped whatever work he had and came to Hollywood to be with us. Wally had no business manager then, and this old friend naturally took over the reins, paying Wally's bills and generally attending to his finances. After I went away Wally finished "The Charm School" and promptly, with the aid of this old friend, decided to celebrate. He did. There were parties at the house two or three times a week. My mother gave a party for the boys one night, and there were others. They were all comparatively harmless but after I came home Wally told me about them in a rather shame- faced sort of way. He was always sorry after he had been drinking too much. And I want to say right here that Wally had no secrets from me until he began the use of narcotics. After that I know he did not tell me the truth on many occasions--but I knew, too, that it wasn't my boy that lied. It was the drug that ruled him. Afterward, when it all came out, he wept because this was true. I came back to find things pretty well muddled up. The boyhood friend had tried to prevent my return by intercepting messages and telephone calls and by various means. Shortly after I returned he disappeared, leaving Wally's affairs in a tangled condition. I tried to find him, but he had gone. He was one of the "fair weather" friends who bob up sometimes, but now he is only an incident, an unpleasant memory. I have never learned whether the chauffeur invited all his friends, or whether it was the gardener. But they came. I have never on any motion picture lot, seen so strange an assembly of humanity as gathered in our drawing room and overflowed into our kitchen that night. It was the most terrible evening in my recollection. I often wondered whether I would live to see another day. Guests began arriving about 8 or 9 o'clock. They were our friends, the people we knew. Wally's jazz band, in which he alternated with the saxophone and violin, was in full swing. There were three other boys and one girl in the organization. And, of course, there was liquor. What Christmas-time housewarming would be complete without it? Later in the evening, guests began to come from all directions at once--people neither Wally nor I had invited. They had been to other Yuletide affairs, and most of them were already under the influence of liquor. Several young men became hostile and one or two girls from somewhere or other were ludicrous. One of the strangers barely entered the house when he insulted a young man and the two of the prepared to do mortal combat in our reception hall. I was terribly embarrassed, because the wife of the young man was talking with me at the time. But to save the furniture, I was forced to ask the uninvited guest to leave the house. The young wife, who had not been drinking, was more embarrassed than I, but she whispered to me that she understood. I have chronicled these incidents in the evening in order to make clear the somewhat amazing conduct of Wally for which I shall not attempt to apologize. Part Three Drug Demon's Debut in Wallace Reid Home Described Yesterday I told you some of the incidents of our astonishing house warming. You must realize that all the evening Wally's jazz band had been tooting away in one corner of the drawing room with Wally, very much in earnest about his music, as he is about everything he undertakes, busily directing the repertoire. I had been busy with the guests. It must have been 1 or 2 o'clock in the morning when I felt a touch on my arm and found Wally, hair rumpled and all out of breath from his saxophone calisthenics, standing at my elbow. "Do you think everybody's having a good time?" he whispered anxiously. He seemed very much concerned about it. I assured him I thought the party was a howling success. "Good," he said mysteriously, and dashed back to his jazz band. And at 3 o'clock in the morning, when the last of the guests had gone, I learned that Wally had taken just two drinks all evening--two drinks. With a house full of liquor! And that is the Wally Reid the scandal-mongers now are berating, the Wally Reid whose reputation is being so sadly shattered by persons anxious to "cast the first stone." When we went into the kitchen to hunt some cold turkey about 4 o'clock, his arm was around my shoulders and he had to be assured, over and over again like a child, that the party had been successful, that everyone had gone away happy. My evening was completed at 4:30 when one young man came wandering back to demand a turkey sandwich. He had peevishly refused to come to the table when dinner was served and said he was "nearly starved." That was the beginning of what I shall call the convivial evenings at our new home. They were always spent in the billiard room. They began with the five or six old friends who were our regular guests. They would drop in during the early evening and play billiards until midnight, with occasional drinks. There would be music. As time went by, more and more friends began to add themselves to our evenings at home. Some of them were barely acquaintances. They would come romping into the house on the way to the beaches, or on the way home, and would proceed to make themselves very much at home until early in the evening. Wally's liquor supply diminished very rapidly during this period. The strangers among our guests sometimes located the base of supplies and walked out of the house with whole quarts in their pockets. In effect, our home became a wayside inn during these months, with no cover charge and everything free. Wally would not stop them; he was "hail