E292: MURDER - William Desmond Taylor (part I)

Fresh Hell Podcast

freshhellpodcast

True Crime

4.8 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 1 August 2025

⏱️ 69 minutes

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Summary

Before there was Hollywood scandal, there was THE Hollywood scandal.

In this first part of our series on the murder of William Desmond Taylor, we're setting the scene: Los Angeles in the 1920s, the silent film industry at its decadent, chaotic peak, and the lives of the people who would soon be swept up in one of the most notorious unsolved murders in Hollywood history.

We’re talking about the meteoric rise of Mabel Normand — one of the first female comedy stars and directors — and the complicated, carefully controlled public image of Mary Miles Minter, America’s “sweetheart” with a stage mom from hell. And then, of course, there’s Taylor himself. Or.... should we say William Cunningham Deane-Tanner?! He was a man with more than one name, and maybe more than one secret.

This is the beginning of a mystery murder that shook early Hollywood to its core… and we're only just getting started.

William Desmond Taylor, Mary Miles Minter, Mabel Normand, silent film era, early Hollywood, Hollywood murder, 1920s Los Angeles, Paramount Pictures, unsolved Hollywood mystery, Charlotte Shelby, Taylor murder, classic Hollywood scandal, vintage crime, forgotten Hollywood, Fresh Hell Podcast

Transcript

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0:00.0	You are listening to the Fresh Hell podcast.
0:14.6	Fresh Hell contains stories of a disturbing and often graphic nature and is intended for a mature audience.
0:20.6	Please don't let your kids listen to this,
0:22.4	or they might turn out like us. Hi, I'm Annie from the USA. And I'm Johanna from Austria,
0:35.2	and you're listening to your favorite international podcast.
0:40.3	The podcast hosted by two women who never met in real life and possibly never will, but
0:46.0	who have a shared obsession for forgotten crimes and inconvenient corpses.
0:52.7	That's right.
0:54.6	Oh my God.
0:55.8	I'm choking on my own saliva again.
0:58.2	Not again.
0:59.6	Okay.
1:01.2	Before we start, we would love to give a huge shout out to our Patreon members.
1:06.2	You are the reason that we are able to keep this podcast going week after week.
1:11.9	Honestly, did you ever think, Johanna, that we would be doing this?
1:15.3	How many episodes is this?
1:18.8	290 something.
1:20.6	Are we coming up on 300?
1:22.1	We miss every anniversary.
1:23.5	Every year we're like, we're going to do something special for our fifth anniversary.
1:28.0	Nope, came and went.
1:29.0	We're like, oh, shoot, we missed it.
	...

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