fellow well met" with them all. One night in April, at the very coldest part of the year, an unusually boisterous crowd came in late one night and demanded that Wally go swimming with them at once. He did. They all found bathing suits and splashed into our ice-cooled pool. At least it must have been ice-cold. They came out blue with cold--but the visitors were cold sober. That was one of the few nights during all these months that Wally slept soundly. And all this time he was working, taxing his strength day by day in the studio or on location, playing with his guests until all hours of the night. I wish that you could understand that his heart wasn't really in any of this, that he really didn't get any "kick" out of it. He simply had the open, generous heart of a child. He would offend no one. So when those friends and acquaintances dropped in, he would not drive them away. Hospitality was Wally's watchword, and people abused it. This does not, by any means, apply to his real friends, who have proved to be many in these hours of trial. It applies only to those few who sought to find real entertainment free, in our home and the homes of others; for, after all, Hollywood's night life is so insipid, so tame compared with the night life of New York. Why do they take such fiendish delight in censuring dear, sleepy old Hollywood? Why not pick out Broadway or Chicago's loop? And now I am about to blast another of the scandal-mongers' sweetest bits of gossip. They will remember when a young man was arrested with narcotics in his possession and explained he was "going to see Wally Reid." The explanation was true but the innuendo was false. Gossips immediately said the young man was taking the drugs to Wally to "make a delivery," as the saying goes. That was not true. Wally was not then addicted to the use of drugs. And so for the first time I am about to reveal this, our first meeting with a confirmed drug addict, and the mysterious circumstances which surrounded it. Wally was fond of French magazines, and that was the excuse for the meeting. Our chauffeur knew this young man and knew he had a large collection of such magazines. One night he brought the boy to the house and Wally bought about $20 worth. He started to look through the bundle and several little paper-wrapped packages fell out--bindles, I think they are called by dope peddlers. "What's the idea?" Wally demanded. The boy seemed greatly surprised. He professed innocence. But Wally called him out of the room and they talked privately for quite a while. When Wally returned he explained: "He told me a wild story about finding the drugs behind the moulding of the bathroom at his home and said he brought them here believing that I would buy them. He had heard stories about drug addicts among the picture people. He's coming to the studio tomorrow and I'm going to try to get him a job." So Wally sent the young man away and arranged to meet him at the studio next morning, promising him work in the pictures. The boy was arrested next day "going to see Wally Reid." We investigated the young man and found his wife was expecting a youngster. They were in financial straits. I helped the wife with the baby things. Wally was anxious to visit the young man at the jail, but his friends advised him against it. So the gossips immediately decided the boy's story was true, and that Wally was afraid to face him, which was absolutely false. Part Four Wally Reid's Confirmed Use of Drugs Revealed I do not intend to give the young man's name, because I believe he is trying to go straight. All the time he was in prison he wrote constantly to Wally, and in one of his letters I remember a line I think was marvelous. He wrote: "I have ceased to play first hypodermic in the narcotic orchestra." When he was released from prison the boy was warned to stay away from Wally Reid. But he had a wonderfully ingenious mind, and was a spectacular writer. He continued to write voluminous letters to Wally. Almost every night, long after we had gone to bed, he would steal up to the front door and leave a package in the mail box, after which he would run madly down the hill. The packages contained his brilliant letters. I have often wondered whether critics saw those midnight visits and jumped to the conclusion the boy was peddling drugs to Wally. It is a queer coincidence that, while all the world frowns on "horrible Hollywood" and whispers of its "orgies," Wally Reid had to go all the way to New York to become a drug addict. In the last day of May or the first of June 1921, he was ordered to New York to make "Forever," the film version of "Peter Ibbetson." It was the most serious vehicle he had attempted, and he was tremendously, earnestly enthusiastic as he went away. I wanted to accompany him, and now I wish I had. But I feared the hot weather would be hard on Billy, our boy, and I couldn't bear to leave him behind. So Wally went alone. To understand fully the condition of mind which made Wally a prey to drugs you must realize that he was a chemist of considerable experience, and that he always had felt the greatest confidence in his own strength, mental, moral and physical. When he went to New York in the summer of 1921, his health was none too good. He found an apartment downtown and prepared to live quietly and work earnestly during the filming of "Forever." His friends, it seems, had other plans, and, as usual, his friends won. All sorts of people began dropping into his apartment--men and women from the studios, from the newspapers and from everywhere. It must have been a perpetual open house. Wally wasn't overjoyed at this state of affairs, but he was too thorough a gentleman to show his annoyance. And so elaborate parties were given in Wally's apartment without his consent. Friends who came back from the East told me they had seen Wally slip out of the house at the height of the festivities and remain away until his "guests" had gone. His rest during this time was necessarily fitful. His insomnia persisted. And, to add to his troubles, the change in climate brought on a severe cold, during which, for more than a week, his temperature hovered around 103. He was very ill. Foolishly, of course, but because he was very loyal, he insisted upon working steadily. During this severe cold he was attended by a New York physician whose name I do not know, but who kept Wally on his feet by administering drugs. I imagine that Wally, believing his will power stronger than the insidious ravages of the drugs, bought morphine and administered it to himself. Please understand Wally did not desire a "kick." He was not maliciously drugging himself. He used drugs, then and always, simply to keep on his feet and to be able to go about his work. Great physicians have done the same thing. I do not understand the physical manipulations which make the human body immune, after a period, against the first small injections of morphine. But I do know that if the desired false strength is to persist, the "shots" must be increased steadily in size. The doctors call in "tolerance." And that is the terrible thing that Wally began to fight in those weeks in New York. He came home the last of July and appeared in the best of trim. It must have been two weeks or more before I suspected he was using drugs. Wild stories came to me--stories which then were going the rounds of Hollywood. People would ask me: "Are you sure Wally isn't using drugs?" Of course I denied it. I had no suspicion at that time. I was indignant at the very thought. And then came the flood of queerly-worded telegrams. Some of them accidentally fell into my hands. They were usually from New York and were couched in mysterious terms. Most of them contained the word "shipping." The senders were always "shipping" something. One day I realized that the shipments were drugs. "Wally are you using drugs?" I have never seen emotions flash so swiftly over a man's distorted face. Trapped fear, doubt, dumb questioning and sorrow--all were written there. He flew into a childish tantrum of rage. He paced the floor, denying his addiction, firing questions at me, accusing me of all sorts of things. "You don't love me any more," he cried. After a while he quieted. But I had seen the guilt written in his eyes. I tried to be tender, considerate with him after that. The argument for me was closed. I never mentioned drugs again until that other night, months later, when he confessed to me and begged for help in fighting back. It all came out then. "I didn't want you to know, mamma," he said. "I thought I was big enough to fight my own battle and win. I thought I could come back alone, and you would never have to know." But that is getting ahead of my story. I have tried to picture the happy, carefree, boyish Wally Reid of the old days. Now, in the clutches of drugs, he was a complete metamorphosis of his former self. He was undergoing agonies of mental suffering. He grew sullen, dogged, miserable, unhappy. His outlook on life was distorted. He spoke spitefully of his friends, accusing them of caring for him "only for what they could get out of him." He appeared to doubt my love. His opinions were very biased. He suspected everybody of ulterior motives. It was a nightmare of distrust. And all this time he continued to work. Yet, during the worst of this terrible time, he harped to his friends and acquaintances on the drug evil. "Keep off the stuff!" I have heard him say it time and again. He had never admitted he, himself, had been conquered, or that he was using drugs. Yet, he seemed to have a horror that others might fall into the clutches. He preached long sermons to Bill, our boy--tender, whimsical sermons I am sure the youngster didn't understand. He seemed his old personality only when he was with Bill. Time after time I have heard him say: "Remember this, Bill: Every time daddy does something he shouldn't do, he must pay for it. Remember son." And I am quite sure the boy didn't have the slightest idea what it was all about. He seldom left the house during this time. He lost interest in his friends. That whole eighteen months, in fact, is only a blur in my memory, as if a fuzzy curtain had been drawn before my mind. Yet I remember the night he confessed and asked for help. It had been such a terrible day; he had been so unreasonable. As usual he was awake far into the night. I was aroused by the soft touch of his hand on my hair. He was sitting on the edge of my bed, beside himself with grief. His eyes were terrible. I can't remember what he said, all of what he said. I don't want to remember. I want to forget all that, if I can, and live for the future he and I sketched that night--the future we would have when he was well again. We talked until morning and I tried to soothe him, to drive his fears away. Late in the morning he slept. I can't begin to tell you the happiness I felt that day. It was like a re-awakening. I felt that our old confidence, our old mutual affection, had been restored. The servants must have marveled at my soaring spirits. I believed at that time, knowing very little, that the drug habit could be conquered by the power of the will. I knew that Wally was mentally strong, and I knew that I could infuse into him some of my own strength. It always has been like that with us; he has relied upon me and I upon him. It has been a mutual bond, greater than I dare trust myself to write. I didn't know then, as I know now, that the drug evil grips at the body of a man as well as at his mind and soul. I didn't know that drugs had steel fingers to wrench and torture the muscles of the body. Had I known, perhaps my spirits would have been dampened that morning of our rebeginning. I have seen it all in the last few months--Wally's brave, uphill fight against the most damnable scourge of humanity. And if you will bear with me just a little longer, I will tell you of the agonies he suffered in his battle for normalcy, of the temptations which came to him, of the time he collapsed on the drawing room floor and of how, in the last days before this awful illness came upon him, he was carried up and down the steps of our home like a little child. Part Five Overpowering Mastery of Drug Demon Described During the winter of 1921 and the spring just past, Wally underwent tortures surpassing imagination! Day by day, fighting, fighting, holding himself in check, he cut down the use of the drug, and day by day his physical agonies increased. To me, Wally's fight was the gamest thing in the world, the greatest battle I have ever known. I have watched him grit his teeth at the tortures which wrenched his body and then, trying to smile, say: "We're going to lick this thing, mamma. We'll win. I'm going to get off liquor and everything." It was pitiful, yes tragic. Yet, more than that, it was heroic, magnificent. It was the heart-rending effort of a great, fine, brave boy against an intangible horror that clutched him like an octopus, catching its tentacles here, there, everywhere. His legs ached intolerably and doctors have told me it was a certain symptom of abstinence from drugs. At the studio they always believed that his illnesses were not caused by narcotics, and have had such confidence in him they have paid him thousands of dollars in half-salary regularly ever since he has been unable to work. To clear up all suspicion regarding Wally's condition, a physician was assigned to stay with him night and day, and to show you how well Wally at that time had won his fight, I give you the following from the physician's report which is dated March 24, 1922: "In accordance with plans made March 16, 1922, I arrived at the home of Mr. Wallace Reid Friday morning, March 17th. From noon of that day until the present time, I have been constantly with him, and can state without reservation that Mr. Reid is not a drug addict. I have slept with him, eaten with him, been with him on the golf course and everywhere else he has been throughout the twenty-four hours of these days; and at no time has there been any indication of the use or need of any habit-forming drugs. "Mr. Reid was examined by myself for morphine, dionin, codeine, heroin and peronin by the Kober test and for morphine by the Huesmann test, and found negative in both cases. "Once while Mr. Reid was at his bath I carefully inspected his entire body, finding only a few puncture marks from injections of vaccine which had been prescribed by the family physician. "From my knowledge and observation of addicts, I can state that Mr. Reid has none of the characteristics of one, and I believe that the reports of certain acts, said to have been committed by him, have been grossly exaggerated." So April came and found him winning his fight, day by day, tiny victory by tiny victory. Then, all at once, his teeth began to ache intolerably. An X-ray was taken and an operation on his jaw found necessary. He was in the middle of a picture. For three days he lived in a dentist chair while they sliced at his mouth. Eating was a horror to him, almost impossible. He came back from the dentist's on the last day so weak he could hardly walk. Yet the next day he resumed work. There was no necessity for it, I suppose. The studio always has been patient with him, and very kind. He was simply so loyal he would work if he could walk. And he did. He went to San Diego on location and about that time I went into vaudeville for a few months. At that time he had conquered the habit. He was taking nothing at all. He was tortured day and night by the physical agonies of abstinence, but he was winning his fight. The agony of the dental operation must have been responsible for his second lapse. At any rate, he met me at the station when I came home from the road in July, and as we were driven home he confessed to me that again he was taking drugs, and again pledged himself to break away. I knew he would conquer. I broke a contract which would have taken me to other cities, and for several weeks played California towns, from which I could motor home to be with him at night. He was heart-broken that he had "slipped back." It was all to be done over again. He plunged into this second fight with the same brave earnestness, and day by day fought himself clear. But it was such a terrible price he paid for his freedom! I came home one night to find the servants fluttering all over the place and the yellow boy who opened the door was almost white. "Mistah Reid velly slick man, velly slick," he chattered. I found Wally unconscious on his bed. One of the boys was working over him. He had fainted on the drawing room floor, and the servants, fearing he was dead, had carried him laboriously upstairs to bed. When he recovered he had no recollection of the events of the early evening and as he lay helpless there he grinned gamely at me and said, "We're winning, mamma; we're winning. We'll lick it yet." Wally always had wanted a baby girl. Playing in Long Beach one night, a tiny curly-haired youngster strayed into my dressing room. Her clothes were a sight. Her hands were black with the grime of the theater alley, her playground. But her face, beneath her tightly curled hair, was sweet and wistful. I found the old grandfather who cared for her and the next night I took her home--Betty, who is now our own. I wish you could have seen Wally's face that night. I carried Betty, still in her dirty clothes, out of the car and into the house. Some of our friends were there, but Wally forgot them. For an hour he sat on the floor with the youngster, and then, oblivious of his guests, took her upstairs and tucked her into beg. He refused to let the maid touch her. His face was working with emotion when he came back, but he said very little. I think that tiny Betty, with her curly hair and her dimpled cheeks, has played her great big part in Wally's come-back. The rest of the story may be briefly told. By the first of September Wally was again abstaining from drugs. It wasn't easy, as I have tried to make you see. It was a terrible struggle against physical agony. Then in September his "week of darkness" came. For several days he had worked "under the lights" as the studios say. It had been inside work, and he had gone through his paces hour after hour with the giant Kleigs smashing their dead-white radiance into his eyes. One morning I heard him pattering around the bedroom and into the dressing room. Suddenly, he gasped--a quick, horrible indrawing of the breath. His voice came in a childish wail: "Mamma, mamma! Come here. Where is the door?" In the space of a heartbeat, he had gone blind. The studios call it "Kleig eyes." It is a blackness which follows over-exposure to the glare of the Kleigs. I helped him back into bed that morning, and later he was dressed. He was totally helpless. Oculists could not help him. For one week he was in the dark, seeing nothing, groping his way about the house, his eyes shielded by smoked glasses. Drawn into that terrible blankness, Wally was alone with his thoughts. The agony of his abstinence from drugs abated not one whit. He was like a child, dependent upon me for everything. "Mamma," he would call, "please don't leave me; don't leave me alone in the dark." I stayed with him constantly. I think he must have gone through hell that week. Valiantly, with his vision still "fuzzy," he went back to work and finished the picture, seeing very little of the things around him. A room was a blur. He had to be directed at each turn--"Right, Wally, feel that chair?" or "Left, through that door there!" Finally the picture was finished. A few days' rest at home did not improve his condition. He decided to go into the higher mountains for a week. He intended to shoot and play tennis; he could do neither. He returned at the end of eight days and his illness was stamped in his face. A dysentery had set in and was undermining his strength. But night after night I have heard him say: "No matter what comes now, mamma, thank God, I've bucked the drugs." His condition worried me. I decided to put him in a sanitarium for two weeks. Apparently he improved. He wanted to "go somewhere" and we went on an eight-day motor trip, making easy jumps. His condition grew worse. We tried every known remedy without effect. When we returned, he decided he wanted a touch of the desert. We went to Palm Springs, an oasis on the edge of the great Mojave wilderness of sand. He seemed to rest there and enjoy himself. After a week he became discontented and talked constantly about home. So we came back. In an effort to get him to exercise, I engaged an professional boxer and athletic trainer who came to the house and lived with Wally. But even that failed. The trainer rigged up a bicycle arrangement and forced Wally to exercise, much against his will. Still the dysentery persisted and Wally grew weaker. Toward the last, the trainer carried him in his arms up and down the steps and through the gardens at the house. I suppose I grew panicky. At any rate I took him to a hospital and the best specialists obtainable poked him and probed him and pierced him with needles in an effort to diagnose his illness. They failed. The nerve- racking days in the hospital sapped what little strength he had left, so now he is back in the sanitarium, making his second magnificent fight with death. I have told you the truth about Wally, my husband, my boy, because the bare naked truth is so much better, so much cleaner, than the horrible stories which for months, and maybe years, have centered about him. I am not ashamed of anything he has done--sorry, yes. But Wally is not malicious and he is not "bad." He is a big overgrown boy who made a mistake, and who had nerve enough, strength enough to realize his error and to set it right. Can you criticize a man for that? (The End) * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * January 3, 1923 SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER ...Simultaneously with Barker's appearance before the commissioner in Oakland word reached here from Los Angeles that State and Federal narcotic agents had raided the sanitarium of "Dr." C. B. Blessing in that city, which advertises the "Barker Cure" as its principal attraction. Correspondence between Barker and Blessing was seized, as well as records of persons treated in the southern institution. Prominent in the correspondence was the name of Juanita Hansen, motion picture actress, to whom reference was made as a former patient in the Barker sanitarium at Oakland. ...A letter from Barker to Blessing was found in which the Oakland "reformer" told of the "kick" he had gotten out of seeing Juanita Hansen on the screen in a motion picture, knowing that "she was then in bed in our place." ...The entry of the Blessing establishment in regard to Wallace Reid showed that he entered the southern sanitarium last October 19. His age is given as 31, birthplace as Missouri, height 6 feet 2 inches, and weight 156 pounds. Reid's normal weight is 190. The record stated that Reid's use of drug, at the time of his admittance, was three to six grains of morphine a day. The record concluded: "Treatment of morphinism for two weeks and partial withdrawal accomplished. Reid later entered another sanitarium, where he is recently reported as improved in health. [This item would seem to contradict Mrs. Reid's written statement that he had been abstaining from drugs for at least six weeks prior to his admission to the sanitarium. And her written statement strongly implies that his admission to the sanitarium was not for drug addiction, but for dysentery, which is also contradicted here.] * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * January 19, 1923 Louis Weadock LOS ANGELES EXAMINER Screen Idol Succumbs to Drug Curse Los Angeles, January 18.-- "Wally" Reid has played his last scene. After a long, hard fight against odds greater than those that he overcame in the moving pictures in which he starred for eight years, he died in a Hollywood sanitarium this afternoon, his hand in the hand of his wife. The doctor's certificate says he died from congestion of the lungs, but everybody who knew him knows that the drug habit killed "Wally" Reid... During the forty-eight hours preceding his death she [Dorothy Davenport Reid] did not leave his room in the Banksia Place Sanitarium. During the last six weeks she had been out of his sight only for a few minutes at a time, because whenever he awoke from his troubled spells of sleep his first words always were "Hello, Dot," and his first gesture was to reach out for her hand. Until a very few days ago she and Dr. G. S. Herbert, who was his attending physician, were so confident that Wally had won his fight that they agreed to the proposal of Jesse L. Lasky, by whom he was employed, that he begin work in a picture, shooting of which was to begin July 1. But although he had not touched narcotic drugs for weeks the ravages which their use had made upon his remarkable constitution were so great that when a relapse came early today he had no stamina left with which to pull him through. Wally was only thirty-one years old... Only once during his last illness did Wallace Reid exhibit any interest in religious matters. That was when he asked if he might have a Christian Scientist practitioner. His wife and her mother, both of whom are Christian Scientists, assured him that he could, but by this time he had changed his mind. Funeral services for him will be held here Saturday. They will be in charge of the Elks. While the services are in progress every moving picture studio in the country will be closed as a mark of respect to his memory. The body will be cremated in accordance with a wish of the deceased. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * January 21, 1923 Louis Weadock LOS ANGELES EXAMINER Los Angeles, Jan. 20--In a bronze urn, which he himself had designed, there rest tonight the ashes of Wally Reid. His body was cremated late this afternoon following funeral services that were attended by more people than have assembled at a funeral here for a long time. Not only was the First Congregational Church, which is one of the largest church edifices in the city, packed to the doors, but in the streets near it the crowds were so large that the police barred automobiles from those streets for a distance of two blocks... In the church during the service were, almost without exception, all of the men and women whose names are the best known in the world of moving pictures..."Fatty" Arbuckle...Pola Negri and Charles Chaplin and Harold Lloyd...Bebe Daniels...Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and Sid Grauman...a complete list would fill columns. Drawn and haggard, the widow [Dorothy Davenport Reid] sat with her mother [Alice Davenport], who, like herself, had been at one time a celebrated actress and who, like her, had given up her professional career that she might devote herself to making a home for her husband. Reid's mother could not cross the continent in time to be present at the funeral, nor could the Reids' closest friend, Adela Rogers St. Johns, the writer, who is in British Columbia, Canada, and could not get here in time... ***************************************************************************** ***************************************************************************** NOTES: [1] See TAYLOROLOGY 8. Woolwine's denial was published in the NEW YORK HERALD. ***************************************************************************** For more information about Taylor, see WILLIAM DESMOND TAYLOR: A DOSSIER (Scarecrow Press, 1991) Back issues of Taylorology are available at gopher://gopher.etext.org:70/11/Zines/Taylorology *****************************************************************************